Queen of Kings - Maria Dahvana Headley [96]
The senators, he noticed, were quiet in their seats, watchful. What did they await?
“I present to you Cleopatra Selene, Alexander Helios, and Ptolemy Philadelphus, children of Rome and special favorites of your first citizen. I’ve forgiven them their parentage, and so shall you.
“And now . . . a unique entertainment, never before seen in Rome.”
The emperor smiled in satisfaction. This would draw her if nothing else would.
“You may remember a betrayer of Rome,” Augustus said. “A man who left his country behind in order to woo a foreign queen. A man who abandoned his soldiers, abandoned his wife and family, for that same queen.”
The crowd booed on cue.
“The gods blessed Rome and struck our foe down. Tonight, our former enemy visits this arena from the Underworld.”
There was a hush of expectation, a nervous giggle, quickly quieted.
Augustus inadvertently caught Selene’s gaze. She was staring at him, bewildered, her eyes wide. It occurred to him that perhaps this had not been a perfect plan. Children were unreliable. But there was no turning back now.
“I give to you Mark Antony!” Augustus shouted.
Chrysate opened the silver box she held in her lap, and the ghost of Antony unfolded from it, fully armored, his eyes dark and unwilling, his wound visible even from the floor of the arena.
There was a moment of total silence and then the audience erupted in applause at the wondrous illusion.
“Father!” Selene screamed a bloodcurdling scream, high and terrified. Ptolemy joined her. Alexander reeled, staring at his father, disbelieving.
Antony, his body controlled by Chrysate, bent at the waist to bow to Caesar, and with that gesture, the lions were released.
22
Cleopatra opened her throat and roared into the brightness, her body vibrating with the sound. She was still in the tunnel’s mouth, and could not see what was happening in the arena. She could hear only the emperor’s voice claiming her children, mocking her husband. The other lions surged forward with her, the dust flying behind her paws as she charged into the Circus Maximus.
The bestiarii awaited her, each with his sword and trembling knees. Some were brave, standing firm in the face of the wall of charging wild cats. Others tried to flee, though there was nowhere to go. A trench surrounded the fighting floor. Cleopatra judged it, assessing the leap.
There.
High in the stands, his toga shining, the evildoer. And beside him, on either side—
Her children.
Selene in the center, her hands grabbing the boys, the little one wide-eyed, and the elder, looking equally startled. Selene grappled with them, tugging their hands.
The emperor, between them, looked straight at the fighting, his gray eyes glinting and lustful. Beside him, a dark-skinned man stood, his dagger drawn, his face watchful, a serpent twining about his arms.
What was standing on his other side? A very young woman, glowing with some strange inner light, had her hand on the shoulder of a man. Cleopatra could not quite see him. He flickered, transparent. An actor, painted to look like Antony. It must be.
Cleopatra lashed forward with a paw, clawing the arm of the bestiarii before her. She did not desire to kill him, and so she dodged his sword. He did not wield it well, in any case. Some of the fighters were screaming and slashing with their eyes closed. Dust flew up and obscured the bleeding lion beside her. The rhinoceros heaved his way up from below the stadium, its great ivory horn as sharp as a dagger, and its eyes flashing black and beady as it began to run, thundering across the circus.
Cleopatra caught sight of a sword, slicing directly at her head, and leapt forward to tear the fighter’s throat, savoring, even if only for a moment, the heat of his blood.
She gathered her haunches and lunged at the stands, feeling the dead weight of a lioness beside her, anchoring her to the ground.
She gloried in her invisibility, straining at the chain that bound her and feeling the links stretch, the metal protesting. They did not