Telemakos again scooped water from the fountain and dashed it over his head. Athena clung to him like a barnacle, scrubbing her hot face against his shoulder.
Now I know, he thought. Now I know what happened to Hara.
“I would never make a city guard,” Telemakos said in a low voice. “I would never have the stomach for it. I think I would rather take such punishment myself than have to deal it out.”
He splashed more water down his neck. It was tepid, sweltering as the air.
“Your courage must stretch a long way further than mine, then,” said the young man named for Alexander. “I could not even speak such a thought aloud, bare minutes after being cursed to such a fate.”
It was close to sundown when Telemakos climbed the broad public stairway to the archon’s mansion. He felt crushed by the length and breadth of that day: the stifling heat; the strange city; the edgy, urban children; the hours spent carrying Athena while keeping the lion on leash. And so back to Hara. What did it feel like, what did you think, when they were driving the nails in? It had not been a dream. It was real.
There was a party of Hadrami legates standing on the archon’s terrace discussing the impending annual Great Assembly of the Himyar Federation. They were hard, turbaned men representing the warrior tribes of the wadi valley that bordered the northeastern Arabian desert; they wore robes of sweeping iridescent indigo and great, curved daggers, and they were greeting and saluting the al-Muza officials while their salukis waited free but obedient at their heels.
Telemakos pushed Menelik gently to the ground and knelt there with the lion to admire the dogs and wait for them to leave. The sun was smoldering lower over the Red Sea through the sullen haze at his back.
“Look at the dogs, my owlet,” Telemakos whispered in his sister’s ear. She had not napped that day, and he knew her mood was as brittle as his.
“Boy’s hair?” she requested, twisting and pulling at it.
“Shhh.”
The dogs were breathtaking. They were lean and sleek, with long, silken fur; Menelik, who was no taller than they, seemed heavy and awkward by comparison. The gazelle hounds twitched their long noses in the lion’s direction, gazing with interest at this strange creature: foe or prey or ally? Bound by courtly obedience but tense with curiosity, they moved only their noses. They reminded Telemakos of himself.
At Telemakos’s other side, Menelik made silly chirping noises. Grandfather’s hounds had tolerated him indulgently, and he was used to dogs. Telemakos began to ache with the strain of holding him in check.
“Hush—lie quiet—when they’ve gone, we’ll find the najashi—”
Menelik barked.
In seconds Telemakos became the center of everyone’s attention, surrounded by a swirl of blue robes and gilded dagger hilts and the long, curious, soulful faces of the salukis. “Good dogs,” Telemakos said under his breath, to reassure Athena rather than calm the dogs. But she was anything but frightened. She started panting in imitation of them and grabbed for their silken ears and long noses. Telemakos tried to hold her hands back, and suddenly, without warning, Menelik’s lead slipped through his fingers.
The lion moved free of Telemakos, slow and proud and without fear, until it stood calm and at ease in a circle of salukis. Menelik let them sniff him all over and butted noses with them. The men broke into a chorus of astonishment, and some delight, in formal South Arabian.
“What folly’s this?”
“Well trained, your Dancer.”
“No fear.”
“Back, Windcutter, back, Redbelly, my fine girl—”
“Watch that thing’s teeth!”
What a fuss, Telemakos thought.
“They’re only milk teeth,” he said stiffly, loud enough to be heard well over men and dogs. “The lion’s not six months old. He can’t tear meat yet.”
He did not expect the clear treble of his voice to ring with such damning scorn.
The men fell silent and stared at Telemakos. Then one of the chieftains bowed to him with exaggerated courtesy.
“He is hiding his crown in his pocket,” the man explained to his companions, and they fell about laughing. Then they cut Telemakos low with ridicule.
“His queen sits in his other pocket.”
“He travels with all his court about him.”
“How many paces does it take to measure your dominion, little sheik?”
Telemakos bent his head before them, his cheeks burning, knowing he deserved this. What a day. He glanced upward through his lashes for an instant and saw that Abreha Anbessa, the Lion Hunter of Himyar, najashi over all the Arabs of the coastal plains and the highlands, stood in their midst.
The najashi wore a linen head cloth like any Aksumite noble, bound about his temples by a narrow rope of coiled gold. His skin was considerably darker than that of the Himyar natives, and Telemakos was reminded that he and the najashi were countrymen, though he would have recognized him anyway by the heavy brow that made him so like his brother Priamos. Abreha had sensibly and firmly taken hold of Menelik’s lead.
“Dogs, dogs, dogs!” Athena told them all.
“Pardon, pardon, gentle masters,” Telemakos apologized with due humility. “I am ashamed. I am your servant.”
Abreha cut him off with his own name, speaking with fond recognition and no surprise.
“Lij Telemakos Meder, at last. My sheiks, my brothers, cry welcome to this prince, and do not mock him. I expect he does not yet have the measure of his dominion.”
Abreha pushed aside one of the dogs. He knelt with one arm lying fearlessly along the lion’s back and looked Telemakos up and down in silence.
“You are not the same child I met seven years ago,” the najashi said at last. “Did I not warn you to beware Solomon’s teeth? Do you remember?”
“I shall surely take better heed of your warnings in future,” Telemakos said.
“Your tongue is still as silver as your hair, Lij Telemakos.” Abreha’s attendants chuckled in agreement. “Or Beloved Telemakos, as Gebre Meskal names you in his letter. How you are favored! That was my father’s title, too. Well, I could ask no better fortune than that the son of Medraut of Britain grace my court this year. Where have you been all afternoon, you elusive young jackal? Your recommendations came straight to me, instead of dawdling about the city with their wayward owner.”