The Empty Kingdom (11 page)

His father watched and listened impassively.

“Look at her, so content and at ease with the federator of Himyar! Your daughter doesn’t remember anything of the house of Nebir,” Telemakos said, and plunged recklessly further. “Tell our aunt that Athena has forsaken her. She’s like a ship with no loyalty, as easily guided by one hand as another. She’ll soon be more Himyar than Aksumite.”

Medraut’s face was quiet, but his dark blue eyes were ablaze.

“You’d better act soon, if you want to keep her,” Telemakos said to his father. “Or the najashi and his hunting dogs will win her affection from within.”

The najashi seemed absorbed in the game he was playing with Athena, but he surely must be paying close attention to everything Telemakos said. I’d better shut up now, Telemakos thought, or he’ll start to wonder why I keep babbling on like this.

“Isn’t that so, my najashi?” Telemakos finished, and his uncontrollable voice soared over Abreha’s title.

“Aye, I suppose it is,” Abreha agreed mildly. “She is my good companion.”

Muna touched Athena’s springing bronze hair. Athena swatted her hand away absently, then noticed the veil. She reached over the najashi’s arm and grabbed and tugged at the sheer silk. “Where’s Muna hiding?”

“Perhaps I should take the little princess home with me,” Medraut said quietly.

“Sir!” Telemakos gasped in protest. “I meant only—”

Medraut was suddenly intent, with his eyes on his daughter, oblivious to the menace at his throat and the guards at his back.

“Princess.”

Athena looked up.

Medraut held out his left palm so that Athena could see the blue serpent and the staff of Asclepius tattooed there. Medraut had used the mark to announce himself as a physician, during the years of silence that had been his private penance for not having died with his brother Lleu in the battle of Camlan. Reaching toward his daughter, he made it seem as if, for a moment, there were a minute, dark dragon nesting in his cupped hand.

Athena ducked beneath the najashi’s arm. She dropped lightly to her hands and feet and crawled over to Medraut, intrigued.

Medraut did not move, watching her, still. He closed his hand.

“Gone,” Athena said. “See that snake again.”

Medraut opened his fingers. His face was expressionless, impassive, immobile as his body.

Athena stood by his side and pointed to the gold dragon that crouched coiled at his shoulder. “Athena see this snake?” she asked politely, careful not to touch without permission.

“Why doesn’t she walk yet?” Medraut asked prosaically.

Telemakos was stunned. It had never occurred to him that his father might have the faintest inkling about when a child should normally take her first steps.

“She should be walking,” Medraut said. “She’s nearly three years old. There’s nothing wrong with her legs, is there? Can she stand?”

Medraut took Athena’s hand and made her step away from him. She swung against his arm and fell over but pulled herself back up. “Athena see your pretty snake, please, Ras?”

“Can she stand on her own? Will she walk with you if you hold her hands?”

“I can’t hold both her hands at once,” Telemakos said.

Athena fell over again. She was doing it on purpose. Medraut looked up from her sharply, giving Telemakos a shrewd, assessing glance. “So you can’t,” he said. “Nor can you lift her anymore.”

Telemakos clenched his teeth. He managed to keep his voice even as he said, “Forgive me the contradiction, sir, but if she holds on I can lift her easily.”

Medraut deftly unfastened his brooch and, letting the folds of his cloak fall away from his shoulders, tossed the golden dragon across the room. It landed in a cup by the door; his aim was effortless and accurate.

“Go get that, if you want it, little princess. But you must walk to it.”

“She does not walk,” Muna said.

It was the first she had spoken since they had all come into the room, and Medraut looked at her. She buried her face in her hands beneath the veil.

“My lady,” Telemakos said, “Athena is an ungrateful little wretch and does not deserve your attention. She doesn’t walk because she’s lazy. She knows I’ll carry her. It’s no blame of yours.”

He caught Athena around the waist and hoisted her to her feet again. “Walk a little—come on, Tena, I’ll hold your hand.”

“Not
Tena
.” She sat down contrarily. “
Athena
.”

“And you, Telemakos,” Medraut said gently. “Your maps are very good. I don’t doubt you can draw them from memory. But you can’t lift a child or unfold a sheet of cloth. What else? Can you sleep through the night without screaming?”

“Sir—”

But the word came out like the squeal of metal on stone, and Telemakos could not answer.

