Queen of Kings

by Maria Dahvana Headley

  Augustus did not feel like reading.

  Augustus had even summoned his favorite poet Virgil from Campania, but the man failed to bring him rest. Nothing Virgil said, no matter the beauty of the words, could keep Augustus from thinking about Cleopatra. The poet seemed to have a special liking for poems about Hades these days, and the verses only made Augustus think of Antony. At last, the emperor had dismissed his poet.

  He poured theriac into his cup and drank. His original dosage of two drops had begun to seem ineffective, and now he poured it in equal proportion to his wine. He’d lost his appetite for food other than this. With each sip, he felt his twisting mind smoothed and relaxed.

  In her chambers, Chrysate lit the fire. With the queen captured, with Selene in her possession, Chrysate should have been at her most powerful. Augustus had given the girl to Chrysate three days after the battle at the Circus Maximus, transferring her sleeping chamber to the one beside the priestess and telling Selene that she was to be an apprentice. But the girl was resistant to her spells. After her flight from the Circus Maximus, Selene had spent two days hidden somewhere in Rome, finally sighted by a centurion and brought back to the emperor’s house. It should have been easy to woo her, but Selene looked at Chrysate with dark, suspicious eyes, and the priestess found herself scarcely able to accomplish the simplest things. She’d spent the past nights trying to communicate with Hecate, to no avail. Her goddess was still bound in the Underworld, and nothing Chrysate did brought clarity. The scry was blurry, everything bloody, but the future was invisible. Now that she had Cleopatra, she did not know what to do with her. There was no clear way to bind her, and the power contained within Cleopatra was inaccessible.

  Had she captured the queen for nothing? Was she no longer linked with the goddess? Was there anything inside the silver box at all, or had it all been an illusion? Had the Northern witch tricked her? Did she have Cleopatra? Or did the Psylli? The box rested in its silver room, and Chrysate left it there. At least if something went wrong, Cleopatra would be trapped in the second prison.

  Chrysate opened her hand and looked at the green holding stone. She shut her eyes, clenching her fist, and said the name of the man who was tied to the synochitus. She might send a message to Hecate through him. He could pass through Hades and find the goddess.

  Her call should have brought him, but it did not. Her powers had ebbed too far, she assumed. She could not find Antony, and she could not understand what had happened.

  She did not dare go to the silver room and open the box to find out. She needed Hecate if she was to use that power, and to summon Hecate, she needed royal blood.

  She needed Selene to submit. Every day, Chrysate grew weaker. The effort of keeping herself disguised was wearing on her. Finally, the deteriorating condition of her body had become too obvious. The spell she was about to perform was necessary. If she appeared as she truly was, Selene would never give herself over willingly, and that would invalidate all of Chrysate’s efforts.

  Beauty was a tremendous part of her currency, both with Augustus and with Selene. Who would trust her as she truly was?

  She scarcely trusted herself.

  Groaning with effort, she opened a small leather pouch and pulled from it a bronze cauldron large enough to hold a boar. She settled the cauldron atop the flame, and tugged open the pouches that held the supplies she’d brought from her cave. Crystalline sand from the beach at the end of the world, and a pinch of frost gathered from beneath the shine of a thousand-night moon. The feathered wings of a screech owl, struggling against her hands and threatening to fly from her even as she crushed them into the cauldron. Nectar from a star torn from the sky one night long ago, when Chrysate was only a girl. The powdered liver of a stag that had once been a prince. The entrails of a man who had once been a wolf. The eyeless head of a crow, which opened its dry black beak and spoke to her as she brought it from the bag.

  “Murderer,” it said.

  She no longer listened to it. She brought out a dry olive branch and stirred the mixture, letting it come to a boil over the fire, and as she stirred, the branch grew glossy green leaves. Chrysate let a bit of the contents of the cauldron boil over, and where they landed, the stone floor became grass, and flowers began to bloom.

  It was ready.

