“Put away the perfumes and oils,” my grandmother finally commanded, rising from her seat in one elegant motion. Her white hair was piled on her head in the same tight mass of stiff curls she’d likely worn when she’d married her brother, the former King of Kings, who now lay moldering in our royal mausoleum. “No one will care how soft our hands are if my son fails today, nor will they notice how we smell like roses if he returns flush with victory over the Macedonian hordes.”
I mouthed my thanks to her and was wiping my hands on my oil-stained sleeves when the echo of hundreds of men’s boots reached us and was joined by the snorting of horses outside. For better or worse, the battle must have ended and our army was now returning.
Stateira clutched my hand so tightly I thought my knuckles would shatter. I imagined my father riding triumphant in his golden chariot, Alexander’s head in one fist and a Macedonian sarissa in the other.
Or perhaps Alexander was entering the king’s huge pavilion, stealing its chests of gold and silver while his boots trod my father’s blood over the intricately woven carpets.
We stepped outside to watch our men return. But it wasn’t blue-robed and bearded Immortals with spears and long-shields approaching at a double march, but a whole host of beardless Macedonians armed with menacing swords and garish sun shields.
My mother screamed and dragged Stateira back into the tent, my grandmother following and issuing stern injunctions for them to remain calm.
I stood rooted where I was, watching as my father’s camp was overrun with orderly lines of Macedonians, their metal helmets gleaming like a thousand moons fallen to earth. I trembled to see our Persian attendants being rounded up: my father’s cooks, musicians, wine servers, and even his scent-makers. The camels that carted my father’s concubines brayed and snorted, commanders barked orders, and leering soldiers carried towering stacks of golden bowls and ewers. A yona takabara stood across the way, almost a head taller than the rest and holding the reins of a black monster of a horse wearing a gold-horned helmet. He directed soldiers as they carried crates of coins and unminted silver from my father’s tent, along with a royal purple carpet and a massive ibex-handled golden jar that contained purified oils to burn for Ahura Mazda. The authority the man wielded and his plumed helmet with its emblazoned lion told me whom I beheld. It could be only one man.
Alexander of Macedon.
I gasped and almost ducked back inside, but the warhorse shifted to reveal the terrible items behind him. My heart screamed with rage and pain, even as I stumbled forward.
It was the custom for an empty chariot drawn by white horses to accompany the King of Kings into battle, to invite Ahura Mazda to assist in leading the troops. Yet before me was both that chariot and another: my father’s, its gold plate still gleaming with the image of Ahura Mazda as an eagle beneath the smears of mud and blood. The yoke glittered with the full panoply of rainbow-hued gemstones and I could just make out the hammered image of my father on the side, dressed in his king’s cloak with his curled beard I’d loved to run my chubby fingers through as a child. Alongside the Chariot of the Sun lay my father’s golden shield and his purple robe, now rent to tatters and stained with something almost black.
My knees turned to water, but somehow I managed to remain standing even as the world shattered about me.
“No, no, no,” I moaned, stumbling toward all that remained of my father. Alexander swiveled and said something in heavily accented Greek, his eyebrow raised in question, but I only spat at his feet. “I curse you, Alexander of Macedon, for all you’ve done today!”
I expected a sword in my belly to end my trials, but instead I was greeted with a great boom of male laughter.
“Alexander?” the man repeated, touching a hand to his cuirass, smeared with another man’s blood. “No. I am merely Hephaestion,” he said in Aramaic, the language of my father’s empire.
I knew not which surprised me more: that I understood the man or that he was not Alexander. I’d expected Alexander’s catamite to be like my father’s favorite eunuch, Bagoas, small and pretty with skin like rose petals, but this beast was certainly no eunuch, unless he’d been gelded after reaching manhood.
I drew ragged breaths to try to calm myself. “Well then, Hephaestion, you may inform Alexander of Macedon that the widow and daughters of King Darius request an audience.” I barely managed to push the words around the stone in my throat. My eyes burned with unshed tears and I yearned to touch my father’s chariot and breathe in the scent of him from his purple robe, yet I dared not.
Hephaestion glanced behind me to my mother’s pavilion. “Darius’ widow?” he asked. Confusion marred his coarse features, then cleared. “But Darius still lives.”
“He lives?” I almost choked on the words. “But you’ve captured his chariot and shield. . . .”
“Yet not the wily king himself,” Hephaestion said, as another commander with a smaller-plumed helm joined him. “His troops scattered in the four directions and the King of Kings bolted east toward Babylon.”
My father had fled, meaning he’d left us behind to be captured by these yona takabara. My heart shriveled to something small and black at the thought, but surely my father had abandoned us only out of necessity, so he might fight another day.
And he would fight. Of that I had no doubt.
Hephaestion glanced back at my mother’s tent. “Tell your mistress I will send Alexander to speak with her after his physician finishes with him.”
Mistress? And then I almost laughed; this man thought me a slave to my own mother!
“His physician?” I asked. “Was he injured?”
“A sword thrust to the thigh, delivered by King Darius, in fact.”
