Coalition of Lions by Elizabeth Wein

slowly, staring at him. I had not got in the habit of lowering my eyes in the presence of authority, and as the emperor’s heir, neither had he; so when he raised his head, for a moment we looked into each other’s eyes.
    “When I am emperor, I will take the name Gebre Meskal,” he said. “The servant of the cross.”
    “You have noble ambitions,” I said, thinking to glance away, then astonished that I had done so.
    Wazeb beckoned to his footman. “My aunt Candake sends you a present, Princess Goewin,” he said in lighter tones. “She knows you have trouble sleeping, and is so kind to give you a book to read. She thinks you will like this. Your nephew told her you like maps.”
    He put into my hands Priamos’s Red Sea Itinerary.
    “The queen of queens tells you to study these,” said Wazeb. “She thinks you will find them entertaining. Here, let me show you.”
    He turned the pages carefully until he came to the stylized church on the cliff, with the dragon at its foot.
    “Here is one. This shows you the road to the hermitage at Debra Damo, among the amba plateaus, where the emperor’s nephews are sequestered.”
    “How did the queen of queens come by this book?”
    “It was a gift,” Wazeb answered blandly. “Look, here are marked all the villages along the way, and the distances between them. Even the turnings are numbered.”
    And so they were, in Greek and Latin.
    The Greek notations had been made by the artist who drew the pictures, the script small and elegant. But the Latin translations had been written out by another hand, in bold, straight, careful capitals like an inscription on a monument, as though the writer were not entirely at ease with an unfamiliar set of letters. The last in the list of names and numbers was “Solomon VIII XIV.” It did not appear in the Greek text, but only in the scrupulous Latin.
    “This is not a turning, is it?” I said slowly. “This name Solomon, and these figures?”
    Wazeb laughed. “It is more likely a biblical text. Though I do not know why it is marked here.”
    “Can you tell me the text?”
    ‘“Make haste, my beloved.”
    I stared at the page, then raised my eyes to look at Wazeb.
    He chanted softly, with his serene smile. “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of spices.’
    “It is the end of the Song of Songs,” he said. “Solomon to Sheba, perhaps.” He bent over the book again, and remarked, “The writing is very fine.”
    “It’s beautiful,” I said.
    Turunesh unlocked a door in one of the recesses at the base of Kidane’s house. It was night, and we moved without a light. Telemakos squeezed my hand in fits and starts, presumably because his mother’s hands were busy and it was the only thing he could do to keep himself from hopping from foot to foot in giddy excitement.
    None of us spoke until Turunesh had closed the door behind us and lit an earthen lamp. We stood on a narrow landing; a steep stair led below the house. The walls were laid with the same granite blocks as the house itself until halfway down the stair, and from there the way was cut into solid rock.
    Turunesh passed the lamp to me and drew Telemakos close against her.
    “Now listen, my hero. You are to obey the princess as you would obey me. As you would obey Grandfather. You will have to wait for me at the other end, and it will be dark, and maybe days before I am able to let you through.”
    “I’m not afraid of the dark,” Telemakos said, fearless and careless, just the way he said in my dreams, I’m not afraid of lions.
    Turunesh lit our way with the oil lamp and carried a bag of food over her shoulder; I carried water flasks, blankets, and my bow. Telemakos carried his own small canvas satchel. The tunnel was narrow, but clean and bare and dry. You could not have guessed where it led, or why it was there.
    “How old is this?” I asked.
    “Not very old. A hundred and fifty years, perhaps. Our house is older. The