  She removed her gown, shuddering at the condition of her flesh. She was withered. She’d let it go much too long, trying to conserve her power, trying to contact Hecate, and it was a miracle Augustus had not noticed. Of course, his theriac had something to do with that. She had introduced a few ingredients to it. Nothing that would disable the man permanently. She did not seek to topple Rome. She sought to use Rome’s power, and for that, Rome needed to be stable. Selene, on the other hand, seemed to notice everything. Chrysate reassured herself. After this spell, Selene would not see through her. Things would be easier.

  She lifted her knife and, wincing, pressed the point into her flesh just below one ear. She drew it beneath her chin, and a long wound appeared across her throat. Blood ran in torrents from it, thick scarlet down the pale skin. The witch’s eyes rolled back, and she swayed before the cauldron, blood pooling at her feet.

  She wavered, and at last, she slumped forward, her body slipping over the lip of the cauldron as she fell.

  The boiling potion closed over her head.

  The surface of the cauldron bubbled for a time, dark and tarry, and beneath the liquid, nothing moved.

  7

  Cleopatra and Antony walked hand in hand toward the entrance to the city of the dead. Birch trees quavered around them, pale things veined with black, like the ivory bones of giants. They were followed by thousands of shades, all of them murmuring quietly, all of them hungering.

  Cleopatra shuddered as they drew closer to the doorway, possessed by a fear she had not imagined herself capable of feeling. She heard something, a faint echo of Sekhmet’s roar, calling her back from the Underworld. A glimmer of wrath and hunger, a god’s voice calling down to a place that did not worship her. She thought of her children left behind in the world above, and then, in spite of herself, she thought of Sekhmet, alone and starving.

  Cleopatra looked at Antony and found herself unable to speak. Every part of her insisted that, without her soul, she did not belong in any Underworld. She could scarcely keep from turning and running to the river, so great was the certainty that she should go back.

  At the same time, she knew that her own world did not want her. In that world, she was trapped in a silver box, and all around her, suddenly, she could feel its walls.

  “I shouldn’t be here,” she said. She could not say that she yearned for the thing she hated. She could not say that half her heart was Sekhmet’s, that she craved the darkness and fury she’d left on Earth. The vengeance and bloodshed, the destruction. How could she desire those things over this? Hades was still and cold, but she was free. How could she long for her enemies?

  “We are here together,” Antony said, holding her shoulders. “You are safe with me.”

  He was the only person who had ever seen her heart. Perhaps he was the only person she had ever trusted.

  Her husband pulled her into his arms, his hands touching her beneath the ragged covering. She stretched her fingers tentatively to run them over his chest. His wound was still there, and she could see it, though she could not feel it when she touched him. He lifted her off the ground to kiss her. She caught herself thinking that nothing had changed, that none of this had ever happened but had been merely a terrible dream.

  His lips were cold, but they were his, and she lost herself, forgetting everything, her body against his, her hands in his hair, the curls twisting in her fingers, the coarse silvering strands.

  “It is not over,” Antony told her, kissing her eyelids, and she had a flash of memory, back to Alexandria. She had said the same words to him. It felt like centuries ago. “We are not finished.”

  “You will go to the end with me?” she asked. “Whatever it is? Whatev
er we must do?”

  “I will not leave you,” he whispered. “I never have. How could I?” She kissed him, feeling his hands caressing her, feeling his arms supporting her. She could forget the echoing sounds she heard, calling her back to Rome. She could forget the pain and hunger for now.

  Antony was hers again, and as she lay back on the frozen grass, his lips on her throat, she knew that she would do anything to keep him safe. Snow fell above them, stars of ice disappearing as they touched the ground. The tree branches were heavy with frost, and her husband held her tightly as they made love, no space between them.

  He knew what she was, and he had chosen her.

  She felt the trees leaning in to cover them, and the grasses bending to offer them comfort.

  The wandering spirits of Hades drifted closer, drawn by the sudden warmth, a fire lit in the midst of a wintry world. Soon, Cleopatra and Antony were surrounded by hundreds of pale shades, their eyes large and wondering, stunned that there could be love in the midst of darkness, that there could be lovers entwined so, here in the heart of the land of the dead.

