“It reminds me of New York,” he said.
“Not at all. New York is on a grid. Addis has no grid.”
“Not that.” Ben shook his head. If he managed to find his way back to the large compound Giovanni and Beatrice were renting, it would be a miracle. “No, just the busyness. It’s a twenty-four-hour city like New York.”
“Perhaps that’s true. I enjoy that the occasional sheep or donkey still wanders into town though. You don’t often see that in New York.”
Ben smiled. “No. And the city’s poorer for it, don’t you think?”
“Agreed.” She hovered in front of him and waited for him to enclose her in his arms. Ben loved floating with Tenzin like this, wrapped in her amnis and her arms, surrounded by their element and drifting with no particular purpose.
“Why are you brooding, my Benjamin?”
“I’m not brooding.” He tucked a flyaway strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’m thinking.”
“You often think with a frown on your face. I consider that brooding.”
“I just…” Ben turned and pointed his face to the north. “Look at that.”
“Look at what?”
The northern stretch of mountains above Addis Ababa got higher and more inaccessible. In the distance, Ben saw no lights. No signs of urban modernity. What lay to the north were the bones of an ancient and secretive kingdom with stories, myths, and lore stretching back for thousands of years.
“Giovanni, Beatrice, and I are meeting with Saba’s representative tomorrow night,” he said. “Gio has to give her a timeline, and he’s already told me he’s going to tell her three weeks. He’s going to be doing some research; it’s a family vacation. All that stuff. He’s making excuses for us, but we have limited time. Three weeks and what?” He gestured to the north. “Two thousand mountains?”
“I think we can do it. And we’re not going to look at two thousand mountaintops. Not all of them fit the parameters of Aksumite treasuries.”
“Do you know how many old monasteries are in this country, Tenzin?”
“I believe there are currently close to eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred.” Ben shook his head. “Think about that number.”
“I’m not saying we won’t have to use our time wisely,” Tenzin said. “And we may need to stay slightly longer than three weeks.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I have places we can hide.”
“Tenzin, don’t ask me to make a liar out of my uncle.”
She sighed. “Fine. I’m sure there’s a way we can narrow things down. After all, your aunt and uncle are research professionals.”
“I mean, we’ve already marked the obvious places,” Ben said. “We’ll search those first.”
“But if they’re obvious to us, they’re likely obvious to others,” Tenzin said. “So there is that.”
“You have to admit, we’ll have an easier time accessing the majority of them.”
Tenzin squeezed him around the waist. “I do love a mountainous and inaccessible country.”
“I’m amazed you don’t have a house here.”
“There are a few caves I’m particularly fond of in the Simian Mountains, but I don’t see Saba being happy with me putting down roots here.” She looked up. “Her alliance with my father has always been wary at best.”
“Still…” Ben began to float toward the ground in the general direction—he was guessing—of their compound. “You and your father haven’t been joined at the hip. Historically speaking.”
“Saba does not understand family estrangement.” She gently steered him away from the football stadium. “None of Saba’s children were ever estranged from her. She didn’t permit it.”
Ben frowned. “You can’t… I mean, sometimes it just happens, right? Children want to go their own way, there are disagreements—didn’t Lucien say that Desta and Saba disagreed when his sister converted to Christianity?”
“Oh yes, they were at odds,” Tenzin said. “But they weren’t estranged. If Saba had asked Desta to join her for any reason, she would have done it.”
“Really?” Ben shook his head. “That’s… interesting.”
“That’s who she is.” Tenzin paused, looked up, and tapped his chin. “Don’t ever forget she’s like a magnet for our kind. We all feel a pull toward her. That’s part of why her cure works so well for any poisoned vampire.”
“Saba’s Cure” was still the only antidote known to cure Elixir poisoning, a debilitating vampire virus that broke the amnis, rendering a vampire nothing more than a shell of their former self. But by taking the cure, you were aligning yourself with Saba forever. All former relationships, all elemental ability, would be lost to the earth and to her clan.
“It’s no wonder she’s getting arrogant,” Tenzin said. “Her army must be in the hundreds now.”
For a vampire army, that was a lot.
A lot.
Ben looked down. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a park I want to show you,” she said. “It’s brand-new and there are fountains.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “But then we’re going back to the house, right?”
“If you want to.” The last two hundred feet, they dropped rapidly, landing on soft grass that sloped down a gentle hill that overlooked a river. Tenzin had kept them in the shadows, and they both stayed frozen as they checked their surroundings.
Nothing stirred, so they stepped forward and into the moonlight.
Tenzin nearly skipped down the hill. “We have to bring Sadia here!”
Ben swept his eyes over the buildings that looked to house different exhibits and the stages that appeared prepared for music or dancing. “It might be more fun for her during the day.”
Tenzin waved a careless hand. “Oh, we can do both. Rather, we can take the night and Dema and Zain can take the day. It’s good for her to be well-rounded.”
Sadia sat on his lap back at the compound and put both hands on his cheeks. Whatever important news she was sharing, she needed Ben’s full attention.
“Ethiopians eat with their hands,” she said. “For everything. Not just hamburgers or sandwiches.”
Ben smiled. “Do you like it?”
“Do I like it?” She rolled her eyes in rapture. “It’s just the best! And they eat bread with everything because that’s like their spoon. They pick up the food with the bread and it’s called injera and at first I wasn’t sure I was going to like it because it’s kind of sour, but then Mika said that she could make a less sour one for me if I wanted and she did and I liked that very much.”
“Less sour injera?”
“It’s still sour.” She raised a small finger. “But not as sour.”
“I see.” He hugged her and tickled her sides until she squirmed away. “What did you and Dema do today?”
She pulled him across the compound toward the massive mango tree that dominated the center. There were three houses within the walls, the main house, which rose four stories and was fronted with wide balconies. Giovanni, Beatrice, Sadia, and Dema shared that house, along with Doug.