Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [33]
The marks of the fangs were strangely large, and bright against the pallor of her skin. Octavian looked at them for a moment, disturbed, and then turned away. Whatever had bitten her, it had not been a typical asp but something much larger. It was a painful and strange way to die. Why did she look so calm?
The troupe of snakebite magicians came and knelt to the queen’s throat to suck forth the venom, but she did not revive.
“She is dead,” the leader of the Psylli said, his dark face grave. “But her soul is not far gone. Something is strange with her. She is not as she seems.”
Octavian shrugged at the man’s phrasing. What did Rome care for her soul?
He dismissed the Psylli, paying them in gold. Word of the queen’s suicide and of the emperor’s attempts to save her would be all over the city by nightfall.
Agrippa hesitated at the doorway.
“Go,” Octavian said. “I’m nearly done here.”
When Agrippa had gone, Octavian bent over Cleopatra one last time, to remove her crown. He let his hand rest on her breast, still amazingly soft. One would think her heart still beat.
He bent closer, inhaling her perfume, telling himself that he was simply taking the measure of his enemy. One last conversation with his foe, before she was gone forever.
“Caesar taught me that true leaders fight with words instead of swords,” he told her. “An army hears an order they think is from their queen, and they turn on their commander. A man hears a message that his queen has killed herself, and he acts to save his own honor. Have I done as you would have done, had you come to my country with your army? Now you will travel to Rome with your emperor. You, who said you belonged to no one, belong to me.”
He leaned closer yet. He pressed his mouth against her parted lips, and then—
The queen’s eyes opened.
14
For the rest of his life, the emperor would remember what he saw that day, looking into the eyes of a dead queen. Visions, he thought at first. Prophecy, he realized as they went on. He was seeing what would come.
He saw the future laid out before him like polished gems on a black cloth, each moment distinct, each moment vibrating with its own horror.
Black clouds filled with slashing lights. Crippled bodies, skeletons. Ships beached on dying shores. Rats swarming bodies, covering them so completely that no skin was left visible. These were the trappings of war, Octavian tried to tell himself. Though he was a young man, he’d commanded armies. He had seen civilization.
This, this blazing place, this horror, was nothing like it.
Here, soldiers herded women and children into machines, tore away their rags, their shoes, their belongings, held metal sticks at eye level as their victims stood against fences, hands behind their heads, waiting for death to take them. Here, child warriors slew other child warriors, brandishing cleavers and metal rods, throwing something that blasted hearts away, carousing in an ecstasy of violence, singing and whooping as they smashed the skulls of less lucky children. Here, the naked and the dying ran through the roads of some dark city, their skin melting away, their mouths gaping with horror.
Wolves prowled cobbled streets, stalking lanes that still held homes. A baby cried out, only to be snatched up by an animal. He saw a flamehaired, white-faced woman crowned with gold, her mouth stretching in a cry of agony, a bearded man throwing his hands into the air, summoning some vast, horned creature. He saw an island of fire, a river of lava, creatures flying through the sky.
A human heart on a scale, a weighing.
A tremendous serpent thrashed and coiled, its fangs shining in the moonlight, high above an arena strangely familiar to Octavian. Metal monsters flew through the air and ignited, screaming people leaping from inside them, and below it all, the blood ran, scarlet rivers of it surging into the oceans and coloring the waters. The great beasts of the sea rose up, fins and teeth, battling over bloated corpses.
The sky rained fire.
Octavian saw himself