The Empty Kingdom (7 page)

Julian looked aslant at Telemakos and held up his cup for more wine.

“Shall you travel there, someday?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps.” The charm bracelet jangled as Telemakos hefted the wine jar aloft. His daily use of a spear in the najashi’s training yards had greatly improved the balance that so eluded him since he had lost his arm. But in preparation for this evening he had filled a thousand goblets, he was sure, with the Star Master acting as his long-suffering gull and pretending he did not mind his robes awash with spilled water. Telemakos was steady now, and though he could not fill the wine jar himself, nor a water bottle for that matter, he could pour from either into a cup. He thought, as he poured now, how strange that he should have come to a point where it was an honor and a triumph to be able to pour out a cup of wine.

I am good at waiting on people, Telemakos thought. It was in waiting on that hyena Anako that I trapped him.

He shivered. Anako again. Oh, if only I could stop
thinking
.

He set the wine jar carefully on the low flagged sill among the scented herbs that grew there, and reached down for the water to mix in Julian’s cup. One of the other pages, unthinkingly helpful, had topped up the water jug so that it was now brimful. It was too heavy for Telemakos to pour one-handed. He considered briefly, then knelt and braced the water jar against his thigh. He tipped it slightly to spill away the excess into the herbs, and warm water splashed over his sandaled feet.

Vivid memory clubbed him from out of nowhere, stunning him as brutally as when it had been real. He was at the salt mines; he had accidentally dropped and split open a waterskin, and his sore feet were soothed with an unexpected wash of warm water even as it evaporated in the dry desert air. The
waste
—Telemakos crouched, cowering, with his head tucked into his knees, expecting to be beaten to the ground in punishment.

“
What is it
?”

That was what Anako the Lazarus had said, seeing Telemakos. Not
Who is that
? but
What is it
?—as though Telemakos were such a freak he could not be considered human.

“What is it?”

The voice was real, and a real hand took hold of Telemakos’s fingers. He sobbed aloud, as he had never done in Afar, dreading to have to endure the knife beneath his nails again. He choked breathlessly, “Do not,
do not
—”

“Are you ill, child?” the Roman legate asked kindly.

After a long moment, when the piercing blade did not come and no one kicked him, Telemakos looked up. The legate, and the ambassador from the Persian emperor Khosro, and two sheiks of Gharun, stared at Telemakos curiously. Julian had put down his cup. The water jar, thank fortune, had righted itself when Telemakos had witlessly let go of it.

“Are you ill?” Julian repeated.

Telemakos fumed inwardly, furious that he was not able to master himself better. “Your pardon, sir,” he gasped aloud. He steadied his voice and managed to speak levelly. “I thought I was going to spill the water. I am inexpert! Please forgive me. I should know to take better care.”

He lifted the jug again.

“Your cup, sir?”

Late, late that night, transformed from honored cupbearer to disgraced prisoner once again, beneath the gaze of two vigilant guards, Telemakos made the lengthy climb back to his solitary existence at the height of Ghumdan’s towers.

Am I not biddable? he wondered. Have I winning charm and a backbone of steel? Am I really more like Lleu than Asad? Am I at all like either one of them, adored by their kingly fathers? What humiliation, what deprivation, what
cruelty
disguised as discipline, did either one of them ever endure? Blessed and fortunate, what harshness was ever visited on them, those beloved young princes?

Beloved young prince
. Telemakos smiled ruefully to himself in the dark as he continued up the endless stairs. That was his own title.

I should expect no mercy, Telemakos supposed, from a man who was imprisoned all his boyhood only because he was the emperor’s nephew; a man who saw his elder brother crippled in trying to escape the chains that were forced on him. In one more week, Telemakos told himself, only one more week, my own imprisonment will be over. I will have Athena back. She can help me with my cup. She can hold my pen and paper steady. She likes to comb my hair. And as long as she is at my side, the hideous dreams stay away.

T
HERE WAS NO CEREMONY
to observe. The morning came when Telemakos stepped outside the scriptorium and found the corridor empty. The guards were gone, and Tharan was not waiting for him. Telemakos was free. He knew he was expected at the spearmen’s practice, but he ran straight to the nursery.

