Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  “And he did,” I said, my voice choking. Ptolemy had come out of the desert of Gedrosia to find Thais and Chloe waiting for him.

  “Of course when he saw Chloe he knew. She had been a newborn when he left. She looked like any other baby. But when he saw her, he knew. And Alexander knew.”

  “That was a very dangerous thing to leave in his hands,” I said. To put in the hands of a childless king a brother with an army at his back and an heir…

  “He was Alexander. He said they had promised long ago to behave as brothers should, and there was nothing to change that. When our son was born a year later, we called him Lagos after Ptolemy's stepfather, something that ought to quell rumors.”

  “Bunny doesn't look like me,” Chloe said. “His eyes are brown.”

  “Yes, darling,” Thais said, pulling an errant leaf from Chloe's hair. “Both her brothers have brown eyes. But that would not stop them from being pawns in the succession.”

  I shivered. It all fell into place. Ptolemy had been desperate to get the children out of Babylon before someone noticed. Before Roxane noticed, and thought Chloe was Alexander's. Before Perdiccas noticed and weighed her worth. Before any one of a hundred other men jumped at an opportunity dropped in their lap. He had been desperate enough to entrust them to a plain soldier and a wild ride to Pelousion.

  And Bagoas. He knew. I had seen it in his hesitation at Pelousion, when I had scoffed at the rumors. Either the King had told him, or he had seen for himself. Hephaistion would have been told.

  I looked at Chloe, and she looked back with those amazing eyes. “She cannot be a hetaira,” I said.

  “Twice royal, twice on the wrong side of the blanket, she is too great a prize,” Thais said. “And Perdiccas…”

  “Father has to win. For me,” Chloe said, and her face was solemn.

  She was a child of the baggage train, not a highborn girl sheltered from every storm. She knew, though she was still a child, not a maiden. She knew what her fate might be.

  “Well then,” I said with a smile for her, “we will have to win. For you.”

  In a year or two she would be a woman. Already I could see it in the bones of her face, losing the roundness of childhood for her mother's beautiful cheekbones, in her slender hands that were already taking a woman's shape. No doubt beneath her loose chiton her body was changing in other ways as well. She was not so much younger than Eurydice, her father's bride.

  “We will win for you, Chloe,” I said.

  SATI HAD BEEN seventeen when I had come to Nysa. She was a young widow, and she was begging in the street. Her husband had died of a sickness in the spring, and her husband's family wanted no more of her when it was clear she was not with child, one more mouth to feed in a time of uncertainty and war. Her own parents were dead, and so she had no place to go.

  I was twenty-two. Not even a year had passed since Alexander married Roxane, and in that time we had crossed into India and fought a great battle. One of the princes of India, a king named Raja Ambhi, had sent emissaries to Alexander offering to do homage if the King would help him against his neighbor and ancient enemy, Raja Puru. Thus it was that Hephaistion and Perdiccas were sent ahead with their troops to arrange bridging of the mighty Indus River so that the main army might come up. I was in Hephaistion's Ile, and while cavalry had little to do in the business of building a bridge, we were necessary to maintain a screen lest the enemy come upon us unaware. And so I was sent to Nysa.

  We had good billets in the small fortress belonging to a kinsman of Ambhi, and our pay was up to date. We arrived just at the onset of the monsoons, and while the engineers swore and bickered and sweated trying to bridge the swollen river, the cavalry had an easy time of it.

  The first time I saw Sati she was begging by the gate, the water running in long rivulets down her face, her saffron scarf plastered to her hair. She sat among the old and the covered in scabs, and I could not help but look at her twice. How should someone so young be reduced to so little? I knew well enough, I supposed. There are always winners and losers. But I thought from the proud tilt of her head that she was not quite defeated.

  A few days later someone hired some prostitutes to come in after dinner, to dance and to sit on our couches the way hetairae would grace our betters. The girl who played had hard eyes, and the dancers had their professional smiles. Except Sati. Every movement spoke instead of acute embarrassment. I watched her, her great dark eyes the twin of mine, her hair like black silk down her back exactly like my mother's. We could have been brother and sister, so alike were we.