“Why does he scream in his sleep?” Abreha asked quietly.

Medraut answered with deliberate care. “I took him hunting in the Great Valley of Aksum, two years before he came here, and one day when we had gone separate ways, he was captured by salt traders and taken as a slave to the emperor’s salt mines. He was evilly mistreated there, blindfolded and bound, starved, lashed if he stumbled in his work. It was two months before we found him. He still dreams of it. He does not complain of it, though; perhaps he finds it shameful to speak of.”

Medraut made it sound so simple: an accident, a mistake, while they should have been hunting together. There was no secret mission, no secret name, no need to hide as Gebre Meskal’s sunbird.

“
Ai
.” The najashi gave a sudden sigh, as though surprised by a sharp pain. “I understand now. Beloved Morningstar, I am sorry. I might have spared you a deal of suffering this year, had I known that.”

“I’m all right,” Telemakos said, embarrassed.

Medraut swallowed again. Telemakos thought he looked tired. He had absorbed the information that could have forfeited both their lives, and turned everyone’s attention away from it, and given Telemakos an alibi for his service to the emperor in Afar. And every word he had spoken had been true. It all appeared effortless, but everything he said was calculated to avoid being cut off by the choking chain, and he must surely guess what a razor’s edge Telemakos walked himself. When Medraut spoke again, his deep, smooth voice rang with challenge.

“I want
assurance
—” he spoke hesitantly, like a man trying to find his way by throwing his voice in a cavern. “My lord Abreha Anbessa the Lion Hunter, najashi and mukarrib, king of Himyar and federator of South Arabia. Telemakos Meder will not remain in Himyar forever, though you give him another name and raise him in privilege as you would your own children. Give me assurance that he will leave your palace fit for anything his destiny will require of him.”

Abreha got up and crossed the room with his purposeful, loping stride. He stopped at the door. “Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll make your son a gift, Ras Meder. Wait for me.” Then he addressed his soldiers. “I am going to the kennels. It will take me some little time to descend the stairs and come back. Keep the prince silent while I’m gone.”

Medraut sat taut and motionless, an alabaster statue, with his hands on his knees. After a few moments, when no one moved or said anything, Athena got to her hands and feet and crawled over to the cup where Medraut had thrown his dragon brooch. She pulled herself up to stand at the table and, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure she was not doing anything wrong, tipped up the cup and fished out the pin. She scrambled back to Telemakos on three feet—or anyway on her feet and one hand—holding the dragon carefully in her other hand. Then she sat contentedly to examine it.

Dawit spoke suddenly again. “Before Medraut courted your mother, boy, he courted my daughter Muna.”

“
Sir
!” Queen Muna cried out.

Dawit sniffed. “It was not secret then. Why should it be secret now you are both married, and not to each other?”

Whatever Telemakos had expected the najashi to be hiding from him, it was not this. He felt as though he had been standing by a dark window, and now a curtain was pulled back so that he could see through to another world, full of a new kind of intrigue that it never occurred to him to watch for.

Medraut’s eyes seethed. He did not move or make a sound.

“There is your reason the najashi did not want Gwalchmei as his ambassador, Morningstar,” Dawit added. “He looks too much like his cousin, your father, and lacked your father’s temperance. Gwalchmei was a captivating libertine.”

“Do not shame me,” Muna said quietly.

“Hah!” Dawit grunted. “The boy is the image of his father. Do you think the najashi will allow him to stay in this palace after his voice breaks?”

When the najashi returned to the room, there were two young salukis pressed close against his legs. Medraut smacked his thigh hard with his fist as a wordless exclamation and broke into a real smile of surprise and delight. Again Athena scrambled to the door on all fours, lionlike. She pulled herself up against the belly of a saluki. The dog turned its head nervously and sniffed at her. “Mine,” Athena said. “Athena’s dog, thank you, najashi.”

That made even the guards’ mouths twitch. Medraut laughed aloud.

“I am sorry, my honey badger,” the najashi apologized, getting down on her level as he always did to talk to children. “But these dogs are for your brother. I am sure he will share them.”

Now Telemakos was completely mystified. He stared at his guardian in frozen disbelief.

“For
me
?” He was sure the najashi meant some mockery or jest.

“Aye, for you, Morningstar. Your father bids me give him assurance of my good intent toward you, and we all know you could use assistance in the hunt. These will be easier for you to manage than a falcon.”

