Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [39]
She eased herself up from the slab, naked and exultant. Whatever it meant, whatever it would mean, she was free.
It was a simple matter to leave the mausoleum, pressing the stone with her fingers and waiting for the hidden tunnel to the palace to open. How had they imagined she’d gotten into the place to begin with? All the tombs were connected to the palaces, and had been for centuries.
She slipped back in through the slave’s quarters, taking only the silver box that contained Antony’s ashes, wrapped in a cloth to protect her fingers from the strange, scalding pain the metal caused her skin. She hid in a cellar. It was daylight, and she could not go out into the sun, particularly not as she was. She would need dark clothing, and something to swath her face.
She found herself confused, uncertain where to go next, and so she stayed hidden. Her city was a great unknown, though it had always cradled her in the past. She had no servants, no trusted friends, no messengers. She had no dresser, no woman to paint her skin and braid her hair.
She was dead to all of them.
She thought of this with a kind of wonder as she crouched, naked and filthy, against the cool stone wall of the cellar. She was no longer a queen. She could do exactly as she pleased now. No more politics, no more advisors, no more declarations of war.
What was it she wanted? What would she do now that she was dead? She was dead, that much was certain. Dead to her country, in any case.
The things she loved had been taken from her, but some of them still lived. Her children. She would find them. Her enemies still lived as well. A whisper of memory came back to her as she thought of Octavian. She saw him as he knelt over her in her bedchamber, thinking her dead, speaking to her as though she could forgive him. He’d confessed his sins to her. He was the one who’d told Antony she was dead. He was the one who had told her armies to desert her husband.
All of this had been set in motion by Octavian’s lies.
When she found him, she would hurt him as he had hurt her.
The palace seethed with activity when first she entered, servants running from room to room, the foul scent of roasting meat, excited gossip, but as the day passed, the place quieted. Octavian had left the palaces just before she’d arrived, or so she gleaned from listening to the chatter. He’d taken a mass of his soldiers, bodyguards, and armor, kindling, and firepots, and gone out into the tombs. Starting a tiny war somewhere in her city, she imagined.
When at last she emerged from the cellar, creeping along a kitchen wall, the place was nearly empty. The creature she finally spoke with was ancient, a blind crone hovering over a basin, scrubbing away at some vile root.
“Where are the other servants?” Cleopatra asked her.
“Are you not one of us?” the crone asked.
“I’ve been away,” Cleopatra said, trying to repress her regal tone. This was not the sort of conversation she would normally have with a slave.
“They’ve gone to the execution,” the servant said.
This was a stroke of luck, though who might Octavian be killing now? His own soldiers? She would not be surprised by such an act. He would kill his trusted allies. Antony had been his friend, his teacher, and look at what he’d done to him.
There was no one left to war against. The city had surrendered. Mark Antony was dead, and so was she, for all Octavian knew. She looked forward to seeing his face when she proved that assumption wrong. Her mouth filled with saliva. Hunger. She still could not remember the last time she’d eaten. Something about the shock of her false burial, she concluded. There were gaps in her memory. It was a blur of light, a glimpse of red that failed to resolve into anything clear.
Cleopatra found a kitchen