Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  The moth was drawn toward the inferno, its flesh singing in anticipation, its wings spreading, its destiny certain.

  At last, it was there, its delicate membranes heating, its creamy wings catching fire. She could see it, illuminated in the last moment of its life.

  As it died, Cleopatra was carried through the net and high into the air on a sudden current.

  A metamorphosis. She spread her wings and flew, aiming herself at the comet.

  High in the stadium, the Psylli shouted a few furious words to the wind and signaled to the priestess. The wind changed direction, and Chrysate leaned forward as though this had been her plan all along. She held out her silver box. She had seen this moment in the scry months ago, though she had not known how it would come. She had waited for it. Auðr leaned forward as well, her eyes flashing. She would have only one chance. In her hands, she held the fates, trying to keep them controlled.

  “Bring her to me,” she told the Psylli, but the man ignored her.

  Behind Chrysate, the man sent by the senators moved for an instant, his hand outstretched to snatch the holding stone from Chrysate’s seat. In its place, he left a piece of green glass. He slipped back into the darkness, gone before the priestess saw him.

  The newborn moth fluttered, caught in a current, helpless, rising, rising, and the wind, angrily following the orders of Usem, carried her into the priestess’s clutches instead of the seiðkona’s.

  Chrysate’s face contorted as she fought against the power the fire had lit in the queen, using all her strength to close the silver box around the moth.

  Everyone in the arena watched light wings disappear into the dark, and Chrysate cried out with triumph.

  Beside the priestess, a small girl with long black hair cried out as well, a broken, despairing cry, and then, disregarding the emperor, disregarding the witch, disregarding the soldiers who tried to stop her, she ran out of the arena.

  She did not look back.

  24

  Nicolaus rose from his crouch high in the stands and looked down into the dust where the bloodstains were still bright and the bodies of bestiarii and animals lay. There was a tremendous blackened circle in the sand at the center of the arena, and the smell of fire still lingered in the air.

  How could he have been so foolish?

  On the ship, he had seen what she had done, but he had not seen her do it. He had not imagined what she was capable of, not truly. A lioness, he knew, but tonight, with every flicker of torchlight, she became a new thing, and all of them equally savage. With every move, she lacerated skin and wounded innocent victims, without conscience, without care. Nowhere in the stories, nowhere in the histories, was there anything comparable. And the sky. He knew that the Romans had called the goddess back to earth with those flames, as surely as he knew anything. Fire was Sekhmet’s family. She was a daughter of Ra.

  Now a lowly witch held her in a box.

  Did they not understand that a witch could not cage a goddess? Cleopatra would escape, and when she did, she would tear the world apart.

  Nicolaus knew that he should take to the sea and disappear beyond the horizon. He was a scholar and a fool, and she was a monster.

  Instead, he ran down the stairs, trying to force himself to do what needed to be done before he had time to regret it. He sprinted through the Circus Maximus and out the gates, saying a silent good-bye to any life he’d had as a historian. His fate had changed, and he must follow it.

  He climbed the Palatine Hill. He would go to the emperor.

  He’d lost hope of separating Cleopatra from Sekhmet. The queen he’d known was gone.

  Now, in spite of his conscience, in spite of his guilt, in spite of his fear, Nicolaus sought a weapon that would kill her.

  The senators convened in a secret chamber, quickly accessed from the Circus Maximus, all of them nearly frantic with excitement and shock.

  “There is opportunity in this!” cried the first senator. “Augustus employs powers far beyond his control. The emperor will say the fire in the sky was an omen for his success, but Cleopatra lives, and our emperor marched through Rome declaring her dead. He is a liar and a betrayer of the republic. He deals in the very things he decries.”

  “More than that. He battles against something Rome has never seen before. What is she?”

  “Nothing Rome should provoke.”

  “We have all seen her captured.”

  “Who can know what we saw? We saw the witch take her. We did not see her destroyed. Who knows who the witch truly serves? Perhaps the emperor seeks to turn Cleopatra to his purposes. To kill his enemies.”