Telemakos’s mind raced. A pair of hunting dogs? A
pair
! Two of the najashi’s gazelle hounds for my own? The last one he gave away was a gift for the emperor of Aksum. What is going on?

They were a matched pair, an identical hound and bitch, not a year old and not quite full grown. Their legs and bodies were the pearly golden white of old ivory, or new cream, or Telemakos’s own pale hair. Their long, silken ears and feathery tails were red as copper.

“You cannot possibly …” Telemakos moved to kneel formally before Abreha, with his head turned aside in disbelief as much as humility, and muttered, “My lord najashi, this is a gift for a king. I do not deserve this.” He drew a shaking breath, burning with shame at having to accept such a gift bare minutes after attempting something close to treason. “Never in a thousand years would I deserve such dogs.”

“I do not doubt that you are right on both counts,” Abreha replied dryly. “But they are yours. My gift to you is my pledge to your father.”

Medraut answered him with real warmth and fervor. “Truly, my najashi, you do my son a great honor to gift him so generously. You do us both a great honor. I accept this pledge.”

The najashi strode across the room to join Medraut where he sat. The dogs followed loyally at his heels.

“Touch them, Morningstar. Let them smell you. You are their master now.”

Telemakos had always known he would sell his soul to call one of these dogs his own. He could not restrain himself for one second longer, and his lips were against their feathery copper ears while his roughened fingertips snagged the white silk of their coats. They warmed to the game joyfully, sniffing and butting their heads against him, so that for a moment he forgot everything else.

“Oh, my najashi,
thank you
!” Telemakos gasped.

Athena was as enraptured as he was.

“Mine, Boy, Tena’s pretty dog,” she argued with him. “Selene, Selene.”

Telemakos laughed. “All right, then, Selene! Selene and Argos! You may share, you selfish thing.”

Does this mean I’m safe? Telemakos wondered, and in his mind felt again the light sting of parchment striking his cheek.

It doesn’t, he decided. The najashi will never trust me. But it is an apology, a payment for that terrible season of discipline and hardship he made me endure.

Overcome with conflicting emotions, Telemakos suddenly threw himself at Medraut and hid his face against his father’s shoulder. He felt Medraut’s arms tighten around him like steel bands. He had never known fear in that harsh embrace, never anything but trust and safety. But Medraut, too, could be merciless. He had whipped Athena’s fingers with strips of hide when, at less than a year old, she had interfered with the sling he was braiding. He had held a knife to his young brother’s throat.

The charm bracelet chattered. Telemakos raised his head. His eyes burned, but he had managed not to weep.

“Give my love to Goewin,” Telemakos reminded Medraut.

H
E WAS IN A
foul mood in the weeks following his father’s visit: one day, that one day being all they had had. It had not even been a day, really, just those few hours in the najashi’s reception room, with Medraut held in chains the whole of their time together.

So the najashi kept his promise and took Telemakos to see the dam at Marib. The journey, Telemakos knew, was meant to console and distract him, and he resisted consolation. But it worked anyway. Telemakos liked traveling. He liked being part of a royal retinue; it was on one of Gebre Meskal’s hunting parties that Telemakos had first met Abreha, when the najashi had come to Aksum to witness Gebre Meskal’s initiation as emperor. The journey Abreha made to Marib now was a routine check on the dam and the dedication of a monument commemorating its rebuilding. But the najashi traveled with all the trappings of an imperial progress, including his wife and his gazelle hounds and Malika the child queen of Sheba, who was heir to the Marib principality. When the silk tents were raised in Marib’s green fields, it felt like a party.

Athena did not like Marib. The empty windows of the ruined palace there scared her, as did the dark, abandoned pre-Christian temple that was half buried beneath drifting sand. All around the great dam, and the irrigated land that it watered, orange groves stretched so far out on the plains toward the desert that you could not see their borders. But you could not get rid of the sand that blew in from the desert reaches of the Empty Quarter. When the wind blew, Athena rode at Telemakos’s side with her face hidden in his shoulder, or with a length of his shamma pulled over her head, to keep the sand out of her eyes. She spat with vicious disdain when it got in her mouth; you had to filter water before you could drink it. City children were paid to sweep the sand away from the buttresses around the great dam’s sluices.