Muna and Rasha were setting out a porridge of beans and sesame oil for the children, who were mostly still asleep. Athena, too, was sleeping. She was held in place on her mattress by a pale blue scarf bound around her upper body, but she had managed to twist herself onto her front and slept like a dog, with her knees curled under her stomach and her bottom in the air. One arm had worked free of the swaddling, and she had got her fingers tangled in her hair.

Telemakos laid his cheek against her warm body and closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath of sandalwood and worn cotton and yesterday’s yogurt. With trembling fingers he smoothed Athena’s hair. It seemed longer, and less metallic, than he remembered. In three months Athena’s childish face had thinned, her legs and arms grown longer. She looked older.

“You have grown, owlet,” Telemakos said softly.

“So have you,” Muna told him, coming up behind him suddenly.

It was true. The hanging stars in the Great Globe Room brushed the top of his head now, and the smooth skin stretched across the stump of his shoulder itched constantly, in the same way the skin itched beneath the tight silver bracelet. He could get at his shoulder, but not at the bracelet. He had been reduced to worrying it against the door frame, like a bushpig scratching its back on a tree. But Athena would be able to reach it now.

Close by his sister for the first time in weeks, Telemakos could scarcely believe her radiance. Her smooth skin and wild hair were both exactly the color of old honey. Her lashes were as pale as his own, nearly white against her brown skin, and curled like feathers. The features of her pointed face were delicate and narrow, and Telemakos could see his father and mother perfectly balanced there.

“She is very like you,” said Muna.

“So my mother said, as well.”

Athena began to stir, coughing and yawning and hiccupping and growling as she came awake and got ready to start screaming. With tooth and nail, as quickly as he could, Telemakos attacked the scarf that held her down. He tore the scarf in freeing her.

“Hello, little owlet.”

She swarmed into his embrace, shrieking with delight. Lu’lu, who was scarcely three years older than Athena, sat up in the other small bed. She glanced dismissively at Athena as if no performance could surprise her anymore, then got up, took up her dress where it lay folded neatly on the clothesbox, and with sugary docility held it up to Rasha to help her put it on. Lu’lu did not look at Telemakos. He thought she must have forgotten who he was, until he remembered that Abreha’s Royal Scions had all vowed not to get him in trouble by trying to talk to him. Lu’lu was carefully keeping to her vow.

“Let me go for just a moment, Tena—”

Athena held on to his hair with her fists and rubbed her nose against his, and tried to explain the whole of the last three months in one great burst of babbling speech. “Athena’s boy, you see my lion, see my baby lion, big lion, see my birds,” she said. “Lu’lu can eat the rice not Athena, Tena rice big mess. Muna does not like to carry me. Shadi’s big bird gone now, Shadi crying. Open najashi’s box, Athena see boy’s animals. You see my big lion?”

“Ah, little Athena—” He was astounded at how articulate she had become. It made him want to weep, all he had missed.

“See my window broken, boy see,” Athena said, with undue pride. She pulled at his shamma shawl. “You come see it—”

“All right, which way is it?”

“You carry me.” She stood on his legs and put her arms around his neck.

“I can’t carry you, you’re a big girl!” He could no longer lift her with one arm, or not for long, anyway. “Aren’t you a walking girl?” She seemed so grown up.

“She doesn’t walk,” Muna said quietly.

“You carry me, boy. Carry Tena’s belt.” Athena scurried on hands and feet, agile and lionlike, to one of the cedarwood chests. She banged on it with her fists. “Fetch Athena’s belt, Rasha,” she commanded imperiously.

Muna’s haughty attendant obeyed this command in silence. She opened the chest and took out the child’s harness that Medraut had made for Telemakos so that he could carry Athena on his hip without having to get help from anyone. Rasha crossed the room and gave the saddle to Telemakos. No one had oiled it, or even touched it, in all the months of Telemakos’s confinement. Telemakos kneaded the stiff leather, stretching out the seams and pockets. When he checked between the folds of the pouch within the seat, the one Athena could not get at herself, his fingers touched paper and silver. There were half a dozen vials and sachets of opium still hidden there.

I must get rid of this, Telemakos thought. She will soon be clever enough to pull things out of here.

“
It is he
!” Malika cried. The queen of Sheba was standing in the door to the nursery, her gown back-to-front. She must have put it on herself, a wonder indeed, in her hurry to be first with the news.

