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She answered fiercely, "Yes All right"

"If Ras Meder won’t do it hiet your mother to sit with you"

She turned to obey him, almost immediately

"Wait!" Telemakos cried softly "Goeait Please let an to preen, balancing on the rireen above the cried "Put her down over here, on ht I don’t mind if she cries I want to see her"

Goewin laid his sister gently at his side

The baby looked up at hileamed with the metallic sheen of bronze, while her skin was the even brown of roasted grain Her hair smelled of sandalwood It was not oiled with it; that was just the way it sazed at Telemakos steadily, her expression faintly worried She had been crying, but her eyes were dry She was so young she could not yet ray of a winter sky

"She has eyes just like Athena’s," Teleht that too," Goewin said with a soddess,’ Homer calls her"

"You honey," Telemakos whispered to the baby She stared at hiht eyes "Oh, you honey I wish I could hold you"

He could not even move to touch her She seemed the smallest, most vivid creature he had ever seen, more vibrant even than Sheba and Solomon had been as cubs, because he could sense the latent intelligence looking out through her clear, gray eyes

Telemakos looked up at Goewin "Her name is Athena," he declared

Goeisted her ht" She leaned down gently and lifted the baby onto her shoulder again "I don’t think either of your parents will contest that choice And who knows, maybe it is a smoke screen I can use The emperor calls his advisor Mentor, after all, not Athena, and if it is ever spoken abroad, it will seem to h pinched nostrils, like an angry sigh "High ti I’m frustrated with your parents, Tele half the day and no longer bothers to comb her hair; your father turns his back and walks out of the room if the baby is in it If you die, I will leave this house and take your little Athena with me But if you live--"

"I’ll have to help you," Telemakos said "I will, I promise"

Goeent to find his father

Ferean to set out the too-familiar physician’s instruments on a clean white cloth; all except the small, narroeler’s sahich he laid in the brazier He knelt at Telemakos’s side

"God bless you, child"

He took Teleently "Your mother will be here in a moment," Ferem said, "and she’ll stay till you’re asleep I will see you in the , when you wake up"

The second half of that as not very different froh to realize what had happened to hiht off the last of the infection But the cruel nails were gone Once he heard his aunt ask soberly, "How is it with our young lion tamer now?" There was quiet relief and firm confidence in his father’s answer: "Much better"

Then one ry He barely had the strength to shake the rattle that would bring Fereht on little more than honey and water

His mother came in She had combed her hair or allowed someone to comb it for her: it was fixed out of her face in the fa loose and full around the base of her neck Teleh her room was next to his

"You’ve been lost! You’ve been lost!" he cried out to her "I can’t reach you Kiss ain! Oh, come closer, I need you!"

"You don’t," she said "You need Medraut, and you need Goewin All I do is feed people"

"I need you to hold ht: she had to feed him Ferem propped him up so he could drink, and Turunesh held a bowl of broth to his lips

"Ugh, this horrible British stock," Telemakos said "Why do you let Goewin cook?"