Free The Empty Kingdom by Elizabeth Wein Page A

brother has the same mother and father as you. They look after you together. Or you and your brother look after each other. Inas has got a little brother, Amir. You know Amir.”
    “Is Menelik my brother?”
    “Of course he is not, you silly thing. Menelik is a lion !”
    They both laughed.
    “You are full of difficult questions tonight, little Tena,” Telemakos said.
    “Menelik is like my brother,” she said.
    “I know,” Telemakos whispered, thinking of the silent bones. “He is like my brother, too.”
    Athena slept pressed tight against his side that night, and every night after that. A semblance of peace fell on the Ghumdan palaces.

VI
ALLIANCES
    N OW TELEMAKOS HAD A secret that he took delight in. He was learning to move without making any noise. He practiced when he was alone or when he was working with the lion; nobody ever noticed whether his charm bracelet was ringing, if the lion was there to hold everyone’s attention. He could not throw a spear without rattling the charms, but before long he could walk and run in silence. He could move as quietly as Menelik if he wanted to. And this challenge, more than anything else, finally restored his sense of balance.
    He could not get enough of being outside. He knew he was watched like a goat; he was always minded at a distance by a herdsman, or two or three. He did not pass the city gates without an escort of the najashi’s soldiers. They kept their distance, and if any of the Scions were with him, Telemakos did not see his more formal escort at all, but Telemakos knew he was watched carefully, all the time. People knew who he was. In San’a’s suq markets he once let Athena choose a set of ivory hairpins for their mother, and experimentally tried to send them off with a note dictated through an itinerant letter writer. The old man would not take his message.
    “The Ghumdan palace children should use the Ghumdan palace servants,” the scribe grumbled. “You can have no need of a street writer.”
    “I bought this gift in the street,” Telemakos said. “Why can’t I also send it in the street?”
    “No paid scribe will risk his hands and livelihood in forwarding unapproved messages for foreign princes.”
    “Your pardon, sir,” Telemakos apologized. “I would not compromise anyone’s livelihood.”
    “You may send the gift without a message,” said the writer.
    Telemakos did not care that he was watched. He could go where he liked. The semblance of freedom was even better than his other recent joy: that of running or riding in the chase with the royal saluki hounds, gripping one spear for balance and with two more strapped to his back should he spend the first, and the najashi allowing him to lead the hunt with Menelik at his side.
    Street children and beggars still stared and cringed at his white hair and strange eyes, but the Scions rallied to his defense.
    “Your majesty of Qataban!” the almond pickers called out in greeting to Shadi as they passed through the groves beyond the city gates when Telemakos went hawking with the more senior of Abreha’s collection of royal orphans. “What are you doing in the company of that half-breed Aksumite? Don’t you know those blue eyes can curse you?”
    Another boy in the same tree added, “Aye, and are the najashi’s Royal Scions now set to playing nursemaid, that the Aksumite comes hunting with a baby tied to his back like a woman?”
    Shadi, who was slight of build and cautious of temper, raised the sparrowhawk on his wrist a fraction and stood gazing up at the boys in the tree.
    “I had not judged you such fools, Hujir and Yazid,” he said at last. There was rustling among the leaves as the young workers within earshot stopped to listen. One dropped out of the branches so he could better see the confrontation.
    “The najashi himself is Aksumite, and his Socotran queen is blue eyed,” Shadi said amiably, “so have a care with your insults. As to the Morningstar, he is our guide and a