Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [58]
Instead—
The Fates had arranged things differently. He was following her to Italy, however against his will. She’d pursue her enemy and her remaining children. He had no doubt that if she lived, that was where she was headed.
Nicolaus ran his fingers through his long hair, tugging at it in an attempt to galvanize his mind and keep himself awake. Here he sat, on a rocking ship, on a tossing sea, helpless to stop the thing he’d unleashed. Somewhere in the depths of his knowledge, surely there was a solution. Somewhere, there was the right story, a story of triumph, of mortals conquering the gods. Years of reading, years of learning, and yet he couldn’t think of what he should have done.
Suddenly, he sat up straight, listening.
From somewhere below, he heard it again. A wailing cry. A moan. A scream.
Somewhere, deep below him, someone was dying.
3
The chieftain of the Psylli tribe watched the sand rising on the horizon as he milked the last droplets of venom from his viper’s fangs. He coiled his serpents into their traveling basket.
“Hush,” he told them, looking into their bright, arrowhead faces. “Sleep, sweet ones.”
Usem was already painted for his employment, his ebony skin smeared with reddish pigments and precious violet inks. His ceremonial headdress was in place, and his coral ornaments. There was no point in trying to avoid the Romans. The nomadic tribe was regularly employed by them, for matters relating both to poisoning enemies and to healing those who had been poisoned. Usem himself had been drawn into Roman service only three months before, brought to Alexandria to attend the dead queen Cleopatra. Though Usem tried, his fingers on her heart, his lips on her wound, he was not able to resurrect her.
It was not snake venom that had killed her, he knew that even then, though he could not determine why she lay so still, a shining thing in her shining room. She didn’t seem entirely dead, or if she was, it was a kind of dead he’d never encountered before.
Something was terribly wrong. Usem had tried to tell the man who was now their emperor, but the Romans had ignored him, and eventually, he’d given in, taken their payment and departed.
Upon his return from Alexandria, Usem had consulted the wind, who went everywhere and saw everything. Now he understood. A dark goddess had risen, one of the Old Ones, and Cleopatra was her earthly vessel.
The forces of chaos were stirring.
All across Africa, serpents seethed from their nests, and lions padded through villages. Elephants stampeded. One of Usem’s own tribesmen had seen the queen walking down a dusty road in the South. The man reported that the very air shook with her power. She killed several villagers before moving on, and nomads picked up the bodies on the roadside, shriveled and pale, bloodless.
The signs had ceased a few days before, but Usem was not foolish enough to imagine that this meant peace. The queen might have left Africa, but it did not matter. Where she went, the world shifted, and what she did was enough to disrupt the balance. The rising of such a force was to no one’s benefit.
The seas tossed, higher and higher. Angry waves crashed upon the walls of Alexandria, and strange beasts were washed up from the depths.
Though it was the Romans who enraged her, the violence of such a creature would not be confined to her enemies. Still, Usem was not afraid. His people were warriors by nature. And there were things to be gained in this fight. More than gold, though this was the usual form of payment for a Psylli’s services. No. This fight was a matter of life and death, and Usem sought to use this to his advantage. The Romans were desperate. He would drive a harder bargain. If they wished to employ a Psylli to battle with an immortal, it would cost them more than they were accustomed to paying.
Usem, as it happened, had a price in mind.
He looked about him, at the smooth desert, at his camels, at his home. His children,