Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [93]
Selene sat in front of Augustus, her eyes lined with kohl, but a tiara of gilded laurel on her head, the better to emphasize her allegiance to Rome. Nicolaus shook his head miserably. Their costumes would only incite Cleopatra more.
Where could she be?
He heard muffled roars from beneath the ground, the tunnels under the circus.
With a sinking heart, he realized. He would never get to her in time.
Chains rattled against the stone ramp as the cats ascended it, and Cleopatra felt her ears flatten. The fur on her spine stood up in a ridge. There was danger here.
She was chained, her leg secured to another lion with iron. This was how the bestiarii were given a chance to win over the animals. Otherwise, the games would have been over too quickly, the human combatants left ruined on the circus floor, and the animals rampaging in bewilderment and terror. She could smell the fear of the bestiarii, and taste their histories.
They were convicts, but many of them were not criminals. They had just happened upon legionaries at the wrong moments and been accused of crimes they had not committed. One of the newly crowned bestiarii was the father of a beautiful daughter, who was a virgin no longer. Now the father was guilty of assault, having tried to beat back the Roman who’d sought her favors. Another of the bestiarii had owned a gilded shield that had been desired by a centurion. Now the man was a convicted thief.
These were not fighters by trade. They had once been Egyptians, and Cleopatra had once been their queen. She tried not to think about them, their souls, their pains. They did not matter. They could not. She was here for a reason, and in order to get close to the emperor, she must kill them in battle.
She would do so if it meant she could get close to the emperor. She could smell his absence, the gray nothing of his soul, high up in the stands. She thought of his throat, the pale skin, the veins pulsing beneath it. She thought of his head crowned with laurels. She would tear into him. She would uncrown him. She thought of his heart, or what passed for a heart. What would it taste like? Dust. Stones.
Her teeth grew sharper in her mouth, and her breath quickened. She looked up into the torchlight and saw thousands of faces glowing with anticipation.
Waiting for her.
21
Augustus sat in the covered confines of the imperial box, looking down over the circus and attempting to keep himself still. All the power of Rome and beyond awaited Cleopatra.
Where would she come from? Where was she now?
Auðr sat behind the emperor, watching his thread spin out around him. The seiðkona drew a deep breath, willing herself not to choke on it. She needed all her strength. The battle was near. She moved her fingers, spanning a fine length of Augustus’s fate. She twisted it gently, snaring it in her sharp fingernails. All around her, fates spun out, and she could touch each one. It was as though the entire arena was covered in a web of drifting threads, snarling and tangling, floating and braiding. And here was the queen’s thread, twisted together with Sekhmet’s, stronger than all the other fates combined, and endless. How many threads had Auðr cut over the years? How many lives had she ended to keep the pattern from disorder? How many fates had she changed?
She tried once more, her fingers twisting, but she could not shift Cleopatra. She could not unknot her from the goddess, and neither thread would be cut. All Auðr could do was manipulate the fates surrounding the two immortal strands, and hope that this shifting would draw the queen into her hands.
It was too much, she thought, afraid for the first time in years.
Augustus leaned forward, scanning the faces of the crowd. None of the witches seemed to have sensed Cleopatra, but that did not mean she was not near. She’d never escape. Everything and everyone was in place.
He was still nervous.
Was there enough space between the arena floor and the imperial box? Years before, twenty elephants imported by Pompeius had charged the stands here, breaking down the iron railing