  I remembered how she had hated him, my father and my master, how she had come from his bed with marks in her lower lip where she had bitten down, how she had flinched when I put my little arms around her.

  When the girls stopped dancing and went to the couches I watched how Sati perched on the end of Glaukos’ couch, hesitantly, as though she were staying as far away as possible.

  Laughing, he took her by the arm and tried to draw her in for a kiss, and I saw the fear in her eyes before she yielded.

  I hardly knew what I did when I got to my feet and crossed between the couches, giving Glaukos a gentle shove. “This one's mine, my friend.”

  “Yours?” Glaukos looked up at me, a few drops of wine clinging to his beard. “You never want one.”

  “I want this one,” I said, and took her by the arm. I could feel her pulse hammering in her thin wrist.

  “Maybe you don't get her,” he said.

  “Maybe I do.”

  I was much soberer than he. Perhaps he considered that, or perhaps there was something in my eyes he didn't like. Glaukos sprawled back on the cushions. “Fine then. She's too skinny to be much good anyhow.”

  I hauled her out of the hall to the hoots of several of my men, into the little room upstairs that I rated as an officer. She said something half a dozen times, but I did not understand a word. I shut the door behind me, bending because of the low ceiling.

  A little light came in blue from behind the shutters closed against the rain. The room was barely the length of a man, taken up almost entirely with my tack and bed. She stood with the back of her knees against the bed, and I saw her swallow.

  “You will pay?” Sati said in halting Greek.

  “Yes,” I said, and opened my belt pouch, spilling a bunch of coins into her hand, much more than she was worth.

  She looked at them and swallowed, her chin lifting. She took off her veil and let it drop to the floor.

  “No,” I said, and my voice was rough. “No.”

  She knew enough Greek to understand that, and she frowned.

  “An old war wound,” I said. “It's left me impotent. I don't want my friends to know, so I pretend to go with women. Just pretend we did it and all will be well.”

  Her eyes flicked down my body and up again, and I saw she didn't believe it for a minute. “You are very strange,” she said.

  “So are you,” I said. “Why are you here with these women?”

  Sati shrugged. “What else is there? I can beg and die, or I can go with soldiers.” Her Greek was better than I had thought. She must have already picked up a lot in the time we had been here.

  “Can't you…” I cast about. “Cook and clean or something?”

  “Show me the man who wants me for cooking and cleaning,” she said, her eyes sharp. She held out her arms, and I could see the way her clothes draped over her slender body, a bit of pale skin showing at her waist between the drapes. “Show me one who wants only that.”

  “I could,” I said and swallowed. Perhaps I would want more, but I was not a beast even if every movement she made caused my blood to sing.

  “You could?” She did not believe me, but there was the ghost of a smile on her face. “Because of your old war wound?” She looked pointedly at the front of my chiton.

  “Yes,” I said. I took a step back, but my back was against the door. “Why are you doing this?”

  “When my husband died I had a
choice. To die or not. I choose not.” Her eyes were steady. I had thought she was like my mother, but I was wrong. She was far stronger.

  “Can't you remarry?”

  She put her head to the side, smiling, her dusky lips curved like a bow. “You do not know India. Who would marry me, a bad-luck bride who brought death to a strong young man two months from her wedding day? My husband was handsome and had never been ill, but he died before the moon was full twice.”

  “I would marry you,” I said. “I mean as a matter of rhetoric.”

  She didn't know the last word, but her smile grew a little, though her voice was brittle. “And you would die young, soldier. Your next battle would take you, and She would carry you down among the armless ones to wait in the shadows. I am poison.”

  “You are not,” I said, though a chill ran down my spine. “I do not fear your Lady of Shadows, though I give Her libation in blood often enough. She will have me when She wants me, and not a moment before.”

  I saw her eyes flicker, and I knew in that moment what she loved most in any human being. Courage. She would never want a man who was less than she, no more than I would.

  “Most men fear Her.”

  “I am not most men,” I said.

