The Lion Hunter

“You are only hostage to your knowledge,” Abreha answered, his voice calm. “Keep my secrets, and you are safe. Your grandfather is not the man we seek.”

“Keep your secrets! Keep secret that you brought plague into your kingdom, and into Aksum!”

“You rail as though my intent was evil.”

“You brought about the destruction of Deire!” Telemakos cried out.

“My people and I decided to suffer together,” Abreha said seriously. “The question of quarantine was put to the Federation, and all were against it. The citizens of your ruined city Deire were not given any choice, when they were bound in their sickness within their walls by Gebre Meskal’s soldiers.”

Abreha’s fingers were lax around Telemakos’s wrist now, but kept steady on the beating vein.

I am dead if he discovers me, Telemakos thought. I am dead. He killed Hara just to please the emperor, and Hara was his own servant. I am nothing to him. I cut short all his venture in Aksum for two years. I am his enemy.

“My—my najashi—” Telemakos stammered. “My najashi, what surety do you need to trust me with your secrets?”

“Do you know the usual penalty for treason?”

“Yes,” Telemakos whispered. “But…”

He hesitated because his understanding of loyalty, which seemed straightforward in his mind, might sound insolent on his tongue. The pulse in his wrist leapt and hammered.

“Go on,” said Abreha softly.

“I am not yet sworn to serve you,” Telemakos whispered, “so I cannot be guilty of treason.”

There lay between them a long moment of frozen quiet. Then Abreha slipped his fingers from Telemakos’s wrist down into his hand, pinching it open between them with his thumb in Telemakos’s palm and his index finger piercing its back. Telemakos clenched his teeth: it felt as though Abreha were trying to make finger and thumb meet between the bones of his hand.

“Here is my plan for you, son of Medraut,” Abreha said with cool resignation. “You were invited into this room; indeed, you were given leave to roam my palace freely, under a certain level of trust already, which you surely have wit enough to appreciate. You have betrayed that trust twice in a single evening. In punishment you shall not leave the scriptorium for the next season, nor have any consort with my Royal Scions during that time. And to ensure you do not try your fortune again in another such endeavor, I am going to fit you with an alarm, like a cat that must be kept away from one’s pet songbirds. We shall bind on you a bracelet of ringing charms that will warn us of your coming. And—”

Abreha’s calm voice never changed pitch.

“—And, beloved Morningstar, if I find you searching my desk again, or anyone else’s, or if you are caught eavesdropping in my court—or if in any other way you seem likely to betray my affairs to my cousin the Aksumite emperor Gebre Meskal—I will have you crucified for a spy.”

He let go of Telemakos’s hand.

Telemakos stared down at his palm: it was marked with a white crescent where Abreha’s thumbnail had bitten into it.

Let the najashi hang you up in my place next, you unholy creeping mongrel spy.

“Acknowledge me,” Abreha said coldly.

Telemakos knelt before his guardian with his face pressed against the smooth pile of the silk carpet, as if he could hide himself that way. He closed his eyes. It was easy.

“My merciful najashi,” Telemakos whispered. “I beg your forgiveness.”

“Why should I forgive you?”

Telemakos did not dare raise his head. “May I speak boldly?”

“Speak then, Lij Telemakos.”

It was a relief to hear his own name, even his own title. Telemakos turned his face aside so that his voice was not muffled by the carpet. The corner of his mouth brushed against the silk wool when he moved his lips. But he could muster no voice louder than a harsh whisper.

“The emperor Gebre Meskal has a favorite story.” It was one of those Goewin had repeated to Telemakos, to distract him, as he had lain half-dead of blood poisoning and fever. “It tells of Menelik, the queen of Sheba’s son, of his visit to Solomon, his father. When Menelik returns to his mother, he steals the Ark of the Covenant from Solomon. And Solomon discovers him. But instead of punishing him, Solomon gives him the Ark and lets him go free.”

Telemakos stopped speaking for a moment, and Abreha waited in dangerous silence.

“Solomon is remembered for his wisdom,” Telemakos whispered into the carpet. “But when I see Solomon’s portrait in the old pictures, I am not struck by his wisdom. I see forgiveness in his face.”

Now he dared raise his head.

“I remember your truce with Gebre Meskal,” Telemakos whispered. “I was there. You wore the look of Solomon, the face of forgiveness.”

Abreha did not answer. Telemakos swallowed, wondering if he had gone too far. He heard Abreha move to his desk, and heard the crackle of parchment and the soft, soft splash of a brush moving quickly over a page.

Abreha blew the ink dry and folded the sheet.

“‘Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat,’” the najashi said, “‘for in the day you eat of it you shall die.’”

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.