Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [77]
She was seized with a spasm of coughing, raw and painful, and when it finally ended, her hands were spattered with blood. She felt about on the tapestry, testing the strength of her own thread. Cleopatra was coming, no matter the seiðkona’s health. Without the distaff, Auðr could be of little use.
She opened the door into the corridor and made her way through the marble complex. As she walked, she brushed aside the threads belonging to all those who lived in Rome. Her own thread was knotted with these destinies, its golden span tangled and braided in ways she had not imagined it could be. She might ensure the fall or the rise of Rome with her actions here. She might break bloodlines, or make them. Most of all, she might find the source of the chaos, the thing that was twisting the pattern, the reason she’d come.
The queen, and whatever it was that twined with her.
Cleopatra’s fate rippled, a strong strand, weaving itself against the souls of those in this house. She was coming, then. She had decided to act.
The seiðkona found a barely bearded youth standing uneasily against a wall. Her distaff was inside the room he guarded. She bent her back, a crippled old woman in need of an arm to hold. As the youth approached her, she worked a small magic.
The boy smiled upon her and opened the door.
12
Cleopatra crept out of Virgil’s doorway and into the city. She moved quickly over the stones, wending through alleys as though she carried the map of Rome in her bones. She did not know this sector, but she could smell the Theater of Pompey, and she went toward it. Julius Caesar’s heart’s blood, shed there so many years ago, gave off a metallic, vinegary tang that was instantly recognizable.
She heard the sounds of the inhabitants of Rome, even though she did not see most of them. The splashing of chamber pots emptied over balconies, the terrified cries of those in the grip of nightmares, the coos of Parthian courtesans to their clients, the stretching joints of acrobats preparing for the next day’s employment.
She trotted past Caesar’s rose gardens and across the wooden bridge over the Tiber, her body regaining memory with each step. Before her was the enormity of the Circus Maximus, the chariot racing and gladiatorial arena, with its high wooden walls and oblong shape.
There, on the other side of the arena, was the Palatine Hill, crowned so thickly with white marble structures that it looked like a snow-capped mountain. Atop it, gilded, and shining even in the darkness, was the Temple of Apollo, newly built since her last visit. There were more new buildings, too, chief among them a complex that she knew housed Octavian. Augustus, Nicolaus had told her, but she did not care that her enemy had changed his name.
Cleopatra began to make her way stealthily around the boundary of the circus, planning to slip up the side of the Palatine unseen, but she paused, startled. The sounds of workmen sweating and heaving were nearly deafening after the silence of the night.
Up above the fence line, they were levering an object with a slender red granite surface and clean lines. A sacred Egyptian obelisk, looted from Heliopolis? She could see the inscriptions from here, praising Ra and wishing him safe passage through the Duat.
They had stolen it from Egypt, stolen it from under her nose.
Her mouth opened in a hiss of fury. They would not destroy her country. They would not take its ancient objects and use them for decorations. Her mind filled with Sekhmet’s voice. Ra’s tributes, stolen.
She was over the lower fence, her teeth exposed, her body ready, before she knew what she was doing, and then it was too late.
These were not workmen but legionaries, and she had flung herself into their midst.
How many were there? Twenty at least, surrounding her, and for a moment she was afraid, but then she laughed. She could see them looking at her, bewildered that a woman could have done such a thing. One of them took a tentative step toward her.
“My lady,” he said. “These grounds are off limits.”
They were no match