Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [111]
She could see thousands of other spirits now, in the gray light, making their way about the terrain, dark and dusty, hungry, bewildered. She couldn’t hear their thoughts, if they had thoughts at all, and this was a blessing. They smelled of nothing, and their histories were unknowns. There was no blood here, and it was endlessly dusk.
She thought of her own Underworld, and the sun that shone there for one glorious hour each night, waking the dead from sleep. From the Duat, the blessed dead could go forth amongst the living during the day. The dead flew through the clouds as hawks and basked in the sun as cats. The dead swooped as owls and trotted across the sand as dogs and jackals. At night, they went back to the realm of Osiris, fulfilled. Had she and Antony both died, they would have been together in the Duat, and perhaps, had their souls been judged happily, in the Beautiful West.
Home.
Now her only home was Antony.
Her husband laced his cold fingers together with hers and drew her to her feet. They walked on, into the mists of Hades.
4
The walls of the prison oozed filthy water, and there was no food but thin, weevil-ridden mash. Nicolaus comforted himself. At least he still lived. It was a miracle he had not been crucified.
A group of legionaries had caught him breaking into the emperor’s chambers at the Palatine, and he had been arrested immediately. He demanded to see the emperor or Marcus Agrippa, but the legionaries took him to the prison without hearing anything he had to say.
He’d languished here for days, surrounded by madmen.
The prisoners, mainly soldiers who had collapsed or betrayed Rome by serving Antony in the battle at the Circus Maximus, compared visions of the queen’s transformation, gibbering and wailing from their cells. They told one another tales of Mark Antony, once their fellow, walking as a shade and hiring them to defend his queen, and of wild animals slavering. They spoke of serpents that swarmed through the streets of Rome.
They spoke of the queen dancing in the center of an endless fire, undamaged.
He had to get to the emperor. His life was already ruined, and if he did not wish to spend the rest of it rotting belowground, he must tell his story to the Romans. He must get access to other materials, other libraries. Something to find a way to defeat Sekhmet. It must exist. They did not understand that though they had Cleopatra, they did not contain her. Sekhmet still walked, and she was the daughter of the sun. It was very likely that the burning had made her stronger.
He was tormented by a scrap of memory, something he’d read in the Museion about Sekhmet’s Slaughterers, seven ferocious children in the form of monstrous arrows, who served as bringers of chaos, plague, and destruction. They had been punished along with Sekhmet, and if she was free, they were, too.
In desperation, he begged a guard for writing materials, hoping to craft a letter to the emperor, and when they scoffed at him, he mentioned Virgil’s name.
Days later, a visitor arrived. He was a head taller than any of the guards, draped in a dark, hooded cloak. Nicolaus watched hopelessly as the man passed coins to the guard. He expected this was some assassin buying his way into the cell, but when the man took off his hood, Nicolaus recognized the poet’s face, long and grim.
“You should not have used my name,” Virgil said. “Augustus does not know I am in Rome. Someone else summoned me here, but the emperor wrote me in Campania, begging me to come to his bedside as a storyteller. He is having difficulty sleeping.”
“As well he should,” said Nicolaus. “A monster sleeps in his house.”
“I heard that,” said Virgil. “The emperor’s servants leak secrets. A miracle, is it not? They captured a shape-shifting creature. A wonder.”
“It is not a wonder,” Nicolaus said. “It is horrifying. You are fortunate that you have not seen what I have seen. You must get me out of this prison. I have to speak to Augustus.”
Virgil looked at Nicolaus for a moment, measuring him. “I’ve brought you writing materials, at considerable