  “We are the Senate,” scoffed one. “He would never dare.”

  “Do you feel so safe?” asked another.

  “The emperor is not as protected as he once was. It was only sorcery that saved him,” said another, still trembling from the proximity of the serpent, from the searing heat of the unnatural fire.

  “What emperor of Rome encircles himself with witches?” howled the eldest.

  “Even his uncle would never have dared traffic publicly in magic,” said the first, and the group nodded, certain of that. Even aside from all else they had seen that night, it was indisputable that Augustus had gone beyond his predecessors, beyond any code of Rome. Now it was a matter of using the emperor’s error to the advantage of the republic.

  “A rebellion.”

  “We are too old to rise up,” said the eldest, but even he, with his papery skin and quavering head, felt his hands drawing into fists and his young man’s ambition rising within him.

  “We will not be alone in this,” said the final senator, and the rest nodded. “Augustus is not a general. He does not command the military cleanly. They were Antony’s men once, and they may be ours now.”

  “And the common people?”

  Surely, the events of the night were a sign of disaster for Rome. Surely, they were omens that might be found in the Sibylline prophecies or if they could not, they might be written there, given the proper connections.

  The senators possessed such connections.

  Once a story was told, it would catch the ears of the people. This was a story that might change the course of Rome.

  The senators nodded at one another and walked off into the city, each in his own direction, each with his own instructions, each with his own set of weapons.

  These men fought not with swords but with sharpened tongues.

  They would wound Augustus with words, and then, when he was suitably damaged, they would kill him by more conventional means, just as his uncle had been killed.

  Outside the arena, the Psylli stood at the center of a whirlwind, arguing with his wife. Against her will, she had helped him force Cleopatra into Chrysate’s prison, and now the whirlwind filled with hailstones and rain.

  “The queen is captured,” Usem protested. “What they do with her is none of my concern. We were brought here to help them trap her, no other reason.”

  The wind twisted around him, and he suddenly felt his wrists bound by hurricane. Hailstones pelted his face. He shut his eyes, frustrated. The voice of the West Wind’s daughter whirled through the buildings and pressed into his ears.

  “I did not enslave her,” Usem said, his voice taut with fury. “Rome will be at peace through my efforts, and my tribe will be safe. Our children will be safe. They will never be at the mercy of Rome.”

  The wind tossed dust in the street.

  “She was already entwined with the Old One. If anyone has enslaved her, it is the goddess, and now they are both captives.”

  The wind whipped Usem into the air, lifting him until he could not breathe. On the horizon the fireball crouched, shining bright against the edge of the world.

  Usem stared at it, miserable. His wife was right. The queen might be captured, but Sekhmet lived. He was not finished. There were things he did not know, and he had not been paying enough attention.

  The wind about him faded, dropping him slowly to the ear
th. The air was still and heavy. The summer night settled around him, hot and thick, and above him, the stars gazed down, careless.

  Usem looked up, wishing to apologize, but his wife had gone.

  Gasping with exertion, Auðr made her way from the arena, surrounded by Agrippa’s men. As she went, she laid her distaff against the brow of each legionary, and they forgot what they had just seen. Knowledge increased chaos.

  Things had gone horribly wrong. Auðr had not been strong enough to keep the snake sorcerer from acting outside the fate she’d woven for him. He had been meant to deliver the queen to the seiðkona, and instead, Cleopatra had ended up in the hands of Chrysate.

  She’d lost control of several strands, and the chaos still showed, dark and twisting, larger than it had been. Nothing the seiðkona did seemed to change it.

  Auðr knew only that her own fate was tied to that of the queen. It all fit together in the tapestry, each thread twisting with others, each warp to each weft, and the knots and spaces were part of the whole.

  The queen still lived, Auðr knew, and the goddess was stronger than she had been. As the flames rose around Cleopatra, Auðr had felt the Old One feeding on the heat, on the violence.

