There was a malachite sunbird perching on the edge of the bright bowl, its thin, curved bill just touching the surface of the honeyed water. Its wings shone iridescent emerald. It sipped there fearlessly, as if there were no one in the room.
“Goewin,” Telemakos said, “I need you to do a thing for me.”
They were the first words he had spoken in more than a day, and what he said then had been whispered. Now his voice suddenly sounded normal again, clear and determined.
“Are you better this morning?” Goewin asked in surprise.
“Nothing hurts anymore. I feel better,” Telemakos said. “I’m not better. I’m dying.”
Goewin stood silent for a moment, jogging the baby against her shoulder.
“I want my arm taken off,” Telemakos said. “Make my father do it.”
She answered fiercely, “Yes. All right.”
“If Ras Meder won’t do it himself, then get Amosi.”
“All right. Give me an hour. I’ll get your mother to sit with you.”
She turned to obey him, almost immediately.
“Wait!” Telemakos cried softly. “Goewin, wait. Please let me see the baby.”
The sunbird raised its head and began to preen, balancing on the rim of the bowl with its long tail, a blaze of green above the crimson water.
“Please,” Telemakos begged. “Put her down over here, on my right. I don’t mind if she cries. I want to see her.”
Goewin laid his sister gently at his side.
The baby looked up at him without whimpering. Her hair gleamed with the metallic sheen of bronze, while her skin was the even brown of roasted grain. Her hair smelled of sandalwood. It was not oiled with it; that was just the way it smelled, coincidence. She gazed at Telemakos steadily, her expression faintly worried. She had been crying, but her eyes were dry. She was so young she could not yet make tears when she wept. Her eyes were the clear gray of a winter sky.
“She has eyes just like Athena’s,” Telemakos said. “In The Odyssey.”
“I’ve thought that too,” Goewin said with a small, tired smile. “‘The gray-eyed goddess,’ Homer calls her.”
“You honey,” Telemakos whispered to the baby. She stared at him with her dry, bright eyes. “Oh, you honey. I wish I could hold you.”
He could not even move to touch her. She seemed the smallest, most vivid creature he had ever seen, more vibrant even than Sheba and Solomon had been as cubs, because he could sense the latent intelligence looking out through her clear, gray eyes.
Telemakos looked up at Goewin. “Her name is Athena,” he declared.
Goewin twisted her mouth into a weary smile and nodded. “You are right.” She leaned down gently and lifted the baby onto her shoulder again. “I don’t think either of your parents will contest that choice. And who knows, maybe it is a smoke screen I can use. The emperor calls his advisor Mentor, after all, not Athena, and if it is ever spoken abroad, it will seem to mean only the baby.” Goewin blew out a sharp breath through pinched nostrils, like an angry sigh. “High time she had a name, as well, poor thing. I’m frustrated with your parents, Telemakos. Your mother lies in bed weeping half the day and no longer bothers to comb her hair; your father turns his back and walks out of the room if the baby is in it. If you die, I will leave this house and take your little Athena with me. But if you live—”
“I’ll have to help you,” Telemakos said. “I will, I promise.”
Goewin went to find his father.
Ferem, the butler, came in quietly and began to set out the too-familiar physician’s instruments on a clean white cloth; all except the small, narrow jeweler’s saw, which he laid in the brazier. He knelt at Telemakos’s side.
“God bless you, child.”
He took Telemakos’s hand, the sound one, and kissed it gently. “Your mother will be here in a moment,” Ferem said, “and she’ll stay till you’re asleep. I will see you in the morning, when you wake up.”
The second half of that week was not very different from the first. Telemakos was scarcely aware enough to realize what had happened to him; he lay half-dead as his body fought off the last of the infection. But the cruel nails were gone. Once he heard his aunt ask soberly, “How is it with our young lion tamer now?” There was quiet relief and firm confidence in his father’s answer: “Much better.”
Then one morning Telemakos woke up clear headed and ravenously hungry. He barely had the strength to shake the rattle that would bring Ferem; he had been kept alive over the last fortnight on little more than honey and water.
His mother came in. She had combed her hair or allowed someone to comb it for her: it was fixed out of her face in the familiar, neat rows of narrow plaits, billowing loose and full around the base of her neck. Telemakos felt as though he had not seen her for months, though her room was next to his.
“You’ve been lost! You’ve been lost!” he cried out to her. “I can’t reach you. Kiss me again and again! Oh, come closer, I need you!”
“You don’t,” she said. “You need Medraut, and you need Goewin. All I do is feed people.”
“I need you to hold me,” Telemakos said plaintively.
But she was right: she had to feed him. Ferem propped him up so he could drink, and Turunesh held a bowl of broth to his lips.
“Ugh, this horrible British stock,” Telemakos said. “Why do you let Goewin cook?”
It was delicious, though; it was as if he had never tasted food before.
“She’s been fishing, south of the city, where the river Mai Barea grows so broad,” his mother said. “She takes the baby with her.”
“I’m not drinking fish paste soup if there’s fresh trout in the kitchens,” Telemakos said firmly. “I want it fried in pepper.”
He did not get the pepper, but his mother gave in and let him have a tiny piece of fish, and mashed banana. She fed him patiently and wiped his mouth and dusted invisible crumbs off the bandages strapped across his chest. She was elaborate in keeping her attention strictly on his right side. Telemakos could tell that whatever was wrong with her had not gone away: she was not whole; she was not completely there.
He said, “This is the most wonderful food I’ve ever eaten. As soon as I can walk again, the first thing I will do is go down to the lake and catch my own dinner.”