Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  If she returned to power, he’d be executed. And if the spell had worked, as he feared it had, who knew what had been unleashed?

  He would not stay in Alexandria to find out.

  11

  The fools thought they had sealed her away from any weapons, but the palace was her home, and she knew every stone. Behind them, beneath them, concealed everywhere were knives and relics. She slashed her palms and watched as the wounds opened and then closed again, bloodless, like gills on a fish. She couldn’t summon the goddess back, not the way she’d originally summoned her.

  All she could do was listen to the whispers that filled her mind.

  You are mine. You belong to me.

  “I must speak to Nicolaus,” she ordered Charmian. “You must find him and bring him to me.”

  Drink.

  “He’s left the city, lady,” the girl told her hours later. “No one can tell me where he’s gone.”

  I hunger.

  She’d executed the only other scholar who might have helped her, the Egyptian. She saw his face now, his admonitions against the summoning. Forbidden, he’d said. Forbidden.

  The bird quenched her thirst for only a few hours. With Charmian, she had to will herself not to act. Her teeth were razors in her mouth. She clasped her arms about her knees and shook, pressing her spine into the corner of her chamber.

  She was a murderess, if not yet, then soon.

  It was terrifying, this certainty that she teetered on the verge of losing control. Her entire life had been a study in calculated restraint. Reserve and then seduction. Seduction and then manipulation. The arts of a queen. Only Antony had been exempt. She’d loved him, and that had terrified her, too, at first. Now there was no one to hold her back from doing what the voice wanted her to do. There was no one who loved her enough to save her.

  “There’s an old temple near Thebes, where the lions come to drink,” Nicolaus had told her when they’d practiced the ritual. “The sanctuary of Sekhmet. This spell, the scroll says, comes from there.”

  The sanctuary was Cleopatra’s only hope, but she was here, a prisoner, and if she broke free? She found herself panicked at what would happen if she went among her people. Here, at least she could do no harm to her citizens, but every night, it was worse. Every night, she grew stronger.

  Cleopatra had loved her freedom, loved walking among her people, walking with Antony. They’d spent countless evenings that way, strolling the city, watching the swifts at play in the darkening sky, the queen uncrowned, her hair done in the style of a commoner, and Antony without his armor, his face smudged with dirt, an anonymous Roman soldier. Invisible, or so they fancied themselves. They joked and threw dice, sang in the bars, danced amid the people of Alexandria, with no guards, no gold, nothing but the two of them and the breath between them.

  Antony stopped in the midst of a dance one night. His face glowed with love for her, and she drew her cloak over their shoulders and led him from the festivities, out into the street and into an alley. They made love in the half dark, her back pressed against the wall, and she cried with sheer pleasure. This man, king of all she held dear.

  Nothing could take him from her, she’d thought then, feeling herself ecstatically in charge of her destiny, powerful, certain. So human, and so foolish.

  Now the freedom she’d taken for granted was gone. The palace walls contained her, and worse than that, the stranger lived inside her, thirsting, all claws and teeth, all hunger. She knew she’d lost things that could not be regained.

  The palace physician brought her prescriptions, ground herbs in his mortar, smeared honey on her skin. She could not tell him what was wrong. She held her breath and clenched her jaw as he came near.

  “I cannot eat,” she told him.

  “Drink, then,” he said, offering her pomegranate juice and muttering magic words.

  She thrilled momentarily at the color, the deep red, and then laughed bitterly.

  “I cannot drink,” she said, but she could cry. Tears ran from her eyes as hunger racked her body. The muscles in her back felt like blades. Her ribs grew prominent.

  Outside the palace, her conqueror held a special audience, forgiving the citizens of Alexandria for crimes committed against Rome during the war. Debtors were received in grace. He’d win her people while she still lived, convince them that it was better to be ruled by a Roman than by a queen. That was his goal.

  They chained her, six guards straining to keep her from breaking free, and Octavian visited her again, demanding an accounting of her treasures.

  What treasures had she left?

  “My children,” she said.

