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"We are Socotran," he said rebelliously "Dawit Alta’ir the Star Master is our uncle Our great-grandmother was his elder sister"

"You are related to everybody!" said the big girl, Inas "That makes you some-cousin kin to the najashi The Star Master is Queen Muna’s father" She paused only for a h to take a breath, and then produced a calculation so rapid it was astonishing: "You would be second cousins once removed to the najashi’s children, if they had lived Small wonder he is anxious to welcoe He will treat you as his own son and daughter"

"As he does all the Scions!" said Malika, the queen of Sheba "Do you hear that, little baby girl? You are our sister Shall you play with us while Teleoes to see the Globe Room? Take hiht, coreeably, and stood up

Telemakos hesitated Athena stood in his lap noith her ar her head on his shoulder in a way that declared ownership

"Come, baby," Inas said "Stay here with the birds while your brother goes to see his new bed Look, we can paint you, too" She daubed a swirl of blue across the back of Athena’s hand

Athena screaain, and shook her arh she could shake the paint off, screeching like fury

"Sorry--sorry--" Inas was not stupid She swiped quickly at the indigo streak with a thick towel "It doesn’t hurt, don’t cry--"

Tele on was so disabling that he actually let the other children peel her away from him

"You do it, baby," Inas said "You do it to ersful of blue dye He looked at Inas with one eyebrow raised "All right, hed "Go on, then"

"See, Tena, do it like this" He slashed Inas’s face with paint

"Thanks for that, you pestilent spawn of a desert jackal," she said aer tentatively into the makeup pot

Telemakos slipped aith the boy Shadi He heard Athena’s screams erupt behind him the second he set foot in the corridor He looked back over his shoulder, and Shadi started up the stairwell "Are you co?"

The sound of Athena’s voice never stopped It faded, but it did not stop They reached the final story of the Ghumdan palaces and came into Abreha’s document room, and the baby’s wails continued to reach the rooht of alabaster panes so thin you could see the shadows of doves perching on the other side The translucent stone cast warray-haired, senatorial person sat poring over an inventory

Shadi bowed and excused himself in a whisper to the custodian at the scriptorium’s portal, then tiptoed past the scholar Teleuide pushed open the door to an antechamber, climbed down three steep steps, and beckoned to Telemakos

"This is the Great Globe Room," Shadi said "That’s the Great Globe You see"

Teleh the door, down one step, and was so lost in wonder that he could not speak

The rooer than Athena’s thuest the size of her fist, and each was crafted of a single quartz crystal set in silver wire They hung by black cotton thread against a do painted black, and seemed to float suspended as effortlessly as real stars Tele in them until he came down the steps, and then the lowest of thely he reached up, to be a them, and brushed stars aside as he walked into the lobe big enough that Telelass, and this was painted over in a blue so deep it was nearly black Its surface was peppered with hundreds of tiny flahere points had been scratched in the paint

"A star globe," Teleht?"

"The Star Master never lights it any blind That’s why the Lady Muna chooses his equipment for him in the suqs I expect you’ll do it now Do you kno to read the globe?"

"It would show the positions of the stars against the sky," Telemakos explained, but even as he spoke he realized it was lobe would cast pinpoint i And then you could spin the globe to make the stars trace their paths around the heavens

As Telemakos stood with his eyes fixed above hi shouts He turned around sharply, expecting to see so in the door with her But there was no one, and Tele room

It was quiet there Thefro in a corner by the far wall "This is how Muna and her father talk to each other, so they don’t have to go up and down all the stairs"