  “Perhaps you have been Her beloved in ages past,” Sati said contemplatively. “To have no fear of Death.”

  I came around and sat down on the end of the bed. “I do not fear Death's Queen, though I revere Her. Do you know the story?”

  “I know one story,” she said, “for I am named for her, Sati who was first wife to Lord Shiva. But I do not know if your story is the same.”

  “Once there was a maiden,” I said, “and her name was Kore. She was the daughter of earth and sky, and there was no more beautiful woman in the world.”

  And I told her the story, while the monsoon beat down against the windows, how the Lord of the Underworld in his pride and loneliness had seen her walking in the fields and had seized her in his black chariot, taking her underground to be his queen. Sati drew near and sat down too, her feet crossed beneath her knees, while I told her of Death's kingdom and the land of the shades, and of how her mother had sought her in vain while all the earth died.

  “She found her then, in the endless caverns beneath the earth, where starlight shines on fields of grain that neither grow nor wither, for there is no time there. And there, her mother made a bargain with Death. Half the year Kore would live beneath the earth as Death's Queen, and the other half of the year she would dwell above and walk under the sun, maiden once more. And that is how it came to pass.”

  There were no more sounds of revelry from the room below. It was late.

  “Now I will tell you,” Sati said, and her eyes sparkled. “I will tell you my story, how the Princess Parvati was born and how she sought and won Lord Shiva through many penances and through many travails on this earth, for she had been his bride before, and love is the thing that is without end. I will tell you my story, if you wish to know.”

  “I do,” I said. “I want to hear all the stories.”

  She told me stories while night turned toward morning, and I told her stories too. There were gods who took the shape of monkeys, and I told her of the Titans, and Prometheus who stole fire and gave it to men. She told me of Prince Rama and how he rescued his kidnapped wife though a hundred kings stood against him, and how she came with him in his exile to live with him in hardship in the wilderness. We fell asleep just before dawn on the faded cotton bedcover, her head against my shoulder and my hair across her face.

  We woke to morning and rain, and the sounds of the Ile about their business, the day's scouts turning out for their patrol below. I watched her wake and stiffen suddenly as she remembered where she was, saw the fear fade from her eyes when she saw me.

  “I was thinking,” I said as I sat up. My little room smelled like damp leather from the tack, and there was no breakfast.

  “Thinking what?” she asked, and a shadow crossed her eyes. In the night it had seemed simple to tell each other stories in the dark, her soft voice counterpoint to the rain.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Fortune favors the bold. “I was thinking that today is a good day for a wedding.”

  Sati blinked. “Whose wedding?”

  “Ours,” I said. “Will you marry me this morning?”

  BAGOAS

  I returned with Ptolemy to Memphis barely a month after his marriage to Eurydice. During my month in Alexandria I finally had the splints and bandages off my arm, and I was not pleased with what I found.

  My left hand was withered and shrunken, bulges of bone standing out at odd angles in my wrist, my first two fingers skeletal. I could move it, some. My wrist moved down a tiny bit, flexing forward a few degrees. I could close my fingers slightly. I could hold a piece of fruit cupped between fingers and thumb, but when I turned my hand over it dropped to the ground. My fingers didn't have the strength to even hold a lemon.

  I felt a rush of rage at the doctor, who was beaming. “There! See how nicely that's coming along?”

  “I can't use it,” I said, and my voice sounded strangled.

  “Not yet, of course,” he said. He took my hand in his and worked it gently, frowning only when he tried to rotate my wrist back and it would not move at all. “You've got to exercise it and let the muscles heal.”

  “How long?” I asked, staring at the twisted thing. “How much?”

  “Another half a year, if you take care of it and work at it. How much?” He stretched my last two fingers out where they had crabbed over. “I don't know yet. You'll have some use of it, certainly.”

  “Enough to ride? I have to be able to ride with this hand.” The reins had to lie across my palm, and I needed the full strength of fingers and wrist to manage a horse in battle. “I have to be able to use it. Will I?”

  He shook his head, though his eyes were direct. “I don't know,” he said.