  He sighed. “And what would you have me do with your children?” he asked. “Shall they fend for themselves?”

  She had not expected him to negotiate. She stumbled, unprepared, then came upon a solution. “Send them to their brother, Caesarion. Only then will I tell you what I possess.”

  She’d kill him as soon as she knew her children had left the city. He’d come for this final accounting of Alexandria’s gold, and she would lean in, close, closer.

  He looked at her, his face smooth, his eyes untroubled.

  “I am a family man,” he said again. “I’ll consider it.”

  Could it be he meant to do as she asked?

  “But where would I send them to meet him?”

  She hesitated. Could she trust his honor?

  “Koptos,” she said at last. “We sent Caesarion to Koptos with his tutor, and then overland to the Red Sea, and Myos Hormos. He will not have arrived yet.”

  Octavian smiled. She could glean nothing of his thoughts. Nothing of his fears. Nothing of his plans. It made her uneasy.

  “Son of Caesar,” he murmured. “I should like to meet him. Does he take after his father?”

  “He does,” said Cleopatra. Her bones rattled, hollowed. Her skin burned where the chain wrapped about her wrists. Her mind felt blurred at the edges.

  “He is just as Caesar was,” she continued, impatient to reach agreement. “Anyone would see it. He is Caesar’s only son.”

  Octavian leaned back, his jaw tight. She saw his eyes darken.

  “I think not,” he snapped. “I am Caesar’s only son. Your children are mine. Your gold, your palaces, your books? Mine. You are no longer the ruler here. I heard that Antony gave you the libraries of Pergamon, which were not his to give.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes blazing.

  “Your own dear Caesar burned the library of Alexandria, and I was owed a replacement,” she retorted, still bitter, even in this dire state, about the loss of Alexandria’s treasure. Tens of thousands of scrolls set afire as Caesar sacked her city. Had the library not been burned, had the summoning scroll not been damaged, perhaps things would be different.

  “You’re owed nothing,” Octavian said quietly, enjoying himself, his calm returned. “You’re conquered. Do you not know what it means to surrender? You’ve surrendered to me, and all the world knows it. You are mine, Cleopatra. You belong to me.”

  Antony’s words. Antony’s rights.

  She screamed a wordless sound of rebellion, threw herself forward, straining against her bonds, and spat in Octavian’s simpering face. He stepped back in disgust, beckoning a servant to wash his skin.

  “I have what I need, in any case,” he said. “You’re not the only one who knows where your treasures hide.”

  Cleopatra’s secretary was summoned, and he searched through the accounting in front of them both, finding mistakes and crying them out, betraying her who had brought him from the countryside, taught him his trade, kept him from the squalor of the poor.

  The guards, the secretary, and Octavian retreated from her chamber, and that, at least, was a blessing. She was no longer cursed with the smell of their flesh. Eiras and Charmian tended her, dressing her hair and washing the wound on her throat, but she heard her maids murmuring outside the chamber door.

  “The queen is mad,” Eiras whispered to Charmia
n.

  Cleopatra reclined in her chamber, pretending to sleep, but her senses were acute. She could hear every word said in the palaces, from the kitchen depths to the upper towers. She could hear falcons landing on the roof, and men stamping their feet in the courtyard. She could hear rats wending their way through secret passages, and moths chewing at silks. She could hear bats fluttering from the dark, hidden corners, departing for a night of hunting. These women were fools to think she could not hear them talking.

  “We must show our allegiance to the emperor if we are to have any hope of outliving her,” Eiras continued, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  “He plans to kill her?” asked Charmian. There was a note of regret in her voice. Cleopatra had only to listen below the surface of the words, and everything the girl thought was revealed.

  The girl had worked her way from village to palace, and now it was all for nothing. She was planning to make off with some of the queen’s robes at least, some cloth of gold, and perhaps a piece of jewelry or two, and then offer herself to the emperor’s wife as a lady’s maid. Cleopatra saw a vision of Rome in the girl’s head: glorious spires, handsome men, ripe fruit. She believed she’d no longer be a slave. Cleopatra smiled bitterly at that. The girl was wrong.

