“My grandfather Artos had something like it hanging in his study. Goewin told me about it. It was a floor plan of his house that his wife Ginevra made for him. She made all his maps.”
“How precise you are,” the najashi said, glancing back down at the faint lines of charcoal on the linen sheet. “Telemakos Draftsman, we should call you. I admired Artos your grandfather deeply, Morningstar. Your father called him ‘the engineer king.’ Artos rebuilt every ruin he came across, wall and palace and aqueduct, all throughout his kingdom. It was his work that inspired me to restore the great dam at Marib. I will take you to see it, someday.”
Telemakos considered, and dared a small challenge. “Will you?”
“I promise you,” Abreha answered seriously, gazing up at him again with his faint frown and sad black eyes. “Next year, perhaps, when the lion has learned to hunt. We will take it up to Marib. In the meantime I will have Dawit teach you the complexities of the irrigation systems that water this dry land and keep it green, so you can make sense of what you are seeing.”
Telemakos was bewildered by this promise; he did not know what he had done to deserve it.
“Why, my najashi?” he asked.
“Because your aunt obliges me to see that you learn such things as part of your apprenticeship,” Abreha answered dryly. He rolled the map carefully shut, moved Telemakos’s duplicitous sealed letter to one side, and folded his hands together on the writing table. He gazed up at Telemakos expectantly.
“Tell me what you are thinking,” Abreha commanded.
Telemakos stared for a moment at the letter he had written and thought, Arrest Gedar.
“When are you going to get a new British ambassador?” he asked.
“When Constantine the high king sends me one. And your aunt must give her approval, as well. You know how long it takes for messages to come and go from Britain.” The najashi laughed. “I have you, in the meantime. You are half-British. I am sure you have advice for me. How can I strengthen my kingdom?”
Telemakos hesitated, wondering where this banter was meant to lead him. He did not want to talk about Himyar’s strengths or weaknesses; mapping distant Britain was a much safer topic. Then he remembered Inas’s pledge of loyalty.
“You should make unions among the Royal Scions,” Telemakos said. “Let Malika and Shadi wed, when they come of age. They are both devoted to you, and their marriage will unite Sheba and Qataban. It won’t increase anyone’s name or title, nor expand your dominion, but it will keep it sound.”
“I shall put that suggestion before my Federation!” Abreha exclaimed.
Telemakos protested carefully, “My najashi, I think you mock me.”
“On the contrary. Let me grant you a petition in exchange for such good advice. What grace would you ask of the king of Himyar?”
Telemakos did not, now, believe Abreha to be trifling with him. He sensed that the najashi was testing him in some unknown way, as Gebre Meskal had done on several occasions, and though he did not know the reason for this test, he thought he could direct it toward some neutral good and make return for a forgotten favor. Telemakos remembered the day he arrived in Himyar, and the stranger who had come to his aid and stood by him with unnecessary loyalty.
He said hesitantly, “Do you remember, my najashi, how I told you I had seen an execution in al-Muza, on my first day in Himyar?”
Abreha said nothing. Telemakos finally dared to raise his eyes from the floor to the najashi’s face, and Abreha blinked his silent permission to continue. His face was unreadable. Telemakos quickly looked at his feet again.
“I had a guide in al-Muza that day, a boy near my own age, the nephew of a tailor called Laban,” Telemakos said. “His name was Iskinder. He told me his ambition was to join al-Muza’s city guard, and though he was bold and strong and honorable, he thought he wouldn’t be accepted in the guard because he had no one to recommend him. I would dare beg your endorsement of Iskinder as your soldier, if you could do that.”
“Of all things, why should you think to ask this?”
The answer that tried to force its way aloud between his teeth could not be spoken. Because, my najashi, someone has to carry out your executions, and Iskinder is willing to do it.
But he managed to answer politely. “Because it’s easily granted, and something you are likely to grant,” Telemakos said frankly, “and if you do, we can both be content to think ourselves virtuous and generous.”
“Is it right that you should volunteer another to pledge me his service, when you withhold your own?”
“Sir!” Telemakos protested. “You yourself asked me to withhold my pledge until you had trained me to use a spear. But that was before you placed me under suspicion as a spy. Would you trust my pledge now?”
“Perhaps not,” Abreha said. “Perhaps not. You are forthright enough in declaring your loyalty to my cousin the Aksumite emperor.”
Not enough, Telemakos thought. I have not been forthright enough. Gebre Meskal does not know the danger that awaits him in Hanish.
The najashi paused, then said again, “And yet I pray that one day you will battle at my side, Telemakos Morningstar.”
IV
SEASON OF STARS
GEDAR WAS NO LONGER in San’a now, but Telemakos had made so much incidental mention of the oil merchant’s name in his coded letters that he felt obliged to mention him in innocence as well. He sent a letter to his father describing last season’s hunt with the lion Menelik. Gedar had been there as an observer. It was old news, but it was easy to bring up naturally, because Abreha was generous in discussing the lion’s training with Telemakos. It was like a flaw in the najashi’s forbidding nature, how eagerly he looked forward to taking Telemakos hunting with the lion again.
Telemakos wrote to Medraut:
You would think it sheer lunacy, this experiment of teaching a lion to hunt like a dog. This lion is not as fast as the wonderful salukis, and much more stubborn. Lions hunt naturally in stealth, by night, creeping up on prey and taking it in a burst of sudden strength; and most of their hunting is down to the females, in any case. Menelik will look like a big black termite mound creeping through the grass, once his mane starts to grow, and scare everything away.
Abreha gave a brief snort of amusement. “I had not thought of that. You do make me look a fool.”
“Shall I paint out this story?” Telemakos offered in bland politeness, his eyes on the floor. He enjoyed needling Abreha about the lion, their one shared interest where Telemakos was on safe footing and certain in his superior knowledge.