Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [44]
“Who is it we seek?” Agrippa asked him, for the hundredth time.
“The body of the queen,” he said. That it was a living body, he did not add.
The emperor instituted blockades on the roads and river, announcing that the body might have been transported by a solitary woman, smuggled out of Alexandria, but he knew that she would evade any such measures. What need had such a creature to travel by land and water? She could as well be traveling in the sky, taking flight like a sacred falcon or, more appropriately, like a vulture.
“Bring the children,” he ordered. He had them under guard, deep in the palace, and now he thought they might know something he did not.
He pressed his back against Cleopatra’s golden throne, cursing the discomfort of his position. The twins, when they came, unnerved him.
The boy looked down, as was proper, but the girl tilted her head to look at him. She was the image of her mother, black hair rippling down her back, though her lips held none of Cleopatra’s sensuality. The girl’s mouth reminded him of Antony’s, drawn tight in a moment of petulance, and below her lips was Antony’s own cleft chin. Cleopatra Selene’s eyes were large, black pools, also inherited from her father, who’d used his limpid gaze to seduce half the wives in Rome.
“Where is your mother?” he asked her, abandoning the canny line of questioning he’d prepared. Her glare discomfited him.
The girl spoke in an unknown language, a torrent of bewildering, crackling sounds. She then looked at him as though he ought to understand everything she said.
“Interpreter,” he called. It was ridiculous. Surely, someone had been aware of this problem before now and failed to alert him of it. Perhaps the girl was simple.
She took a step closer toward him, and involuntarily he drew back. She seemed to be taking his measure.
“There is no need for a translator. Our mother is dead,” Cleopatra Selene announced in Latin, her voice unexpectedly deep and rasping. “I am surprised you do not know where she is, as we were informed that you’d buried her.”
What fool had told them the details of their mother’s death? He’d ordered them sequestered. It would not do to have them grieving their parents and blaming him for their deaths.
“Where is my brother?” the boy asked, speaking unexpectedly. The girl put out her hand to silence him.
“Ptolemy is sleeping in our bedchamber,” she reminded him, and then turned back to the emperor. “Do you not speak Egyptian?”
“Of course not,” he said. “I am Roman.”
“As is our father, but he can speak the tongue of our people. How is it that you do not?”
“I’d like to visit Rome,” Alexander Helios interrupted, his eyes bright. “I’d like to train in the army.”
“I will take you to Rome,” Octavian told him. “In exchange for information.”
“We do not wish to go to Rome,” Cleopatra Selene interrupted. “We will await our father here at the palace. He is traveling, and we would not like to leave without his knowledge. He will grieve over our mother’s death, and we will comfort him.”
A stroke of luck. She did not know everything.
“If you tell me where your mother is,” he tried, “I’ll let your father live.”
The girl smiled a nasty, vindicated smile.
“So you are a liar as well,” she said, this time in Greek.
Octavian straightened his spine and put on his most regal air.
“Do not question me,” he said.
The girl laughed, a short, harsh bark, and continued in Greek.
“My brother doesn’t study when the tutor comes and so he cannot speak any language but Latin. He does not know that our father is dead. I heard the slaves talking, while everyone else slept. I do not wish to stay in Egypt. The people will kill us.”
Octavian was taken aback. The girl no longer looked like a ten-year-old, but like a full-grown woman, and it appeared that she was attempting to negotiate with him.
“Ask him where Caesarion is,” the boy whimpered, and his sister pinched him.
“He is dead,” Octavian said, resigned. “He was a traitor to Rome.”
The boy looked shocked. The girl did not, though Octavian