I felt a surge of pride. “And might he still die from the wound?”
“It’s merely a scratch. He’s suffered far worse.”
“Pity,” I muttered. “Someone will need to finish the job one of these days.”
Hephaestion’s eyes narrowed. “You may tell Queen Stateira that she shall be treated gently by Macedon, although Alexander has no use for slaves with whips for tongues.”
I recoiled, then offered him my back and returned to my mother’s pavilion. The women inside set upon me before the tent flap fell shut.
“You little idiot! Where have you been?” my mother began, but my grandmother cut her off.
“What did you discover?” she asked, her face a mask of calm even as her nails dug into my palm.
“Father is still alive,” I said, my immense relief at his survival quashing the whisper of shame that he’d run from the battlefield. “And Alexander will come once he finishes plundering my father’s tent.” I refrained from mentioning the pile of his treasures outside or my father’s captured chariot.
Hephaestion was true to his word, and we didn’t wait long for both him and Alexander to arrive, the latter’s golden curls damp and smelling of fresh almond oil. He was shorter than I expected and more handsome, but I clenched my fists beneath the pleats of my robe to realize that this yona takabara had befouled my father’s great marble bathing basin, carried west by a sledge and six matched horses from our palace in Babylon. My mother gave a sharp inhalation and cursed under her breath, likely troubled not by Alexander’s bath but by the woman dressed in sapphire and gold on his arm, whom I recognized as Barsine, the widow of my father’s Greek commander, Memnon. Until recently Barsine had spent almost her full thirty years exiled in Greece, so she was considered more Greek than Persian. Her face was shaped like a heart, framed by lovely black hair, but even her beauty paled in comparison with my sister’s. I imagined Stateira on Alexander’s arm and winced.
“Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon,” my grandmother said. She too was drawn to the sheer size and power emanating from Alexander’s guard, and bowed as she addressed Hephaestion. I cleared my throat in an attempt to redirect her misguided attentions, but sh
e ignored me.
Hephaestion and Alexander exchanged grins, and it was Hephaestion who corrected my grandmother in fluent Aramaic. “This, Dowager Queen Sisygambis, is Alexander of Macedon.”
“My apologies for so egregious an error,” my grandmother said smoothly, but I thought I detected a rare flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.
“It is no mistake,” Alexander said, his smile wide. “Hephaestion and I have been of one mind since we were boys, two sides of the same coin. Thus, he too is Alexander.”
One mind and one flesh as well.
To my shock, he knelt on one knee, and I took satisfaction at his wince, although there was otherwise no sign of his leg wound. The rest of his retainers followed suit, but it was almost humorous to watch Hephaestion find his knees, akin to watching a poorly trained bear bow. “I am honored to be in the presence of King Darius’ women.”
“And we are honored by your attentions,” my grandmother answered. “This is Queen Stateira and her daughters, the princesses Stateira and Drypetis.”
Hephaestion stared at me as the men stood; then his lips curled into a grin. “Beware the younger one,” he whispered to Alexander, his lips almost grazing the man’s ear. “She hisses. And spits.”
I did my best to look down my long, albeit broken, nose at him, but that was difficult considering the top of my head scarcely grazed his shoulder.
Alexander inclined his head to us, which I supposed was another honor. “I shall guarantee your safety and comfort while I make arrangements with King Darius for your return.”
“You mean while you ransom us,” my mother stated, ignoring my grandmother’s pointed look.
Alexander shrugged. “So it is in the ways of war.”
“As dowager queen, I believe I may speak on my son’s behest,” my grandmother said. “Perhaps instead of a ransom, you may be amenable to a more enjoyable arrangement?” She stepped past Barsine, sniffing as if she were rancid meat, then nudged my sister forward. To her credit, Stateira stared straight ahead, although she’d gone pale as milk. “My eldest granddaughter, Stateira, is of a marriageable age. Marry her, become my son’s heir, and put all this foolish war business behind us.”
My sneaky, slippery grandmother. Alexander would become my father’s heir only if the babe in my mother’s belly was another girl or, worse, another stillborn. But, of course, Alexander didn’t yet know of my mother’s pregnancy.
Alexander blinked at her boldness, then chuckled. “I like you, Sisygambis of Persia. However, there is one flaw in your otherwise cunning logic.”
My grandmother smiled, and I realized with a start that she was enjoying this, the sly old she-cat. “And what might that be?”
“While I appreciate the women your empire has to offer”—Alexander tucked Barsine’s perfectly manicured hand over his—“I’ve already taken your family as captives. I could marry all of you if I wished it, but as King Darius discovered when he fled today, wives and children are a costly burden to any campaign.”
“You may be right,” my grandmother said. “But in time you may come to see the beauty of my offer.” The word beauty was pointed as her gaze flicked to my sister and prompted a genuine smile from Alexander.
“Perhaps,” he answered. “But in the meantime, we break camp and you shall accompany me.”
“We thank you for your generosity,” my grandmother said, bowing over her hands and stopping just short of kissing her fingertips in a proskynesis as if she were addressing a god or a king.