  She was here now.

  Auðr touched the night air, sensing gleaming strands of fate strengthened by the bloodshed. Darkness was rising in Rome. Violence and destruction. Other old gods stirred, strengthened by this one.

  She could feel it happening, and she could not keep them down. She coughed, bent over, her lungs racked by exhaustion and powerlessness. Why did she still live if she had failed? Her eyes hazed over with smoke, and she choked, dropping to her knees and trying to draw a breath.

  The legionaries, stumbling over her, picked up her limp body and carried her up the hill and back to the Palatine, her distaff, even in her unconsciousness, clenched tightly to her chest.

  25

  Augustus sprinted up the hill, wincing at his bruised ribs and denying the men who were supposed to carry him. He reached his study, slammed the door behind him, and vomited out the window. What had happened? He had only a few minutes before Chrysate and Marcus Agrippa would arrive, bringing with them the box that contained Cleopatra.

  In those moments, he tried not to see what he had seen, the lioness springing at him, her talons stretching for his throat. The serpent, whose eyes had reflected his own small and fearful face. The queen, her naked form quivering in the dirt, looking up at him with grief and hatred in her stare. Her children torn from her embrace. And the way she had wailed Antony’s name.

  The fire had not killed her. He saw her body again in his mind’s eye, turning white hot in the net, surrounded by flame. She’d looked into his eyes just before she flew.

  He tried to convince himself that this ordeal was finished, but he did not believe it. The things that had happened tonight were only the beginning of the visions he’d seen in Alexandria.

  He drank the last of his vial of theriac, swallowing convulsively.

  He thought of Agrippa, flung by the snake, a weak man, a flawed defender of Rome. The terror Augustus had banished began to return as fury. Was he not the emperor? He’d nearly been killed, and everyone around him had watched it happen. He saw the box closing around Cleopatra, his witches succeeding where his warriors had failed.

  By the time Agrippa opened the door to the emperor’s study, favoring his fractured arm and grimacing with untreated pain, Augustus was in a righteous rage. Chrysate followed the general into the room. Her wrists were bound, though she still clutched the silver box.

  “Why is my defender being treated like a prisoner?” Augustus asked, his tone frigid.

  “She cannot be trusted,” Agrippa said. “She refuses to surrender Cleopatra, if Cleopatra is even inside that box.”

  “You saw her trapped in it,” Augustus seethed. “We all saw it. She is captured.”

  “Witches traffic in illusion,” said Agrippa, looking bitterly at the fiend as she curled herself into a chair, her bare legs delicate, her lips roses, her eyes an innocent, luminous green.

  “I am no witch,” Chrysate said. “I am a priestess. The thing from the North is a witch. She tried to take the queen from me. I suggest you watch yourself around her. She is a dark creature, and I serve the light.”

  “Hecate is not a goddess of light,” Agrippa muttered. His ribs ached, and the pain in his arm was severe. It would have to be splinted. “She stands at the gates of Hades.”

  “You know nothing about her,” Chrysate said serenely. “Nor about what she will be.”

  Agrippa reached out his good hand for the box and tried to wrest it from her grasp, but her fingers were like iron. His hand slipped from the box, and he caught hold of Chrysate’s arm. He recoiled, stunned by what he felt. Her skin was withered, though it looked smooth.

  He glanced quickly up at her face, seeing, if only for a moment, a crone, her teeth long and pointed, a single eye bulging from her face, staring at him.

  Then she was a beauty again, virginal and dewy-skinned, transformed back into the girl she had seemed a moment before.

  She smiled at him.

  “Who are you to say the Underworld may not become this one? Who are you to say the dead may not one day walk in the sun, and the living in darkness? Who are you to say that you will not, Marcus Agrippa?”

  The words, though spoken quietly, were a curse. Agrippa’s center twisted. He felt like screaming.

  “Do you fear the dark, Marcus Agrippa?” the girl asked. “Do you fear my mistress? Do you fear Cleopatra? Then you should leave us. I, and my kind, kept the emperor of Rome safe tonight. You and all your men failed.”

