The Lion Hunter

Page 5

Instantly she stopped crying. He put out a finger, and she held tightly to it, all of her tiny fingers wound firmly around one of his. She was able to cry tears now, and her deep gray eyes were wet, but so bright they seemed to sparkle. Telemakos stared into them and found himself incurably in love.
“Come here, hoot owl,” he whispered. “Oh, you stink. Small wonder you’re howling.”
He scooped her up without thinking about it. He slipped his sound right arm beneath her from the bottom up, cupping her head in his hand, and swooped her over his left shoulder so that his arm was crossed over his chest. She let out a whooping hiccup of a gasp as she landed. She was tight and secure against him that way, but he was not prepared for the pressure her head put on his newly healed wounds.
“Aiee.”
He gasped and sat down hard on the floor, but held her tight.
“Oh, you’re hurting me, you little slug—” He bit his lip. It was his own fault. “All right. We’ll move you. Come on—” He wanted to move her carefully, but he was so clumsy. He had to gather all his strength and then sling her from one side of him to the other. Again she let out a shrieking hiccup. She was less secure held this way, but he did not have the strength to hold her otherwise.
Her small body was still now, as if to be held against him—or anyone—was the only thing she ever wanted. After a minute or so he collected himself and struggled to his feet. He could not lever or pull himself up as long as he was clinging to the baby. He fought against his own slight body, pulled down by Athena’s added weight, and found his sense of balance all skewed as well. He made it to one knee, fell back, climbed up again, and finally staggered upright. Athena gasped and choked with her crazy little hiccups.
She was laughing.
Every giddy dive and swoop made her yelp with rudimentary laughter. Telemakos leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, triumphant and exhausted, clutching the baby against his chest. By the time he had stopped gasping for breath, his arm was aching with strain.
“I’m going to have to put you down,” he told his sister. He glanced quickly around the room. Everything in the nursery was alien to him. “I’m going to have to put you back in your bed. You’re still a stinker, but I’ll clean you up, all right? It will probably take me the rest of the afternoon.”
He did not know where any of her things were or what you did with them or how they worked. Athena began to whimper the second Telemakos let go of her; she was hysterical with fury long before he had even managed to get her dirty napkin off. She pulled her little legs up into her stomach and balled her brown, dimpled hands into tiny fists, screaming in great, long, choking waves. Telemakos fought her doggedly, absolutely as stubborn as she was.
“Do you be quiet!” he yelled at her at last. “I cannot help you any faster than this. I have only got one arm!”
“Telemakos.”
He fastened the last fold he had made, tightening the knotted cloth with his teeth. It was crude, and probably uncomfortable, but the baby was clean. Telemakos straightened and glanced over his shoulder. Goewin stood in the doorway.
“Let me help,” she offered quietly.
“Too late!”
He was slick with sweat, though he had long since pulled off his shamma and now wore only a kilt. He said proudly, “I’m finished.”
He sat down on the floor again, thoroughly spent. Goewin lifted the sobbing baby up over her own shoulder and asked, “Where in blazes is your mother?”
“Asleep.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. The two of you would wake the dead.”
“She takes my opium.”
Goewin gazed down at Telemakos, who sat panting at her feet, sweating beneath his bandages. He looked away from the calculating assessment in his aunt’s dark eyes. He was too dark skinned to blanch with pain or effort, but he knew he must be gray around the mouth and that Goewin would not miss the tightness in his jaw or the slight trembling that ran all through his body.
“God blind me, Telemakos, you are the image of your father sometimes,” Goewin muttered under her breath. “Look, boy, I haven’t the strength to carry you and the baby at once. Can you get back to bed yourself?”
“In a minute.”
“I’ll tell Ferem to come and bathe you.”
She stood gazing down at him while he caught his breath. Athena still let out a racking sob every few seconds, but it was not real crying: she, too, was catching her breath. Goewin watched Telemakos with sharp eyes as he dragged himself slowly to his feet again.
“About that opium,” she said.
“She takes it because I never use it.”
“Idiot.”
“Me or her?”
“Both of you.” Goewin herded Telemakos down the hall before her. He sat down on his own bed and thought, I will be asleep before Ferem gets here.
“Don’t try to clean the baby again,” Goewin said to him. “Anyone of the household will do that, if you ask. They can’t hear her from the kitchens or the stables. It’s not a bad thing for you to help with her, but it will be a pyrrhic victory if you poison yourself in doing it. You will die, Telemakos, you will die, if you infect yourself again. There isn’t any more of you to cut away.”
She turned her back and went to find the butler.
A day later Telemakos was in Athena’s room again, swooping her up over his shoulder once more. He took her back to bed with him, propped her against his hip, and shored her there with cushions so that she could see the sunbird at the window. Athena’s small, uncoordinated hands moved slowly, grasping for the far, bright feathers and the bright water; then her hands distracted her and she stared at them as if there could be nothing more fascinating. She tried to put them in her mouth and missed.