  Cleopatra herself, a new-crowned queen, had been as good as a slave in Rome in the time she’d spent there as Julius Caesar’s mistress. The city assumed her to be whoring herself out to Caesar to buy his sponsorship of her throne. The senators treated her not as a queen but as a simple woman, good only for childbearing. When they met with her, they looked over her shoulder, directing their requests to Caesar. She’d concocted a fantasy that she controlled them, even with her hair unbound and her baby at her breast, but in Rome, only the vestal virgins had public power separated from the fruit of their wombs. Cleopatra was certainly not one of their kind. This girl would not be, either. A slave she was, and a slave she would remain.

  “The humiliation will kill her, if he does not. The men say that he plans to take her to Italy in three days, she and her children. I was told to pack their clothing. As though I were a common maid,” Eiras said.

  “What will they do in Rome?”

  “He’ll parade them in chains, and us with them.”

  “Might he not take her to wife?”

  “To wife? To bed, maybe, but never to wife.”

  The women laughed at this. They did not understand her love for Antony, nor her sorrow, Cleopatra could feel it now. What was love to them?

  “She’s poxed, likely,” said Charmian. “I heard her husband wooed the kitchen slaves.”

  Cleopatra hissed under her breath. They should fear her, they should tremble, and instead, they chirped outside her door. Hunger gnawed at her stomach.

  “I wouldn’t mind warming the emperor’s bed,” said Eiras, preening. “He’s a handsome man, even if he is a bit short. He looked at me. Did you notice?”

  Somehow the queen could see her, even though a door stood between them. Eiras’s hair draped like black silk over her smooth shoulders. In her own village, she’d been known for her beauty. Not so since she’d come to work for the queen. Here, she was forced to unstyle her hair, to simplify her dress so as not to compete. Here, she was no one. Cleopatra could smell her history, even through the stone. The smell was not unpleasant, and beneath it, there was heat, the girl’s life thrumming under her skin, like the juicy meat of a grape contained by only the thinnest of coverings.

  Cleopatra felt dizzy with starvation and strange knowledge. She could feel every corner of Alexandria, like a creature seeing through the dark to find its prey. She could see things, even as she sat caged in the palace.

  Evening fell, shadows dancing over the stones, and the streets of Alexandria lit up with the wildly spent gold of the Romans. Every brothel in the city was busy, and every doctor, too, quelling the poxes that were spreading from whores to soldiers and from soldiers to whores. Goats were being slaughtered for feasting, and bulls were bleeding into basins. A troupe of young men walked below the palace window, drunk and disarrayed, laughing raucously. The smell of blood and lust and anticipation rose through the open windows and filled the room.

  Cleopatra could wait no longer. She was caged, yes, but not chained, and suddenly, she felt she could break free. Octavian pretended for the sake of her people’s trust that she was in the palace as his guest, willingly surrendering her throne to him, and now she would take advantage of his error. There were few guards. She would be out.

  “Charmian,” she called, making her voice as sweet as mead. “Eiras. Tend your queen.”

  They’d fit her out for the night, she told herself, and she’d slip out and leave them. Her cloak dark and rough. Her hair braided as a commoner’s. She’d walk the streets, unseen. Inhale the evening air. That would be enough. Surely that would be enough.

  The girls entered the room. They were such pretty things, their throats long above their gowns, their cheeks ablaze, nervous that she’d heard them gossiping. She smiled, pretending she had not.

  “What will you have us do?” asked Eiras.

  The queen rose from her couch, her body suddenly vibrating.

  The girl came closer, a questioning look on her face.

  Her expression changed as she saw the queen’s eyes. They were wide and golden, dilated. They were not human.

  Cleopatra felt the maid’s shock and saw herself through the girl’s sight. She was a monster. An animal.

  She inhaled the girl’s fear as though it were her own. Her body filled with desire, a searing heat, a slashing hunger.

  She sprang.

  12

  Cleopatra’s teeth were on the girl’s throat just as the scream rose from it. The beautiful, unheard sound of Eiras’s voice rippled through the queen, absorbed into her body like music.

