There was the slick squeal of steel against silver as Abreha drew his dagger. Telemakos knelt tense but unflinching, head down, as Abreha parted the hair at his neck. The dagger’s blade brushed cold against Telemakos’s skin, but all the najashi did was to shave off one of the matted elflocks at the base of Telemakos’s skull.
“Raise your head,” Abreha commanded him. “Watch.”
The najashi pierced the tip of his dagger through all the thicknesses of the folded page he had been writing on. Then he twined the shorn hank of Telemakos’s hair into a rough silver filament, and threaded it through the holes in the sheet. Finally he twisted the great signet ring from his finger. He placed it on his open palm, held flat before him where Telemakos could see it.
“There is no solid thing, no object of value, that I would not forgive you,” Abreha said quietly. “Not Solomon’s Ark, if I had it; not even Solomon’s ring, which I hold in my hand. There is no tangible thing you could take from me that I would not forgive you. But I will not forgive you stolen knowledge.”
He lit a stick of wax and sealed the writing with his mark, with Telemakos’s hair fixed through the seal, so that even if the seal were to be prised off unbroken, the folds of the page could not be opened without the hair being cut as well.
“In the hands of your enemy, this is warrant for your execution.”
God help me, this cannot be happening, Telemakos thought.
“But let us keep it safe in the hands of your friend,” Abreha added, and tucked the sealed page into his sash. “So long as I hold this on my person, your life is secure. Let me help you up, Telemakos.”
He raised Telemakos to his feet at last, and stood with his hands on his ward’s shoulders. Telemakos kept his head down, not risking the insolence of meeting the najashi’s gaze.
Abreha kissed him lightly on the side of his face.
“That is how the Romans seal a covenant,” the najashi said. “Guard my knowledge, and I shall guard your life. I still expect your pledge of service to be made to me someday.”
He drove Telemakos gently toward the door. “Compose yourself. You are dining with my guest tonight. Gedar need not know what has passed between us.”
He let Telemakos go.
Later, alone in the small, high room where he worked and slept, Telemakos knelt by the dark eastern window with his head resting along his forearm, staring out over glittering San’a. The colored windows of the tower city gleamed like eyes and fireflies. Athena was sobbing below him in the nursery. He was not allowed to see her. They had set a guard by his door. The baby’s sobs sounded breathless and pathetic, as though she had been screaming hysterically for a long time and no longer had the energy to keep herself going. Telemakos knew no one would ever get her to eat anything that night.
He chewed at his knuckles and tried to think.
What is Goewin telling me? What is in those letters that is so revealing, so secret, so damning that the Lion Hunter of Himyar will not let me see them?
Perhaps it is something to do with the appointment of a new British ambassador to Himyar. Maybe Gwalchmei was really dismissed for some disgrace Abreha does not think I should know about, and Goewin does. Or did Gwalchmei, like me, know something he shouldn’t?
Telemakos stared at the city lights and gnawed at the back of his single fist until he fell asleep, and fell drowning into another dream.
He swam beneath a deep green salt sea with his hands bound behind his back, at such a distance from air and light that his body seemed twice its normal weight. He despaired of ever fighting to the surface before his lungs filled with heavy water and dragged him into the cold dark that plunged endlessly away below him. He kicked frantically upward, chest exploding and throat afire, toward a gold star of shimmering brightness far above. Then suddenly Telemakos broke through to warmth and wind and sunlight. He drew greedy breaths of sweet, clean air, relief flooding his veins. He shook the water from his eyes and looked about him.
The sea stretched endlessly away on every side. He could see nothing in any direction: no land, no sail, no raft, no drifting branch. He did not know where he was. The horizon was limitless; the sun stood overhead and told him nothing. He could not swim—his hands were still bound. He was alone.
Desolation so choked him that Telemakos began to cry in his sleep.
That woke him. He was cramped and cold, still sitting with his head against the windowsill.
He dragged cushions and his coverlet over to the pulley hole in the corner and made his bed on the floor there, with his head close to the shaft that led to the nursery. He could hear Athena below him breathing gustily in her sleep; the warm air of the room beneath filtered up to him. It smelled of sandalwood.