Telemakos gave her the sistrum that he used to summon Ferem. It looked like something that had been stolen from a church, possibly liberated from the monastery at Abba Pantelewon by his father. It was a fork of mahogany with shining silver bells threaded on wires between the tines. Athena reached for it, missed, and reached again. She moved her hands with slow deliberation, purposefully, but without skill. The fingers of her right hand closed around the sistrum’s handle as if by accident. The polished wood was the same color as her hand. It was too heavy for her to hold if Telemakos let go, but she shook it so that the bells chattered faintly. It surprised her, and she let out her funny little hiccup of delight.
“Clever girl!” Telemakos laughed also, and gently pulled the rattle away. “Do it again.”
This time she caught it in her left hand.
“Both hands!” Telemakos crowed. “Well done. Clever girl—” He faltered suddenly. “Lucky girl,” he whispered. “Well done, lucky girl.”
When the baby began to whimper with hunger, Telemakos hid her under his blankets, letting her suck on his fingers to keep her quiet while Ferem brought him a bowl of milk. When they were alone again, Telemakos fed his sister with a napkin twisted into a makeshift teat. It took at least an hour. In the evening Medraut found his children curled against each other, sound asleep.
After that they gave up trying to keep the baby away from Telemakos.
IV
THE LURE OF SHADOWS
“THERE,” MEDRAUT SAID, RUNNING the tips of his fingers along the blind seam in Telemakos’s shoulder. “Finished. And your skin should grow with you comfortably; you can thank Amosi for that. Your grandmother the queen of the Orcades could not have made cleaner work of it, and that’s saying something. Let me show you.”
The bandages were gone. Medraut held one of Turunesh’s mirrors at Telemakos’s back, and Telemakos held another, so he could see behind him.
“We did not ever cut through bone in the end,” Medraut explained. “We took your arm straight out of its socket, at the join with your shoulder.”
Telemakos tilted the mirror back and forth, fascinated. His ribs and throat were impressively scarred as well, back and front.
“Solomon never took his teeth out of your arm,” Medraut explained. “The other wounds on your body were made by his claws. They were ugly, and any one of them could have killed you if it had festered, but they were not deep.” Medraut’s low, musical voice was matter-of-fact as he laid out these horrors. “You did the right thing, Telemakos.”
“I did?”
“You kept the lion’s teeth away from your throat. You sacrificed your arm for it, but that is what saved your life. Well, that, and Nezana forcing Sheba off so she could not open you up while her partner held you down.”
Telemakos choked back a sob, feeling sorry for himself: not because he had lost his arm, but because he knew he would never be allowed in the lion pit again.
“Does it hurt?” Medraut asked.
“Nothing hurts.” Telemakos sniffed. “I miss my lions.”
“They aren’t your lions, boy.” Medraut’s tone was dry.
He added, gentler now, “It’s said lost limbs cause pain that isn’t really there. You seem to do a lot of desperate flailing when you move; you’ve lost your grace.”
“I have trouble balancing,” Telemakos admitted. “I try to move my arm, and there isn’t anything to move. I keep thinking I must be bound, as I was in Afar, and when I try to lift my arm, I can’t. So I struggle.”
Medraut laid aside the mirror. He looked down at his own scarred hands, and at the blue physician’s mark of Asclepius tattooed in his left palm. He murmured, “I don’t know how to heal you of the wounds you took in Afar.”
Telemakos said, surprised, “They’re long healed. They were nothing.”
“I don’t mean these,” Medraut said, tapping lightly at Telemakos’s scarred fingertips, where Hara had slashed the nails off to assure Anako that Telemakos was mute. “I mean the wounds to your spirit, which make you scream in the dark, and trick your body into believing it is still being forcibly subdued. Do you dream about the lions?”
“Never.”
“Well, Solomon crippled you. Hara the Scorpion did not. Who torments you in your sleep?”
Without warning Medraut laid his hand across Telemakos’s eyes.
Telemakos gasped and shuddered, flinching.
“You see,” Medraut said.
Telemakos was appalled. He had not thought his secret fears were so transparent.
Medraut spoke more to himself than to Telemakos, his musical voice dark with menace. “I swear, when we round up the last of these salt pirates, I will demand their heads struck up on pikes in the Cathedral Square. That will bring an end to the tale. That will see you avenged.”
“I don’t need avenging,” Telemakos said. “Or I’d be angry at Solomon, too.”
“Oh, aye, that’s what you’d do, turn the other cheek. If your friend the lion should eat up your left arm, offer to him the other also.”
Telemakos laughed. Medraut gave a faint smile with half his mouth. Encouraged to hear his father quoting scriptures of forgiveness, albeit loosely and with sarcasm, Telemakos stood up and twisted his shamma over his shoulders. “Sir, you yourself bear a grudge against a person who does not deserve your ill will any more than Solomon deserves mine,” he said boldly. “Wait here for me a minute.”