Free The Empty Kingdom by Elizabeth Wein

and shook it. Telemakos stood at the gate to the arena, watching Menelik toss the rattling bones into the air and catch them in his mouth.
    Athena called out, “Lion lion lion lion!” and chirruped deep and loud. It was exactly the sound Menelik himself made in greeting. The lion came bounding over to the gate, the bone rattle in his mouth. He dropped the bones and rubbed his head adoringly against the bolted wood, chirping like an oversized kitten. Telemakos reached over the gate, without thinking, to scratch the lion between the ears, and Menelik began to purr.
    “Oh, still so easily won!” Telemakos laughed, delighted.
    “You throw it, you throw my lion’s toy,” Athena told him.
    “Let’s have it. Let’s see how well they’ve trained you without me. Give me the bones! Give!”
    Menelik picked up the rattle in his teeth and held it up to Telemakos.
    “Good, good—let go! Give!”
    Telemakos took hold of one of the long, scarred bones. They were heavy; the rackety bundle weighed nearly as much as Athena.
    “Bring it back!”
    With a thunder of bone and a sweet shower of silver chimes, Telemakos hurled the rattle with all the strength he would have put behind a javelin cast. The bone spider sailed, clattering across the track. Menelik raced after it, subdued it as it crashed into the far wall, then picked up the thing daintily by a single bone and came loping back to Telemakos in deadly silence.
    “He’s a good lion,” Athena said approvingly.
    Telemakos stared. The heavy young king Wajih whistled through his teeth.
    “I shouldn’t want to turn my back on him !”
    “Indeed not,” Telemakos agreed, breathless with astonishment. “That’s how I lost my arm, to his father. Give, Menelik, give me the bones.”
    Telemakos threw them again, and again the white sticks stormed through the air, and again Menelik brought them back without a sound.
    Telemakos watched the lion run, his own heart racing with discovery.
    He moves with it, Telemakos thought. He moves with it ! Look at him! I can’t pick that thing up without a riot, but when the lion wants to muffle it, there’s not a sound. Yes, I see, he doesn’t let it fall still, he lets the bones shake from side to side, but as long as he keeps moving, they don’t knock against each other.
    “Again again again!” Athena crowed.
    Telemakos shook his bracelet tentatively. He reached toward the lion, thinking only of silencing the bells at his elbow.
    Yes, I can do it. Not well, not yet. But if I practice, if I practice!
    Telemakos collared the lion affectionately by the scruff of its neck. Menelik pushed up his heavy head for kisses, as he had done since he was a starving kit fed on milk from a goatskin.
    “Oh, you baby !” Telemakos exclaimed. He leaned over the gate and gave the required kiss. The young lion smelled warm and familiar, of straw and sun and honey. “Ah, thank you for this instruction,” Telemakos whispered in the lion’s ear.
    “What is a mother?” Athena asked, sitting wide awake in the darkness of the Great Globe Room long after the rest of the palace was asleep.
    “Why, a mother …”
    Telemakos found himself at a loss. Athena did not remember her own mother. He did not want her to think Muna was her mother.
    “A mother makes children,” Telemakos said. “A mother and father together make a child.”
    It made no sense. None of the Scions had a mother or father; they were all dead of plague.
    “Sometimes after the child is made, the mother and father are not able to take care of it. So they have to get help from someone else. Queen Muna takes care of children who have no mother. You have got a mother, but she lives too far away to take care of you, so Muna helps. You have got a father, too.”
    “Are you my father?”
    Telemakos laughed. “I am your brother.”
    “What is a brother?”
    “Oh, save me, Tena, it is time to sleep!”
    She bounced in the cushions and repeated patiently, “What is a brother?”
    “Your