  Her blood was salty and bright, and the queen’s fingers spread on her servant’s skin, holding her smooth, bronze face. Seventeen, was she? A child. Eiras struggled in her grip, making muted, desperate sounds. Her life was strong. With each movement, Cleopatra drank the girl’s youth, her strength, her ambition. She drank her history, her dreams, her hopes, her jealousies and sorrows.

  “Help me,” the girl whispered, and Cleopatra felt the plea traveling from Eiras’s heart and all the way through her lips, the words like teetering boats on a swift-flowing river, before they coursed out of the girl’s body and into Cleopatra herself.

  Her skin warmed as the blood flowed into her lips, hot and pure, perfect. She heard herself moaning with pleasure, her body trembling as it fed, her very skin tightening, her hips shuddering. This was what she had needed. This was right.

  She drank Eiras’s desire for the strong soldiers marching into Alexandria, her blushing heat as she stood in the shadows, waiting for the one who would be her lover. She drank the girl’s simple hopes of babies, of a home, of a tree and a garden, of food to eat and pretty clothes to wear. She lapped at her throat, at the sweet liquid, the wine of the gods.

  Eiras’s body began to seize. Her hands grappled hopelessly, but Cleopatra scarcely noticed her. She was prey, an insect or bird, and Cleopatra was a cat, playing with her as she ate.

  The voice inside her sang for pleasure. Drink, it sang. Drink!

  She was the queen, and before that, a king’s daughter. Slaves had brought her trays of food, poured her wine, and formed her honeyed cakes.

  Slaves had always fed her.

  The spark of life began to leave the girl. Her flesh was still pliant, but she breathed no longer. Cleopatra, her hand on the slave’s breast, felt the girl’s heart stop beating and, her mouth on the slave’s throat, felt the blood slow, the pulsing end. She pulled her lips away and laid Eiras down. She gazed upon her for a moment.

  Her body hummed with it, a ferocious, glorious sound, a song, a call to reenter the world. A call to feed. Cleopatra looked down at the girl’s body and felt as though an army had revealed itself. She was not what she had been, a woman, a mortal. No.


  She was more.

  The dark voice inside her cried out in triumph.

  Her eyes turned to the corner, easily picking the other slave out of the shadows, where she hid, hands over her face, crying.

  “Please,” Charmian whispered. “Please don’t. I won’t tell anyone. I should never have said those things. Mark Antony was a good king. You are my queen.”

  Cleopatra heard her, but these things were unimportant. There was nothing but her body, still quivering with hunger, nothing but the blood that even now filled her, fed her. Her eyes swam with red. She could smell the girl’s terror radiating from her skin like perfume.

  Her thirst was boundless, deeper than the sea that surrounded her city, and she felt she could drink until the world was empty.

  She shook her head, trying to rid it of the image of blood-filled oceans, of corpses. Suddenly, her eyes opened wider. What was she doing?

  Why should you be denied? the voice inside her purred. Why should we hunger?

  “Don’t be afraid,” Cleopatra heard herself say, her voice soft, the blood soothing her throat. “I will not hurt you. I need you to do something for me.”

  “What would you have me do?” the girl asked, still crying, trying to regain her composure. She would run, she was thinking, as soon as Cleopatra turned her back. She’d go to the country and never leave it again. She thought of her mother and her younger sister. She thought of the riverbank and the old temples, suddenly dear to her.

  Cleopatra heard it all, and yet she could not find herself any longer. The voice inside her was too loud. It felt like her own heart speaking.

  “Dress me,” said Cleopatra. She’d go into the world as she had planned. The beautiful, throbbing world, the dark, the songs and dances and brothels. She would not go out a peasant, though.

  She would go out a queen, dressed in her finest gown, radiant, jeweled. She had not been a goddess in her previous life. She’d been a woman pretending to be divine, pretending to be immortal. She was a goddess now, and nothing could stop her. She felt the girl’s blood filling her, rushing through her, and the feeling was of pure, clean power.