  At last, her sight dissolved into a thousand stars, her head falling back into the snow, her body liquid around him, and he moaned, moving faster now.

  “I love you,” he said, holding her face in his hands so that he could see her eyes.

  Neither of them were whole, Cleopatra knew, but they were together, and together they would petition the lord and lady of Hades.

  They would try to reclaim her soul.

  8

  A grippa marched down the corridor to the Northern witch’s chamber, the scrap of treasonous prophecy clutched in his hand.

  Nicolaus, it was signed. Agrippa had his spies, in the prisons and in the merchant houses, in the legions and even in the brothels; never mind that he himself never entered the places. One of Agrippa’s men had delivered him this shred of papyrus, claiming that the prisoner had been writing piles of the stuff.

  The Damascene had finally surfaced.

  He’d been arrested by Agrippa’s own men, the general discovered, on the night of the venatio, but in the chaos, no one had said anything about it.

  Agrippa had searched Rome for days, seeking something stronger to fight with, forging new swords and testing new poisons, and all the while, the man who had given Cleopatra her power waited in Rome’s own dungeon.

  Now Agrippa needed the assistance of the seiðkona. Auðr might not be a Roman, but she was powerful, and he knew that she was not on the same side as Chrysate. The Greek witch had told him so herself. That was enough for Agrippa at present.

  His men had carried Auðr up the hillside after the battle at the Circus Maximus, and since then, she had stayed in her rooms, coughing. The doctors had been unable to do anything for her. Agrippa prayed that she had enough strength and will to help him now. He was shocked when he saw her, as limp as a rag, slumped in her chair, her cheeks sunken and her lips pale blue.

  Still, she looked up at him with her fierce silver eyes and nodded. She picked up her distaff from the corner. It should have been taken from her after the battle, and Agrippa wondered how she had gained possession, why no one had reported it. She turned her distaff sideways, and looked at his arm, splinted since the battle. His ribs still pained him as well, bruised and cracked, no doubt, but nothing to be done about that. Agrippa had fought in many battles over the years, and pain followed him wherever he went.

  Auðr shook her head, touched his arm, and spun the distaff briefly, and with that, the pains in his arm and chest were gone. Agrippa tried not to be amazed, but he was. He thought for a moment about what it would be like to go into battle with such a sorceress, but then he snorted. This was not the Roman way, and he would not start being something else now.

  “Thank you,” he said, and that was all.

  With Auðr, the general descended to the prisons.

  Many of his former men cried his name as he passed, amazed that he still lived after what they’d seen in the arena. He walked past the traitors destined for execution, the soldiers who’d risen to Antony’s commands and fought against Agrippa’s men. All of them seemed to have lost their minds, in any case. At last, Agrippa discovered the Damascene huddled in the corner of his cell, trying to conceal himself in a shadow.

  “You are a servant to Cleopatra,” Agrippa said, and Nicolaus shook his head.

  “No longer.”

  “You smuggled her into the city. Do you know how to kill her?”

  Nicolaus was startled.

  “Is she escaped? Where is she? What has she done?”

  “She is still caged, or so the priestess swears,” said Agrippa. “But I have looked into her eyes. I know what she is capable of.”

  “I have only an idea of what to do,” Nicolaus said. “And that idea is a myth, not a certainty.”

  From behind Agrippa stepped Auðr. Nicolaus backed farther into the corner of his cell, convinced that she was a death bringer. He’d seen her working in the arena, her hands spinning, the light of her power surrounding her. His legs had grown spindly, and he doubted he could run when his cell door opened, but he planned to try.

  She peered through the bars at Nicolaus.

  Agrippa watched her fingers tracing complicated patterns in the air, winding them about that wooden spindle. He opened the door of Nicolaus’s cell for her to enter.

  Somehow, Nicolaus found that he could not move. Her eyes were strangely hypnotic. He felt himself tilting, and she put the flat of her palm against his forehead. Her brow furrowed, and she cocked her head as though listening.