She called delightedly over her shoulder to the other Scions, “It is, it is the Aksumite prince, the Morningstar is back among us!” Then she threw herself down on the carpet at his side and rattled her fingers through the silver charms he wore.

“Peace to you, Morningstar, peace and greetings and hurrah! I heard your little bells and I knew you were in here—it sounded so much closer than when you pass in the corridor. Pretty, aren’t these? Look, little Tena, you can make these bells ring.”

Malika held him still with one friendly hand on his shoulder. She rubbed noses with him as she rattled the silver charms.

“This is
so lovely
! You lucky thing. The najashi has never given me such a pretty bauble.”

Inas and Shadi came in now, laughing and exclaiming in outrage. “Liar! What about your onyx box of facepaints—”

“—Your cameos, your carnelian earrings? Good morning and good fortune to you, Morningstar!”

Telemakos knelt, hugging Athena against him, rather stunned, as the nursery filled with Abreha’s fourteen foster children, all clamoring around him in high-spirited welcome. He almost thought they must be teasing him.

“Look at your brother’s bracelet, Athena bird girl, it’s like yours! You can match now. Rasha, where’s the baby’s silver bracelet? Let her wear it so they can both have one.”

“Have you heard all your sister’s exploits, how she poured a jar of indigo dye all over the cushions by the window—”

“And of the time she set free the whole great cage of Indian parrots—”

“And an owl was eating them, it had taken three that were perching in the walled almond garden, and Shadi caught it with his new bird?”

The thin, dark boy king gave a proud and quiet smile. “My sparrowhawk, she means. And on another day, Athena pulled two of the strings out of Muna’s lyre and cut her hands on them. And on another day, she tipped two lamp stands over the terrace wall, all ablaze—”

“My Athena!” Telemakos exclaimed, and kissed her springing bronze hair. “How can so small a girl commit such enormous knavery?”

“Trees and flowers on fire,” she said proudly. “Birds flying away.” She let Rasha fasten her silver seabird bracelet about her wrist and gave it a shake. “Flying birds!” She gripped Telemakos by the hair with one hand on either side of his head and gazed into his face anxiously. “Stay with Athena.”

“Yes, stay with us awhile,” said Inas. “Or have you some prince’s duty you must attend to straight away?”

“Javelin practice.”

“We’ll come with you,” said Malika. “We can watch. It will stop Athena making a fuss if we all go down together.”

Telemakos saw, with envy, that they were now wiser in the ways of Athena than he was, and decided not to argue. And anyway, he wanted to take her with him. He did not want to let her go.

Telemakos pulled the leather straps of her harness over his head and let Athena climb in it herself. The bands were tighter than they had been, and Athena waited impatiently while, with some difficulty, he adjusted the buckles. She kicked at his ribs and thumped his ruined shoulder with her fist.

“Birds, lion, dogs, goats!” Athena demanded. The Scions all laughed at her.

“Dictating the itinerary again, bird girl?” Inas teased. “We will visit all your friends.”

“I want to see the lion and the dogs, too,” Telemakos told his sister. He was aching to see them.

The najashi himself turned up at the close of that morning’s javelin practice. He stood with folded arms, splendid in his council robes, frowning blackly beneath the rope of gold that bound his headcloth. He looked like God come along to observe the day’s human activities in Eden. He left before the session was finished, without speaking to Telemakos, but he stopped among the Scions for some time, as he always did, and Telemakos could hear his unexpectedly merry laughter break free as they spoke to him.

Tharan said to Telemakos afterward, “You may forgo the riding ring today. The najashi bids you spend an hour or so in the kennels and see if the lion still remembers you. You may go hawking with the princes Shadi and Jibril, later, if you wish.”

It was turning into a holiday after all.

The Scions stuck to him like honey. They could not have made a plainer statement of their loyalty if they had made formal pledges on their knees in the parade ground before the city walls. Shadi and tall Jibril fell into step on either side of him like lieutenants, and at their shoulders came the desert cousins Ibrahim and Nabil and Numair, demon riders all. Numair walked so lightly on his toes he seemed to have springs in his heels. He had been grinning quietly to himself since Abreha’s visit.