The Empty Kingdom by Elizabeth Wein

been long after his imprisonment in Afar, and they had not let him join in the stalking because he had been so thin.
    The feast of Abreha’s Great Assembly was held outdoors in one of the stepped gardens. There were canopies over all the braziers and carpets, in case of rain, for it was the time of the summer monsoon. But it was another fine night. San’a’s terraces and rocky ledges were at the height of their greenery, with rose of Sharon blooming everywhere and the perfume of jasmine nearly overwhelming. The garden was lit by hundreds of round glass lamps set in crevices up and down the stone sills. Other lights were set on standards in and out among the canopies, and the men of the Great Assembly sat on the carpeted flagstones beneath.
    All those burning lamps were fueled by the oil of Gedar’s olive groves. When Telemakos came into the garden, he had to close his eyes for one blinding second in a private, hateful sneer. He despised the wasteful light, despised Himyar’s prosperity in the wake of plague and war that left Aksum’s cities shabby and depleted. And he hated Gedar with a black and bitter hatred: Gedar who had profited by it, Gedar who three years past had taken charity from the house of Nebir while Telemakos, enslaved in Afar, silently endured having his fingernails pried off to soothe the suspicions of Anako the corrupt governor of Deire.
    Arrest Gedar . Telemakos had not heard anything from Aksum for over a month. He could not risk sending this message again. He was torn with guilt for not having tackled a new message about the Hanish Islands.
    The men of the Great Assembly sat on the carpeted flagstones beneath the lovely, indifferent lights. Julian, the Roman legate Telemakos had been set to wait upon, was friendly and garrulous. He spoke not a word of South Arabian, but he wanted to know the names of all the men he sat with, and where they came from and the pedigrees of their saluki hounds, how one managed to scratch a living in the desert, and how one might make bitter water drinkable by adding camel’s milk to it. He could understand his companions’ Greek easily enough, but when he spoke himself it was incomprehensible, so he stuck doggedly to asking his questions in Latin and letting Telemakos translate everything he said.
    “I shouldn’t be learning half as much without you at my side,” the legate confessed to Telemakos as the evening wore on. “What did the Federator Abreha tell us your full name is—Morningstar? Bright Shiner? He honors you near as much as he did Asad, his own son, but you put me in mind of Lleu, Artos’s heir, more than you do Asad. Asad was biddable. Lleu had a backbone of steel beneath his winning charm.”
    “Lleu!” Telemakos exclaimed in surprise, astonished to hear a foreign stranger speak aloud the name of the dead British prince who haunted his dreams. “How do you know of Lleu?”
    “The prince was about your age when I was in Britain. I remember him helping the villagers with the harvest, until they sent him home because he had such trouble breathing. He came back a quarter of an hour later with a cloth tied over his nose to keep out the dust.
    “I never met anyone who did not love him,” Julian finished warmly. “They called him Leo, the young lion, in Latin. But in their own language he was Lleu, the Bright One, the light-bringer. You see, you even share his name, Beloved Young Prince Lucifer.”
    Telemakos laughed uneasily. He did not like being held up to his dead uncle for comparison. “They don’t call me Lucifer. No one speaks Latin here, as you’ve heard! It’s Athtar, their ancient sky god. Or Eosphorus, in Greek. It’s not my real name, only a nickname, because of my light hair. My name is Telemakos, or young prince, Lij Telemakos, if we must speak formally. Truly, Telemakos is enough.”
    “And Greek as well, to match Eosphorus! But your Latin is very good.”
    “The emperor of Aksum was allowed to approve or appoint my tutors,”