  I closed my eyes. Which meant not. I knew that. With one good hand I could either use a sword or ride. Not both. What use is a cavalryman who cannot ride and fight at the same time?

  “We will have to see how it heals,” the doctor said. “A few more months of light duty while you exercise it and get the muscles back. We'll have to see.”

  AND SO I returned to Memphis with Ptolemy by barge in the growing season, when the Black Land was greening with the gifts of the river. My room was waiting for me, though when I first entered for a moment I thought I was in the wrong place. Green curtains stamped with leaf patterns in white hung at the windows, and the bed was piled high with green and white pillows. A pair of hanging lamps swung from a stand, and there was a thick carpet underfoot. It took a moment to remember that these were the things I had ordered to have made up just before I left. During the month I had been in Alexandria they must have been finished and delivered. It looked much, much more comfortable.

  I looked about with satisfaction and spread out my papers on the table. Reading was still laborious for me, though I was learning. I was told by all that it was much easier to master if it were begun in childhood, but while Ptolemy and Artashir had been at their respective lessons, I had served Tehwaz and learned other things.

  There was a quiet knock on the open door, and I turned around.

  Bagoas stood in the doorway, his dark hair in a long braid down his back, wearing a new tunic of white Egyptian linen over his Persian trousers, a compromise of dress, but one that suited him. Persians do not wear white often, except for religious services. I did not think it was forbidden, just not done. “I heard you were back.”

  “Hello, Bagoas,” I said, straightening up and smiling. “I just arrived. How have you been?”

  “Well,” he said, and smiled back. Perhaps it was the white tunic giving a glow to his face, but he did look well. “I wondered if you'd join me for dinner. I heard that Ptolemy is dining privately tonight and there is no banquet.”

  “Yes, no banquet until tomorrow,” I said. “Ptolem
y and I arrived too late in the day to invite all the local notables. So I am free tonight. I can come with you.”

  “Good,” he said, carefully not glancing at the scroll unrolled on the table.

  “It's not secret,” I said. “You can see if you like. Ptolemy wanted me to look at some of the draft language for the process of electing magistrates for the city of Alexandria.”

  “Electing magistrates?”

  I nodded. “As I'm sure you know, when Alexander founded cities he left them with constitutions for their governance. Alexandria's wasn't finished when he took the road east, and he never got back to it. So we are working on it now, filling in the holes and making it work now that we have a better idea of what the city will be.”

  Bagoas looked bemused. “Doesn't Ptolemy intend to rule his own city himself ?”

  “Well, yes,” I said, “but under the constitution. How can we have a city with men from a dozen lands living there and not have a constitution that lays out one law for everyone? If we didn't, and let each group do things according to their own laws, we should have a situation where the same crime was treated entirely differently depending on who did it! That wouldn't make sense, and it would breed unrest and resentment between peoples.”

  “But surely Ptolemy can appoint the magistrates, as Alexander always did. He would appoint just men, I think.”

  I shrugged. “Yes, he would. But will his grandson?”

  Bagoas spread his hands. “How can anyone know that?”

  “No one can,” I said. “That's the point.” I opened the scroll and laid it out. “We are building something here that must be stronger than any one man. We are building something that will endure for hundreds of years withstanding good kings and bad. It's always the same problem, isn't it? A good king comes to the throne and for a lifetime his kingdom prospers. But inevitably the crown passes to someone who isn't a good ruler, who is drunk and spoiled or simply not up to the job. And then the kingdom and all its people suffer. We are trying to build something that works regardless of who is king. If Ptolemy's grandson were an idiot, still the magistrates of Alexandria would fairly prosecute crime.” I pointed out the map I had spread beside the scroll. “See how the city is divided into twelve districts? Each district elects a magistrate, and the magistrates hear the prosecution of crimes in rotation, with three courts in session at once, one for civil matters like wills or property disputes, one for petty crimes, and one for grand crimes. When you come before a magistrate, it may be the magistrate from your district, or from any of the others, but each district is equally represented in the rotation of cases.”