  Agrippa felt himself sagging, her words piercing him. She was not wrong.

  “What is the matter with you?” Augustus asked, looking sharply at him.

  Agrippa would not fail again. He must protect his emperor, even if it meant protecting him from things Augustus himself had invited in.

  He knew this witch before him would not go easily back to her cave in Thessaly now that she’d tasted power. And the queen of Egypt would certainly not stay imprisoned in that box, not if she could survive fire, not if she could transform at will. If the priestess found a way to control her, Agrippa did not want to imagine what would happen. Together, Cleopatra and Chrysate would be even more formidable than each was alone.

  “Do not trust her,” he managed, and then he saluted Augustus, mastered his fears for his friend, and left the room.

  His task was set. He must find a new weapon, one that could destroy the indestructible. And he must act outside his orders. Agrippa had always believed in his friend, had served at his side for most of his life, but now, Augustus was wrong. The consequences of his error would be severe. If Augustus trusted Chrysate, what else would he trust? What other foolish decisions might he make?

  The emperor watched his general depart, feeling the panic rising up again. He certainly could not leave his savior bound. He walked across the room, knelt before Chrysate, and untied her wrists.

  The girl was motionless, her skin glowing from within, her eyes greener than ever. Despite his vow to the contrary, Augustus felt himself desiring her again. She was ruthless. To keep her in his employ would bring him power. What might she do in a city built over the bones of so many dead? There were heroes buried in Rome, warriors of legendary prowess. And why stop with Rome? He might take Chrysate to the battlefields of Troy. He imagined it for a moment, himself commanding an army of the glorious dead. What need would he have for Marcus Agrippa, when he had Achilles?

  “What have you done with Antony?” he asked.

  “He sleeps inside this box,” she said. “And his wife sleeps beside him as long as I hold the stone that keeps him from descending to Hades. They are mine.”

  Chrysate could see by the way the emperor’s pulse throbbed against the thin skin of his temple that he was thrilled by her as much as he feared her.

  She held in her hands the box that contained the end of
the world. The monster within would be like a drop of aconite in a cistern, spreading through a city’s water and killing all who drank. Chrysate could feel Hecate’s strength growing. She’d be satisfied with this, and the goddess long ago sent to the Underworld would rise, feeding off Cleopatra and Sekhmet.

  Hecate would rise.

  For that, though, for the summoning spell, Chrysate needed Selene. Chrysate’s powers were dwindling even as she sat here in the emperor’s rooms. Despite the love spell she’d worked, the spell that should have made the girl her slave, Selene had run from her in the Circus Maximus, terrified, and who knew where she was now?

  Chrysate smiled. At least Selene was not a stupid child. This was good. Intelligent children were more valuable.

  She ran her fingers over Augustus’s cheek. He startled at her touch, but she saw his color change, his eyes dilate.

  “I saved you,” she told him. “Without me, your enemy would have escaped. Without me, you would be dead. I want the Egyptian girl. Cleopatra’s daughter.”

  She licked her lips, moistening them.

  Augustus looked at her, bleary, his brow furrowing.

  “Selene?” he asked.

  Chrysate placed the sealed silver box carefully on the table and untied the sash of her robe. She heard the sharp intake of Augustus’s breath. She wore nothing beneath, and the spell she’d worked had made her body into one that could easily make a thousand ships refuse to leave port. She was well aware of the emperor’s weaknesses.

  “Give her to me,” Chrysate whispered, leaning over Augustus, pressing him back onto the floor, letting him feel her softness, letting his hands linger on her skin. “Give her to me, and you will have everything you could desire.”

  The emperor’s hands came to life, grasping her thighs. She’d never met a man who could not be manipulated with the simplest tools. They were all the same. She prayed her illusion would hold long enough to accomplish what was necessary. The body beneath the spell was nothing the emperor would want to touch.