The Empty Kingdom (5 page)

“You are a consummate tactician, Morningstar,” said Abreha. “That’s what the poet Tarafa says, as well. ‘When grief assails me, straightway I ride it off.’ I shall consider your domestic advice.” He looked up at Telemakos at last. “We will send this map of yours off to the seamstresses to embroider. Your instructions are clear enough as to where to fix the beads and sequins. I shall ask them to give you a bolt of cloth for your own use, so you may complete this series, and if Dawit is satisfied that you know what you’re doing, then you need not send the rest of them to me to check. What made you think of this? Such a simple idea, really, to make the lines visible to the fingertips as well as to the eye.”

“My grandfather Artos had something like it hanging in his study. Goewin told me about it. It was a floor plan of his house that his wife Ginevra made for him. She made all his maps.”

“How precise you are,” the najashi said, glancing back down at the faint lines of charcoal on the linen sheet. “Telemakos Draftsman, we should call you. I admired Artos your grandfather deeply, Morningstar. Your father called him ‘the engineer king.’ Artos rebuilt every ruin he came across, wall and palace and aqueduct, all throughout his kingdom. It was his work that inspired me to restore the great dam at Marib. I will take you to see it, someday.”

Telemakos considered, and dared a small challenge. “Will you?”

“I promise you,” Abreha answered seriously, gazing up at him again with his faint frown and sad black eyes. “Next year, perhaps, when the lion has learned to hunt. We will take it up to Marib. In the meantime I will have Dawit teach you the complexities of the irrigation systems that water this dry land and keep it green, so you can make sense of what you are seeing.”

Telemakos was bewildered by this promise; he did not know what he had done to deserve it.

“Why, my najashi?” he asked.

“Because your aunt obliges me to see that you learn such things as part of your apprenticeship,” Abreha answered dryly. He rolled the map carefully shut, moved Telemakos’s duplicitous sealed letter to one side, and folded his hands together on the writing table. He gazed up at Telemakos expectantly.

“Tell me what you are thinking,” Abreha commanded.

Telemakos stared for a moment at the letter he had written and thought,
Arrest Gedar
.

“When are you going to get a new British ambassador?” he asked.

“When Constantine the high king sends me one. And your aunt must give her approval, as well. You know how long it takes for messages to come and go from Britain.” The najashi laughed. “I have you, in the meantime. You are half-British. I am sure you have advice for me. How can I strengthen my kingdom?”

Telemakos hesitated, wondering where this banter was meant to lead him. He did not want to talk about Himyar’s strengths or weaknesses; mapping distant Britain was a much safer topic. Then he remembered Inas’s pledge of loyalty.

“You should make unions among the Royal Scions,” Telemakos said. “Let Malika and Shadi wed, when they come of age. They are both devoted to you, and their marriage will unite Sheba and Qataban. It won’t increase anyone’s name or title, nor expand your dominion, but it will keep it sound.”

“I shall put that suggestion before my Federation!” Abreha exclaimed.

Telemakos protested carefully, “My najashi, I think you mock me.”

“On the contrary. Let me grant you a petition in exchange for such good advice. What grace would you ask of the king of Himyar?”

Telemakos did not, now, believe Abreha to be trifling with him. He sensed that the najashi was testing him in some unknown way, as Gebre Meskal had done on several occasions, and though he did not know the reason for this test, he thought he could direct it toward some neutral good and make return for a forgotten favor. Telemakos remembered the day he arrived in Himyar, and the stranger who had come to his aid and stood by him with unnecessary loyalty.

He said hesitantly, “Do you remember, my najashi, how I told you I had seen an execution in al-Muza, on my first day in Himyar?”

Abreha said nothing. Telemakos finally dared to raise his eyes from the floor to the najashi’s face, and Abreha blinked his silent permission to continue. His face was unreadable. Telemakos quickly looked at his feet again.

“I had a guide in al-Muza that day, a boy near my own age, the nephew of a tailor called Laban,” Telemakos said. “His name was Iskinder. He told me his ambition was to join al-Muza’s city guard, and though he was bold and strong and honorable, he thought he wouldn’t be accepted in the guard because he had no one to recommend him. I would dare beg your endorsement of Iskinder as your soldier, if you could do that.”