Alexander turned to my mother, her face pale and her hands clasped over the still-flat belly that would soon burgeon with my father’s secret heir. “I give you my word, Queen Stateira, that you and your daughters shall receive the same honors as my own mother and sisters.”
“Says the man who murdered the husband of his sister,” I muttered to myself. This man was our enemy and instead he was being feted like a powerful satrap.
Alexander ignored me to place his hands over my mother’s, then turned away with a sweep of his purple cape. “May the gods keep you,” he said to us, but I overheard him murmur in Hephaestion’s ear, “Sisygambis I like, but the Stateiras both quake like terrified rabbits. As for the younger daughter, I’ve seen fairer-faced horses.”
Hephaestion glanced back at us and for a moment I thought he might smile at me. Instead, his gaze fell on Stateira. “The elder daughter is lovelier than a nymph,” he said under his breath. “And you never know—the younger one may one day prove useful. Perhaps for target practice.”
Alexander’s laugh boomed as they stepped into the encroaching dusk, ushering in a gust of chilled autumn air that bespoke ripening pomegranates and hearth fires at night. I resisted the urge to shout obscenities at them, mostly because their foul soldiers’ mouths could probably outcurse me. Or their soldiers’ swords could stake my tongue as Alexander had threatened.
I sagged with relief as the tent flap fell closed, shutting out the commotion of the camp and leaving us with some semblance of protection.
Today my father had been branded a coward, but we would be safe as Alexander’s hostages.
At least for now.
CHAPTER 4
Balkh, Persia
Roxana
I gave a squeal of disgust at the gaily painted wagon of karakul as it lurched across the rutted road, its cargo of prized fetal lambskins tipping dangerously while mud from the recent rains splashed onto the hem of my favorite orange robe. “Foul-faced peasant,” I shouted at the driver, shaking my fist from the back of our rickety donkey cart. “Don’t you know who I am?”
“A trussed-up little shrew,” the man said, the black grime dug so deep into his lined face that he might have passed for a striped tiger. “With a mouth like a braying ass!”
“I hope you choke on a fish bone!”
“Roxana!” My father turned and snapped his whip overhead from his place at the front of our cart. “Well-bred daughters are silent as a corpse. Learn to keep your mouth shut, you little fool!”
Ha! I snorted silently. Well-bred I was not, certainly not with hunchbacked old Oxyartes of Balkh for a father. My mother had birthed my twin and me, then died and left us to fend for ourselves.
“This is the Mother of Cities?” I muttered under my breath, wrinkling my nose. I’d hoped for more from the birthplace of Zoroaster and its satrap Bessus, cousin to King Darius and the man next in line for the throne. I’d lived within a day’s ride of Balkh for all of my thirteen years but hadn’t left the crumbling walls of my father’s rural estate on the dusty outskirts of the city since I was six, both because we lacked the coin to purchase anything the city might offer and because my father feared that some accident might befall his lone daughter. It wasn’t tender feelings that made him worry for my safety, but instead the fact that my dusky eyes and the long black hair that fell past my hips were the most valuable pieces of property he possessed.
All my life my father had promised to make a return on his investment in me. Today was that day; hence my short temper and roiling stomach.
Now my ears rang with the braying of donkeys and my nose twitched from Balkh’s pungent stew of dung, sweat, and animals. A storm cloud of gnats shifted in the air and the half-dead donkey that pulled our cart shat with exuberance. “I didn’t realize the Jewel of the East smelled like our stables,” I muttered.
“What did you expect?” My twin brother lay sprawled on the cart’s floor and lifted a hand to shield his face from the autumn sun, peering at me through slitted eyes. Parizad was all elbows and knees, with a giant fleshy apple at his throat. “That Balkh’s rivers flowed with honey and the walls were made of amber?”
The truth was, I had expected more from the Mother of Cities, had dreamed of the comforts I would gain once I left my father’s crumbling walls. Bessus was second only to King Darius himself, the powerful satrap of all of Bactria and my father’s overlord. Where
were the jeweled towers and the marble palaces I’d been promised, the slaves to weave ribbons into my hair and the scent-makers to create exotic jasmine perfumes for me to swim in?
Instead, our father dismounted to lead our donkey and cart through the sea of scab-kneed urchins and scowling merchants that thronged the packed-dirt streets.
“Our hideous father is the most minor noble in all of Balkh,” Parizad said, sitting up and twisting his perfect lips into a lazy smile. “You should be honored that our great satrap would glance in our direction.”
“I know that,” I snapped. As if I could forget. For the past days, ever since our father had arranged my betrothal, he’d been scouting new horses for his perpetually empty stables and guzzling finer vintages of sweet raisin wine than had ever graced our table. Even the robe and the long-legged shalvar he wore today were new, a garish shade of yellow with blue embroidery that did little to hide his misshapen back or twisted foot, while my own robe was a piece of reworked silk from my mother’s marriage chest. The only things of any value on my father’s estates were his several metal foundries, as useful to me as pebbles in my slippers.
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