“Do it for no man’s sake. Do it for Turunesh your wife, and your new daughter. Ras Meder—”
The emperor spoke steadily. “Ras Meder, I have a question to put to you before you go. Let me ask it quickly, for I do not like to consult you on matters of policy when you are so pressed with hope and fear for your children. But it cannot wait. A dispatch has come this morning, and I must send an answer before rain makes the roads impassable. My cousin the king of Himyar, Abreha Anbessa, whom the Himyarites name Lion Hunter, wants me to lift my quarantine.”
Telemakos’s mind went suddenly keen, clutching at this distraction. Even only half-conscious, he was fascinated as always by the complicated adult world of power and influence that surrounded him.
“Why do you consult me?” Medraut said. “Consult my sister, the princess Goewin, your so-called British ambassador. She is your Mentor, not I; your Athena, your queen of spies.”
“Do not ever call her that,” the emperor said sharply, “even though we are alone.”
“Your pardon, sir,” Medraut muttered. “But why consult me?”
“Because you are a doctor. I want to know what risk I run of bringing plague to Aksum if I lift my quarantine and resume trade in the Red Sea. Abreha has his eye fixed on the Hanish Islands, and I fear he will try to secure them if I do not exercise my right of dominion there. He has been my ally these six years, and I do not want to wake the ghost of my father’s conflict in Arabia.”
Oh, the wealth of intrigue you heard when no one imagined you were listening.
Telemakos tried to divest himself of his ruined arm and the numbing, flashed return to last summer’s captivity, to concentrate on the low voices over his head.
“What do you lose if you lose Hanish?” Medraut asked.
“A colony of exile and our first port of entry from the Orient to the Red Sea, since plague took Deire. A vast mine of obsidian. Rich pearl-fishing grounds.”
“Majesty, run the risk of losing Hanish. Have you condemned whole cities and plunged nobles into poverty with your quarantine, to be tempted by a handful of obsidian and pearls? Throw wide your gates before time, and your people will fall to plague like corn to locusts; they will have no hardiness against a disease they have scarcely encountered.”
Medraut drew a long breath. But he finished firmly, “Ask that your cousin forgive you for refusing his request. Abreha Anbessa is a forgiving man. Show him that you trust him. Hold your quarantine another year.”
It took every fragment of Telemakos’s will to understand and remember this exchange.
“So. The quarantine holds. Thank you, Ras Meder.”
“It is advice easily given. It is not so easily enforced.”
“The quarantine holds.”
This assertion seemed curiously reassuring. Telemakos opened his eyes.
“You prying young demon. You never miss a word.” Medraut drummed his fingers against Telemakos’s chest, his touch fond and feather light, so that Telemakos hardly felt it. “Look at this, my lord, he is awake. He is hanging on our every syllable.”
Medraut bent near him, searching his face. Telemakos watched but could not move his head.
“Queen?”
Telemakos made the word with tongue and teeth, but no sound came out. With a great effort, he gathered himself.
“Queen of spies?” he whispered.
His father and Gebre Meskal glanced at each other over Telemakos’s still form. Then the emperor leaned close to him as well, with one finger raised to his own lips.
“It is a secret,” he said. “No man must ever know the true name of my Mentor”—his voice was gentle—“or that of my sunbird.”
That had been Gebre Meskal’s name for Telemakos himself, when Telemakos had moved in listening secrecy, alone in Afar among the salt pirates, the year before.
But no one knows my name, Telemakos thought. Our ports are closed, the black market was stopped six months ago, the men who ran it are all exiled or dead. Why then, he thought, and this time found himself shaping words without meaning to: “Why now, if all is finished—?”
It was utterly exhausting to try to speak aloud. Telemakos closed his eyes again.
“All is not finished,” said the emperor Gebre Meskal.
II
IMAGINARY BEASTS
TELEMAKOS LAY IN THE New Palace for a month. A day or so after the accident, when he was vaguely sensible again, he begged so piteously to go home that they finally sent for his aunt to come stay with him. It was not the same as being at home, sharing an apartment with Goewin in the New Palace, but it was a little like last year’s arrangement in the governor’s house at Adulis, when Telemakos had first begun to uncover the plot to undermine Gebre Meskal’s quarantine. Goewin came to sit on the edge of Telemakos’s bed after her day’s meetings were finished, just as she had done in Adulis. She read to him from Homer’s Odyssey, his favorite book.
“Do you think Telemakos knows?” Telemakos asked about his namesake, Odysseus’s son. He had to whisper because he could not talk. “Do you think he knows that Mentor is really Athena—his advisor is the goddess Athena, inspiring him to do everything he does?”
“Of course he knows.”
“He always pretends he doesn’t.”
“He is a diplomat. Prudent Telemakos,” Goewin said, turning and settling the pages. “Athena likes to hide her nature. The advisor Mentor is only a mortal, a loyal servant of the king. He has no special power to speak of, other than wisdom. It is the perfect disguise for the goddess.”
“You are my Mentor,” Telemakos whispered.
Goewin looked up sharply. If Telemakos had not loved her as much as he did, he would have been afraid of her warning glare; she was so different from everyone else, black haired and white faced, tall and pale and proud.
“I see why you would call me that,” she said. “We’ve always been like that. The first thing you ever said to me was to quote Telemakos’s welcome to the goddess.”
Goewin put aside the manuscript pages and laid one cool hand on his forehead, to smooth the pale hair back from his brown skin.
“But Telemakos, there is a reason you ought not to call me Mentor.”
“I know. I heard—” Telemakos hesitated. He had tensed at her touch. She had seen it and, perhaps thinking it hurt him, took her hand away. “Ras Meder and Gebre Meskal were talking about you,” Telemakos said. “They called you Gebre Meskal’s Mentor. ‘Queen of spies,’ they called you.”