“Of all things, why should you think to ask this?”

The answer that tried to force its way aloud between his teeth could not be spoken.
Because
,
my najashi
,
someone has to carry out your executions
,
and Iskinder is willing to do it
.

But he managed to answer politely. “Because it’s easily granted, and something you are likely to grant,” Telemakos said frankly, “and if you do, we can both be content to think ourselves virtuous and generous.”

“Is it right that you should volunteer another to pledge me his service, when you withhold your own?”

“Sir!” Telemakos protested. “You yourself asked me to withhold my pledge until you had trained me to use a spear. But that was before you placed me under suspicion as a spy. Would you trust my pledge now?”

“Perhaps not,” Abreha said. “Perhaps not. You are forthright enough in declaring your loyalty to my cousin the Aksumite emperor.”

Not enough, Telemakos thought. I have not been forthright enough. Gebre Meskal does not know the danger that awaits him in Hanish.

The najashi paused, then said again, “And yet I pray that one day you will battle at my side, Telemakos Morningstar.”

G
EDAR WAS NO LONGER
in San’a now, but Telemakos had made so much incidental mention of the oil merchant’s name in his coded letters that he felt obliged to mention him in innocence as well. He sent a letter to his father describing last season’s hunt with the lion Menelik. Gedar had been there as an observer. It was old news, but it was easy to bring up naturally, because Abreha was generous in discussing the lion’s training with Telemakos. It was like a flaw in the najashi’s forbidding nature, how eagerly he looked forward to taking Telemakos hunting with the lion again.

Telemakos wrote to Medraut:

You would think it sheer lunacy
,
this experiment of teaching a lion to hunt like a dog
.
This lion is not as fast as the wonderful salukis
,
and much more stubborn
.
Lions hunt naturally in stealth
,
by night
,
creeping up on prey and taking it in a burst of sudden strength
;
and most of their hunting is down to the females
,
in any case
.
Menelik will look like a big black termite mound creeping through the grass
,
once his mane starts to grow
,
and scare everything away
.

Abreha gave a brief snort of amusement. “I had not thought of that. You do make me look a fool.”

“Shall I paint out this story?” Telemakos offered in bland politeness, his eyes on the floor. He enjoyed needling Abreha about the lion, their one shared interest where Telemakos was on safe footing and certain in his superior knowledge.

“That would not be right,” Abreha answered mildly. “Your father is wise enough to draw his own conclusions. Read on.”

Abreha can use Menelik now
,
if need be
,
to make the killing blow once the dogs have brought down their prey
.
But then Menelik always thinks the kill belongs to him
.
Abreha may reason with him at such times
,
but the lion snaps at all the others as though they are his cubs
,
or his mates
,
and are trying to cheat him of his masterly share
.
I hope when my seclusion is through
,
Menelik will remember me
,
because the najashi estimates that at one year old Menelik weighs as much as a grown man
,
and though I
,
too
,
have begun rapidly increasing in stature
,
I do not think I will catch up to the lion
.

The najashi skimmed through the letter himself, as he always did, then sealed it without fuss.

“Can you imagine what your father will make of my lunacy when he reads this tale, Morningstar?” he commented. “Don’t be surprised if he forbids you to hunt with me, or orders another long confinement for yourself.”

It would be worth it, Telemakos thought, to know that my letters are going where they are supposed to.

He never received any response from his father. He never received anything from Goewin. But it could have meant Abreha was keeping his mail from him. The najashi had done that before; his family’s letters made mention of some impenetrable circumstance the najashi did not want Telemakos to discover, perhaps to do with the departed British ambassador. The letters arriving from Telemakos’s mother were two months old, and predated his disgrace.

