“I’ve only been up here a little while, but she hasn’t moved. I keep hoping. Nezana says she won’t suckle them, or doesn’t let them suckle, or is just stupid. He’s waiting for her to leave them alone so he can bring them away from her.”
Athena reached out to pull at the ropes of emerald that were always plaited into Sofya’s hair. The princess expertly twitched the baby’s hand away.
“Tena,” Athena said, grabbing at the emeralds again. Sofya sat back on her heels, facing the baby.
“Tena, my love, it is a clever girl that knows her own name,” Sofya said. “You must learn to say Sofya, next. Sofya.”
“Sofya,” Athena repeated obediently.
“You little vixen!” Telemakos exclaimed. “What’s my name, then? Who’s this?” He tapped himself on the chest.
Athena identified him lovingly. “Boy.”
Sofya laughed. “Telemakos is too long, isn’t it? Silly, pompous Greek name.”
“Thank you. Why are you learning Latin and the names of British kings?” Telemakos asked.
Sofya coughed again. She arranged her skirts around her knees. She seemed uncharacteristically apologetic when she spoke.
“I am to go to Britain in the summer, when the rains and the quarantine are over, as the new ambassador there. I shall be counterpart to your aunt Goewin.”
Telemakos felt a stab of envy at the thought of the adult assignment that lay ahead of her, representing her kingdom in formal embassy to a distant and important ally. That Gebre Meskal should choose a girl as his ambassador—Goewin surely had a hand in this recommendation.
“Does that mean your brother Priamos is coming home?” Telemakos asked. “Goewin will be pleased.”
“If he is still alive, after the plague, yes.”
“I shall miss you.”
“Rot. You have not missed me all this year.”
“Tena! My my my my my!”
Athena reached for Sofya’s hair again, and Sofya began to pick absently at one of her long plaits, twisting a glinting rope of green jewels from her hair. She held it out to Athena, who tried to tangle it into her own wild bronze curls. When she found the beads would not stay on her head, she put them in her mouth.
“What kind of baby are you, that teethes on emeralds?” Sofya said, wrapping the tail end of the string about her hand so that Athena could not accidentally swallow it. “Do not fall into one of your black sulks, Telemakos so-called lionheart; you look like your father. It is very unbecoming. You are not ambassador to Britain yet, but you can be sure the emperor has plans for you as well.”
She stretched out the emeralds. Athena growled, a warning growl this time, and kept on chewing. “These jewels I wear all belonged to my father,” Sofya went on. “And so did those my mother the queen of queens gave you, last year.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The emerald collar you wore at the smugglers’ trial. The queen of queens did an odd thing when she gave that collar to you. She should have given it to one of her sons. But my eldest brother, Mikael, is mad insane and imprisoned; and the next, Abreha, is king of Himyar and will not come back to Aksum; and Hector is dead; and Priamos is in Britain. So she gave it to you. And that is sort of like adopting you as her son. It does an odd thing for you; so long as Gebre Meskal has no sons of his own, it puts you in favor to be chosen as his heir.”
Telemakos gave a disbelieving snort. “That’s as likely as the sprouting of a new arm!”
“You’re not his blood kin,” Sofya said, and her face was serious now. “But you are heir to the house of Nebir,” and you have the unspoken endorsement of the queen of queens. All her own sons are useless or dangerous. Do you see? It makes you a favorite, Beloved Telemakos. ‘Beloved’ is a title. Did you think it was an endearment?”
This was, in its own way, as chilling as any hyena’s head in the palace kitchens.
“I had not thought about it,” Telemakos said faintly.
“It was my father’s title,” said Sofya. “Ras Bitwoded Anbessa, the beloved prince Lionheart. When the emperor calls you ‘Beloved Lionheart’ it puts everyone in mind of my father, who was chief counselor to the emperor Caleb, before Gebre Meskal was born.
“Ah me,” she added caustically. “I am sorry to make you have to think so hard.”
Telemakos, used to her insults, glared fixedly down at Solomon. “Well, I see now why no one will let me touch a spear. I might perhaps arrange a royal hunt, go kill a lion and prove myself a worthy rival to the kingship, and have to be imprisoned somewhere.”
“You look like Ras Meder again,” Sofya said. “Your sister will think it is acceptable behavior to scowl at anyone who tries to instruct you—”
“Oh!” Telemakos gasped in sudden delight. “There they are!”
The lioness Sheba had paced away to stretch. The three cubs had been sleeping close against her, curled together in an intertwining ball of golden fluff. Telemakos had never seen lions so small and new.
“Look, look, Tena,” he whispered, gazing at them in rapture, and it was only after Sheba had come back and sat on them again, as though they were eggs in a nest, that Telemakos realized Sofya had been watching him all the while through narrowed eyes, as intent on him as he had been on the lion cubs.
“It is true that I have missed your company,” she said softly. “I am sorry to be going away in such a little while.”
Two of Sheba’s babies died within a week of their birth. Telemakos was in agony over the state of the remaining kit, until the morning Nezana called at Grandfather’s gate with the thin, faintly breathing scrap of fur sleeping in a basket.
“The emperor Gebre Meskal asks if Telemakos Meder will raise this cub for him,” the lion keeper requested formally. “There is no one better able to manage such a task.”
“I should like a word with the emperor Gebre Meskal,” Medraut told him in the silken serpent’s voice that made you want to run and hide.
But Grandfather unexpectedly threw in his support with Telemakos. They stood in the courtyard arguing while the lion, scarcely old enough to blink, lay quietly starving in its basket.
“I would not care if Gebre Meskal were emperor of Rome,” Medraut said coldly. “He will ask my permission before he offers my son so mocking and dangerous a gift.”