The Winter Prince (The Lion Hunters:01)(72)

“He who won the battle against Ras Priamos,” Telemakos supplied, the gap in his teeth making him whistle over Priamos’s name.

“Abreha’s title is not self-styled,” Priamos said with his habitual scowl, though his voice was mild enough. “He was elected.”

“Let’s not talk of Himyar,” Ityopis said quickly. “My fault for speaking Abreha’s name. Our mother the queen of queens will have to call me Hornbill instead of you, Priamos. Has he explained why the queen of queens names him Hornbill, Princess—”

“Because I look like one,” Priamos interrupted, his heavy brow lowered ferociously.

“Because his tongue will never be reined when he is nervous or excited, and lets slip a deal of nonsense that were better left unsaid.”

I raised my own eyebrows. “Truly?”

“Has he not yet gone off his head with temper in your presence? Perhaps you have enspelled him, Princess—”

jusy">1C;Ityopis, keep hold of your own tongue or I will find someone to cut it out,” Priamos interrupted hotly, and said to me, “Pay no heed to this lapdog of his mother. He has always been abominably disrespectful of all his elder brothers. Sits on the emperor’s council and gets called dove, the peacemaker, by the emperor Caleb’s elder sister, our mother Candake the queen of queens! What monstrous rot!”

Through all this exchange they had not let go of each other’s shoulders.

“Tell me of my brothers, Peacemaker,” Priamos said. “Have you word of Mikael?”

“He sits as ever on his cliff top at Debra Damo, reciting the tale of Daniel a hundred times a day.”

“And Yared?”

“Sings. They say he is devising a way to write down his music. Perhaps Yared will be released from his sequestering when he is a little older, as you and I were,” Ityopis said. “And as Hector was.”

“And Abreha,” said Telemakos.

His grandfather struck him. Not hard enough to call it cruel, but hard enough to hurt. Telemakos knelt again. His poor knees. He hid his face in his hands and said humbly, “I don’t know what I did that time, Grandfather. I beg your pardon.”

Kidane sighed.

“Ityopis has said we will not speak of Himyar anymore,” Kidane said. “Don’t just hear what people say: listen. If you listen to everything, and keep your mouth shut until someone asks you a question, you won’t offend anyone. You’ll hear more that way, as well, because you won’t be sent off in disgrace. And, God willing, you’ll learn to tell what’s spoken appropriately, and what isn’t.

“Listen,” Kidane repeated.

“Yes,” Telemakos said quietly. “Yes, sir.”

And I, who had been listening carefully the whole time, realized that the pretender Abreha was also Priamos’s brother.

Constantine sat in a room of black and green marble. He was surrounded by attendant courtiers, and had the ceremonial spear bearers of the Aksumite emperor, the negusa nagast, king of kings, at his back. One of the company, a boy of fourteen or fifteen years who wore a plain white cotton shamma and head cloth, watched me steadily and frankly, which was the first time anyone in Aksum had eyed me other than with oblique glances. And in truth I must have been a troubling sight: unadorned with gold or precious jewels, my hair plaited and pinned up simply in the way I had learned to care for it myself during my journey, my skirt patched and faded.

Constantine rose and came forward to greet me. He was not much taller than me, and close to my age, like Priamos. His sandy hair was banded with an Aksumite head cloth; he wore a small pointed beard, also like Priamos. He took me by the hands and said, “Welcome, cousin, to the imperial city of the Aksumite peoples.”

He spoke Latin, which meant that most there could not understand what he was saying. “My dear Goewin, you are still so very young!” he said. “How did you dare the journey from Britain? What can have brought you here? Could you not wait until next year for a husband?”

I could not return his smile. I answered stiffly in my limping Ethiopic, so that my words should not need to be translated or told twice. “I did not come seeking a husband. I came seeking the protection of the emperor Caleb, Ella r Cy wAsbeha, who brought forth the dawn, my father’s most powerful and influential ally.”

“The emperor could not have made that offer himself,” said Constantine. It was a bald statement of truth, lacking of sympathy or interest, and my dislike of him grew.