Endless weeks passed. It was nearly a year since Telemakos had first arrived in Himyar. The apricots were harvested, Athena passed her second birthday, and lordlings from all Arabia began gathering for the Great Assembly, the yearly meeting of Abreha’s Federation. Telemakos did not witness any of these things. He knew they were happening, or he heard about them from Dawit. He memorized maps and watched the stars and slept on the floor of the Great Globe Room with his head close to the pulley hole, where he could catch the faint breath of Athena’s sandalwood-scented hair and hear her self-pitying baby sobs as she cried herself to sleep.

Dawit woke him in the middle of one night, kicking him gently. It took Telemakos some time to work out that this was real, and not some new abuse of his own dreams.

“Get up, boy,” the Star Master barked. “Fetch clean tablets and an abacus, and give them to me to carry. You go ahead, up to the gallery on the roof. The librarian says there’s a star shower on.”

Telemakos, struggling from sleep, obeyed numbly. He had got used to navigating the Globe Room in the dark, for Dawit rarely bothered to light a lamp in the evening, and Telemakos still could not master the striking of a flint one-handed to make a light himself. Groping in the gloom, Telemakos found three writing tablets fresh with new wax, and a portable abacus with its own stand. Dawit took the things and pushed Telemakos up the steps that led to the door to the scriptorium.

“Go on, go! We’re missing it! Harith doesn’t know what he’s looking at. Every time a star falls he thinks the world is coming to an end. And anyway, he can’t count.”

Telemakos felt his way along the scriptorium shelves to the narrow stairway that led to the roof. Dawit followed behind, his arms full.

The parapet around the base of the Globe Room’s dome was the highest point of the Ghumdan palaces that could be reached without scaling the slopes of the dome itself. There was scarcely room for two men to pass abreast on this terrace, and the stair that led to it was so narrow and steep that you had to climb it face-to both up and down, like a ladder. Telemakos emerged blinking from the black pit of the stairwell to a warm summer night lit faintly by a sliver of new moon, about to set, and streaked silver above and behind him with falling stars.

He could see the silhouettes of half a dozen men leaning against the dome or the rails of the terrace, and realized suddenly that he had not got dressed. He stood limned with starlight, all strengths and flaws on full view to any whose eyes had adjusted enough to the dark to be able to see him.

“Get out of the way,” Dawit said behind him, gruffly.

Telemakos stepped aside and crouched low on the parapet, partly out of embarrassment and partly because he was blocking the view. He moved quickly, and the silver bells at his elbow thrashed and jangled like an accompaniment to the strange show in the sky.

“Welcome, young prince,” said the najashi’s voice. He spoke in Greek, the common language of the Red Sea.

It was impossible to tell which of the figures was Abreha until the najashi made his way along the terrace to meet him. Abreha took off his own short surcoat and slung the heavy embroidered silk over Telemakos’s shoulders. Then he offered Telemakos his hand and raised him to his feet.

“Come and join us! I’ve saved a good place for you, so you may act as Dawit’s eyes.” The watchers made room for Telemakos deferentially, with good nature. “Come along, stand here. There is room for your abacus by the railing. Dawit, my Star Master, here is a seat for you.”

The najashi’s robe was too broad for Telemakos. Its folds flapped loose and got in his way as he tried to erect the abacus, which he just managed to discreetly save from being knocked over the edge of the terrace. He slipped his sound arm free of the trailing sleeve and let the silk hang precariously from one shoulder, hiding the bare stump of his lost arm. The chimes at his elbow shivered and sang.

“Let me muffle those bells,” said the najashi, untying his own fine sash. “Their ringing will distract us.”

He took Telemakos by the wrist and wrapped the belt of silk again and again around the charm bracelet, tying it off securely. Telemakos watched him do it, aware of the shooting stars littering the sky above him.

“Some princess’s sweetheart, is he, your young astronomer, wearing her gift as a decoration?” jested a man who spoke Greek with a Persian accent.

“He is adored by his infant sister,” Abreha answered lightly. “Little bells keep her entertained. He does not wear them idly, though the right to display some decoration would be his if he were given to vanity. This is Lij Bitwoded Telemakos, the beloved young prince Telemakos, heir to the Aksumite house of Nebir and a favorite of the emperor Gebre Meskal.”

The dark, faceless figures around him bent their heads in respect, there being no room to kneel.