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By Root 494 0

we’ve danced around a few times before; and here we are again. She prods me toward it, sometimes, I think; can’t quite bring herself to confront me directly, but worries at it like a little dog with a big bone. “It” being my unusual religious beliefs (I choose this term as neither hers nor my own, but one we might skittishly agree on for the purposes of argument, if we ever were to argue, which we never do). Pythias is pious, keeps the household shrine, attends various temples, observes rites when there are rites to be observed—births and deaths and weddings. She sacrifices to thank and appease and show penitence; she is (though she tries to hide it from me) superstitious (she would say devout), and sees signs where I see only the natural beauty and familiar strangeness of the world. In fact I am not irreligious, and swoon before a smoke-plume of autumn birds just as she would, but for my own reasons.

“The gods don’t send it,” I say. “It’s part of the machinery of the world. When the air is cold enough, rain turns to snow. It freezes. The droplets attach to each other and harden.”

“But why?”

She wants to hear that once upon a time Apollo did this or that to a nymph and snow was the result. I can’t offer it. Divinity for me is that very plume of birds, the patterns of stars, the recurrence of seasons. I love these things and weep for the joy of them. The reality of numbers, again, for instance: I could weep if I thought about numbers for too long, their glorious architecture. I want to weep, now, for the beauty of the sky dispensing itself across my courtyard, the cold warmth in all our cheeks, the fear-turned-to-pleasure in my slaves’ eyes. Pythias sees my face and holds her hand out to me.

“For pleasure,” I manage to say. “So that we may go in and warm ourselves by the fire and look out at it from time to time, and feel—”

“It’s all right,” she says. “Come in, now.”

“—and feel—”

“It’s all right,” she says again, because I am weeping now, and not quite exactly for joy, though that too is part of the spice.

“Why do you think they send it?” I ask her.

She turns her face up to the sky. Flakes land in her hair and lashes. I look helplessly at the line of her cheek.

“To remind us of them,” she says, and there is no arguing with that.

“Master.”

I turn to the slave, take a deep breath, exhale. “Tycho.”

Tycho smiles, seeing me trying to rally. We’ve known each other a long time. “There’s a boy at the gate.”

Pythias gathers her skirts up from the whitening ground and sweeps into the house. “Your lady’s gone to the kitchen for some bread. Tell him he’ll get something in a minute.”

“He doesn’t look like a beggar.”

“Messenger?”

Tycho shrugs. “He asked for my lady.”

In the street, people are hurrying, heads down, through the snow. No one seems to have noticed Alexander standing alone by my gate. He wears sandals and a tunic; no cloak, no hat.

“Child, where’s your guard?” I ask.

“I slipped them.”

Tycho opens the gate and I hustle the prince into the courtyard just as Pythias re-emerges with a crust.

“Is that for me?”

Pythias instinctively draws up her veil. “Majesty.” Shock, pleasure.

“I followed you from court,” the boy says to me. “I wanted to see where you live.” He takes the bread from Pythias, bites, and stands there chewing, looking around.

“Tycho and I will escort you back to the palace.”

“No.” He swallows. “It’s too dark now. Not safe. You’ll have to send for my guard in the morning.”

“You’re staying the night?”

“Carolus said you wouldn’t mind.”

Pythias bows and withdraws into the house.

“I’m starving.” He puts his head back, as I did, and stares up into the sky. “I love snow.”

“They’ll be looking for you. I’ll send Tycho to the palace for your escort.”

“But I want to stay here. You can’t refuse me hospitality.”

“Your parents will worry.”

“They never worry when I spend time with Hephaestion,” the boy says. “His family’s very loyal.”

“That’s where they think you are? With Hephaestion?”

Our cock screams once; Pythias is working fast.

“Stop worrying. I’m perfectly safe here, and so are you. I haven