  His mind sped unwillingly through the events of his life, from his childhood to the present, dwelling on Alexandria. He felt it happening but could not control it. He watched as he paged through scrolls, filling in gaps in the text with his own inventions. He watched as he taught the summoning spell to Cleopatra and as he discovered her in the hold of the ship, the child in her hands, the dead slaves at her feet. At last, she came to his revelation. The Hydra.

  He lurched backward, jerking himself away from her touch, but she’d seen enough to condemn him or save him. He did not know which she planned.

  She nodded to Agrippa, and the man took the scholar roughly by the shoulder and steered him from the cell, up endless passages and finally into the light of afternoon.

  “You will tell us what you know, myth or not,” Agrippa said. “You will be of use to Rome.”

  “There is a temple of Apollo, located at Krimissa,” Nicolaus stammered. “There we may find what we need to defeat an immortal.”

  “May?” asked Agrippa.

  “We will,” Nicolaus corrected. “Or so the legends say. What we need will be guarded, but it is there.”

  Auðr nodded, satisfied. This was her doing, or some of it. Something to destroy Sekhmet, something to wound her and make her retreat back to Egypt, and beyond. Back into the vault of the sky. She had not known what the historian knew, and now that she did, she directed all her strength to accomplishing it. If there was a weapon, it would be found. The fates of Agrippa and Nicolaus wrapped around her distaff, and she directed them to Krimissa.

  9

  Usem did not bother to ask for admission to Augustus’s chambers. The wind had returned to him for the first time in days, bringing an ice storm to his chamber, and news that the plague had traveled still farther, that Sekhmet gloried at the edge of the sky, and now his mind was filled with his own responsibilities. He threw open Augustus’s door and found the emperor dozing in his chair, clearly drunk. Augustus sat up, startled but not on guard, and Usem snorted with disgust. The man was no warrior. He was scarcely a man. Even as Usem looked at him, Augustus drank another draft of his potion, the theriac. The smell of the potion put the Psylli off. It smelled like witchcraft, like Chrysate’s influence.

  “There is a plague,” Usem said. “It has broken out in the villages surrounding Rome, from one end of the country to the other, even to Sicily.”

  “I have no help for plague,”
Augustus scoffed. “You are the sorcerer, not I, and to cure a plague requires magic. It must run its course and kill whom it will. The countryside has always been vulnerable.”

  “The plague is traveling,” said Usem. “It is not merely a summer sickness but something of the spirit world.”

  Augustus suddenly looked more alert. “Cleopatra?”

  “Cleopatra may be captured, but the Old One is not. My wife has seen the goddess, and she has seen the plague traveling around the world at Sekhmet’s pleasure. You might see it yourself if you went outdoors and looked at the sky. Have you not seen the flashes of light at the edge of the world? The stars streaking across the heavens? Surely, even the Romans do not think such things meaningless. I ask leave to go, assemble my people, and fight. The queen should have been destroyed when we captured her. Now it will be harder. I thought Rome shared my goals, but perhaps you do not. You keep the queen imprisoned, but the goddess she serves is more dangerous than she. What do you plan to do with her?”

  “That is not for you to know,” Augustus said, though he himself wondered the same thing. What was Chrysate doing in her room? “You will stay in Rome. If I travel, you will travel with me. You will be my general if Agrippa will not. You said that you would defend Rome, and I hold you to your word.”

  “I came here willingly,” Usem said. “Do not waste my goodwill.”

  “I am the emperor,” Augustus replied, his jaw tensing. “Do not waste my time.”

  “You waste your own time,” Usem said. “And there is little of it left. If we do not go out in force to fight this, it will be too late. You bought a warrior when you agreed to hire me. Let me do my work.”

  He stalked from the room, and Augustus sat for a moment, uncertain, frustrated, before he rose to his feet and went in search of Chrysate. At least, she could reassure him that Cleopatra was still safe in her box.

  The priestess’s room was empty, the windows open, and the bed unrumpled. Augustus felt suddenly as though he had lost months since the battle. The hearth was lit, and a large bronze cauldron was upon it. Augustus did not recall ever having seen it there before.