Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [85]
“Augustus?”
“The same.”
That was enough to change their minds about fleeing. Dispensing with the minor matter that their messenger was from the Underworld, the senators leaned hungrily forward on their benches to listen.
“Speak,” they urged. “Tell us everything.”
“There is a price. A small matter. Nothing that such powerful men would find difficult. There is an object I require. A piece of green glass, a synochitus, must be stolen from a woman tomorrow night at the Circus Maximus and destroyed. You will send a man to do it.”
“Yes, yes, that’s easy enough. Get on with it,” said a senator, and Antony nodded.
“There will be games held tomorrow night, and at the games the emperor’s betrayals will be revealed to you. He has bound himself to witches, against the ways of Rome. His defeat of Egypt was false. Cleopatra is not dead. Would you have me speak further?”
The senators leaned forward, shivering in the newly frigid room. One of the pools was entirely ice now, and a thin rime of frost covered the men’s pates. Still, they were eager for more information. Rome was powered by such things, and always had been. A rumor of an emperor’s betrayal was worth as much as this and more.
“Continue,” said a senator, and the rest nodded.
“You must each give me a drop of your blood, so that I may speak fully,” the shade told them, and the senators held out their hands, willing.
Blood was a small price when one was offered information about the powers that ran Rome.
Blood was nothing.
Antony smiled. All the memory of Rome was contained within these men, and he took it, seven drops of blood, as snowflakes drifted gently from the ceiling of the room.
He told them all he knew, and then, together, they made a plan.
15
Cleopatra was maddened by her failure. What had stopped her? Fear? Her daughter’s face?
She thought at first to return to Virgil’s house, but then the thought of Nicolaus kept her out in the city. She hungered too much to trust herself to return to him. With daylight, she’d hidden in a root cellar, but the sounds of Rome plagued her nonetheless.
As soon as the sun dropped, she was out again, scarcely managing to pass the doorways, the stones, the temples that Antony had once visited, without stopping to look for him. She could almost feel him, but she knew he was dead. She’d burned his body.
Nothing was ever entirely gone; she knew it now.
A cryer sprinted past her, shouting his announcement.
“PRIVATE VENATIO, an hour past sunset, tomorrow evening! To be attended by Caesar Augustus, celebrating the arrival of the children of conquered Egypt and offering a special curiosity: a vision of Mark Antony, brought from beneath the earth to bow to Rome.”
She hissed, hearing it, but thought she imagined things. Her hunger was great now, and she could scarcely contain it. A group of legionaries stumbled from a bar and past her, and she thought she heard them say Antony’s name. She shook her head to clear it.
In an alley near a bathhouse, she caught the scent of Antony, stronger this time. Her eyes filled with tears as she inhaled. It was as though he were beside her. If only that were true.
A legionary passed her, pasting notices of the venatio onto a fence. She paused to look at them. A drawing of a man, his body familiar, broad-chested and tall. She looked more closely. The man in the drawing had a cleft chin. He bowed before a drawing of Rome’s emperor.
Cleopatra tore the notice from the wall and then followed behind the man who was posting them. How dare they mock Antony this way? It would be an actor, painted and costumed, a theatrical show exploiting the memory of her husband.
Still.
She would not stop this time. It had been a mistake. She’d had the emperor, and she could have killed him. This would all be done.
Now it would be in public. That might be better. There would be so many people there that her children would not be in any danger. No frenzy could take her and injure them,