Read Online Coalition of Lions by Elizabeth Wein - Free Book Online Page A

baskets and behind curtains and swarmed over his lap. One of them perched on his shoulder, rubbing its head against his face and purring so violently you could have heard it from across the room.
    “You may trust my handmaids, little Sheba,” Candake told me kindly. “Say what you like; who shall repeat it outside this court shall have her tongue cut out.”
    She patted Telemakos on top of his head with one of her fat, painted hands. “Isn’t that right, my fox kit?”
    He tossed his head. “You don’t scare me,” he said loftily. “And anyway—I’m no telltale.”
    They had to say everything two or three times over before I could fully understand it, but I think that is how it went. Candake made me sit at her feet opposite Telemakos. Then, tilting my chin toward her with one thick, emerald-laden finger, the queen of queens demanded: “Tell me, Princess of Britain, have you met my sweet nephew, the good and holy Wazeb, heir to the king of kings? A king-priest shall we have in him, not a bad thing, though his father thinks him a very silly boy. And what think you of our salt-faced regent? Let me touch your hands while we speak, your smooth pale hands. Constantine will not let me near him.”
    I thought she had some important things to tell me, implied in her pregnant questions. I let her stroke my hands, fascinated by her.
    “Can you explain—” I ventured. “Can you tell me how Constantine came to power here?”
    “Through my brother having the temperament of a hyena.” Candake snickered. One of the maids began to feed her pieces of fruit cut into stars and crescents and diamonds. “Why should Caleb work when another can do it for him? Hyena! Caleb sent one after another of my sons into battle, so to avoid losing any more of his own. The day my husband Anbessa died, even before he was lying in his grave, Caleb sent the order that my sons should be released from their sequestering and brought to him to train as his warriors. My brother has emptied his treasury on war and this palace. He looks at his heir and sees that Wazeb chants and dreams of God. Caleb mourns his lost Aryat, and thinks his ravaged kingdom will fall to a son without ambition or ability.
    “So Caleb designs to retire to the dragon’s hermitage and let another patch up his empire for him, while Wazeb waits his chance at power. But Wazeb will not grasp and grab at authority. Ha! You watch him. The tame lion. And they think all the lions have gone from the emperor’s palace!” She gave another burst of elephantine laughter.
    “So Caleb looks about him for a regent, saying, Which of these attendant insects will suck up the most nourishment for Aksum, before he begins to whine so irritatingly that Wazeb is forced to snatch up the imperial fly whisk? Caleb reviews them all and fixes on the mosquito Constantine. No one else is so strict, so plodding and pedantic. And no one is so dispensable. So they go up to Mai Shum with the bishop, the abuna, and a cloud of priests, and in the reservoir they baptize Constantine again with our own baptism, and so you see him now, the viceroy Ella Amida.”
    Candake stopped speaking at last, wheezing.
    “So if Constantine fails, the blame is Constantine’s,” I said. “And if he succeeds, the kingdom is Wazeb’s. Whatever happens, no reproof will come to Caleb. It is not so unaccountable as it looks.”
    “A princess and a politician!” Candake chuckled. “Bring coffee. Feed some of those to the princess,” she ordered suddenly; and to my consternation, the maid began to put the fruit stars into my mouth.
    “How long will Wazeb endure it?” I asked, when I could. “Does he seem likely to snatch up the fly stick?”
    “Fly stick!” Candake creased herself laughing again. “Why should he put down his prayer stick? It is good enough for swatting flies, and his British viceroy is bringing order and wealth to the mess his father left behind him. The tame lion will wait and watch.”
    Then she