Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [54]
A silver box engraved with images of Isis and Dionysus.
He’d last seen this box in Cleopatra’s mausoleum. It was a companion to the pyre he’d had her chained to, and inside it was all that was left of her husband.
Octavian stifled a moan. She’d been here. Now she was gone, and he had no way of knowing where she would appear, or who would die next.
He lifted the box of Antony’s ashes. She would not have carried it so far only to leave it behind on purpose. It had to have been an accident. Sooner or later, she would realize that she’d lost it, and then—
He wrapped it carefully in his cloak. It was more precious than gold to him now, more useful than his weapons or any hostage. According to Selene, she did not care about her children but only about her husband.
The box might be the one thing Octavian had that Cleopatra wanted.
That and his own life, he knew that well enough. The only reason he was still alive was that he’d been exceedingly lucky. He could stay no longer in this country. He’d depart for home, where he might have enough time to assemble his own forces and the forces of others against her.
His stomach lurched in a most undignified fashion.
“We return to Alexandria,” he announced. “And then to Rome, as quickly as can be arranged. We do not go toward peace. Marcus Agrippa. You and your men will go in search of something special.”
Agrippa looked at Octavian, his eyes unreadable.
“What is that?”
“Sorcery,” the emperor whispered, thinking of Alexander, thinking of what his hero would have done if faced with such things as these. “Magic to defend Rome. We cannot fight without help. You will find the most powerful sorcerers the world can give you.”
“And how will I know them?” Agrippa asked, clearly hoping that this was a whim of Octavian’s and not a true order.
“You will find those who are most feared in their villages,” Octavian told him. “The ones whose fires light the woods, who dance with demons, who summon shades.”
He thought of the stories, of Circe and Calypso, of Medea. Powerful things. There were witches in Rome, yes, but they worked only simple magic.
He dreamed of something larger, something stronger. Surely the world was wide enough that it might be found. The future of his country depended on it.
The visions he’d seen in Cleopatra’s eyes would come true unless he fought them back into the darkness.
“To your knees,” he said. “All of you. We pray for strength. We pray for Rome.”
25
Cleopatra bent to touch the rekhet’s shoulder. Dead, like everything died, the birds and insects, the animals, the fish, the plants. Cleopatra was the only thing in the world that would not go to dust.
She was chained to Sekhmet.
If she ever wished to join Antony in the Duat, if she ever wished to die, she’d have to kill her. There was too much Cleopatra did not understand still, too much that was strange. Even as she thought it, she felt the hunger surging through her. Flashes of red. Her blood boiled with fury and resentment. She would find the emperor, if she had to follow him around the world.
If she’d sold her soul, the soul of the last queen of Egypt, if Antony and Caesarion had died, it could not be for nothing.
The Romans would call to the Scarlet Lady, they with their leavings of metal and blood. Cleopatra could smell them now, though she was far away. The followers of this emperor who’d killed so many. This emperor who had murdered her son, whose men had murdered her husband. It would not be possible for Octavian to hide her remaining children from her. She was their mother. When she found them, she would destroy their captors.
She would eat the heart of the man who had forced her to sell her own heart.
She turned quickly from the temple and looked out into the empty desert. Dawn was hours off still. The moon was high and white. Selene, Cleopatra thought. Her daughter’s name and that of the moon as well. Alexander Helios. Ptolemy Philadelphus. Her children were still so small.
The silence had ended with the death of the priestess. Night