The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  “I’m learning to fight,” I protested. “And surely no man would be tempted to risk Alexander’s wrath.”

  “Your brother is far away,” Antipater said. “And you invite all sorts of trouble with your degenerate ways.”

  “Do you expect Alexander to protect you after you are kidnapped, raped, and married against your will?” Olympias asked.

  I had no answer for that.

  Olympias only sighed. “Provided that you do not become negligent in your devotions to Dionysus, Cynnane will move into the palace to provide you with entertainment,” she said. “Effective tomorrow.”

  My heart gave a gleeful somersault to know that I’d be able to train every day. Of course, I doubted how elated Cynnane would be to receive Olympias’ royal command, which was likely already arriving at her gates. I suspected she’d take her wrath out on me; I’d be lucky if I could walk in the days and weeks to come.

  I thought I’d won the day, escaped punishment, and received a double boon in Olympias’ approval of my training and Cynnane’s relocation, at least until Olympias’ next words crashed over me like a basin of creek water.

  “It seems that Thessalonike can still benefit from the guidance of a learned tutor,” she said, already turning to leave the gardens. “Cassander, you will fulfill that role until I deem otherwise.”

  I expected him to sputter and protest, but I would soon learn that Cassander was far too stoic for such dramatics. His outburst about my training was out of character, and that was simply because I was the antithesis to the order he believed to be necessary and good in this world. Instead, we glared at each other while Antipater scurried after Olympias like a flea after a dog.

  I wondered how long it would take before one of us killed the other.

  CHAPTER 11

  Korkura, Persia

  Drypetis

  The Eternal Fires of Baba Gurgan made a furious blaze in the falling darkness, the naphtha lake gleaming like a great golden round shield laid flat on its side. Scattered about the gray plain were molten slivers of intermittent blazes, the forgotten tailings of some giant’s forge from days long since past. To the east, a hundred holes in the earth spewed smokeless fire and a daring soldier stabbed the ground, then yelped when a flame erupted to lick his helmet. There were rumbles of laughter from his companions, but the sound was tense, for the unnatural fire and stench of sulfur made these Greeks uneasy.

  “It’s said that King Nebuchadnezzar threw Jews into these fires for refusing to worship a golden statue of Ahura Mazda,” my grandmother said to Alexander, but my sister and I exchanged a sly glance. Every Persian old enough to listen to a traveling singer knew that the flames from this lake were sacred and untainted by humans. The shepherds from Korkura huddled close to these fires in winter to keep their flocks warm, and women often came here to pray that their husbands’ seed would flourish in their wombs and bring forth sons. The Father of Fires had smoldered to life with the old gods and would continue to burn long after our bones had turned to dust.

  From here, the Royal Road branched east toward Babylon, but dusk was falling and we would camp outside Korkura, the odor of Gaugamela’s dead still fresh in our nostrils and the visions of the battlefield carnage seared into our eyes.

  Not even the Father of Fires could cleanse us from the filth of that battle.

  It wasn’t dead men but the rearing elephants and fallen horses I saw each time I closed my eyes, their flanks ripped open by all manner of blades and glazed eyes covered with flies. Worse still was the memory of Hephaestion charging toward my family, the thundering hooves of his stallion grinding to dust our hopes of escape.

  A bright shard of pain burst from my swollen hand as Alexander excused himself and our cart lurched to a stop. My shoulder had healed, but a physician had proclaimed my hand broken, which was obvious to any fool. He’d splinted it with wood and linen bandages, and admonished me to pray that it wouldn’t set as a misshapen claw. I refused to dwell on his threat, but beseeched Ahura Mazda to spare my hand. I also suggested to the god of wisdom and light that if my hand was ruined, he might also turn Hephaestion’s wound putrid. That seemed only just.

  Exhausted from the day of travel, I stumbled from the chariot and collapsed onto a waiting crate next to my grandmother, watching with drooping eyelids while slaves worked to assemble our pavilion even as Alexander’s tent rose like a newly formed mountain.

  Our purple and white striped pavilion had become dull and battered in the two years we’d spent following Alexander’s army, but it was home and despite everything, Alexander still insisted that we be treated as royalty. I sometimes wondered if that was because he feared his own treatment should he one day be defeated and captured.

  A eunuch opened the wicker cage holding my four-eyed dog from Tyre—freshly washed and brushed now—and he barked happily, darting to take up his post at my feet. Despite the recent battle and the day’s dusty journey, a herald bearing Alexander’s lion insignia on his breastplate approached and bowed over his closed fist in the briefest acknowledgment as he addressed us.

  “Alexander, basileus of Macedon, Greece, and Persia, requests the presence of the mother and daughters of Darius at his tent, to better enjoy the evening meal and entertainment.”

  I opened my mouth to protest that Alexander wasn’t king of Persia while my father still lived, but Stateira’s hand put gentle pressure on my shoulder.

  “We would be honored to join the king,” my sister said, standing as stiff and beautiful as an ancient statue of the goddess Anahita. “It is kind of him to remember us.”

  I didn’t bother to suppress my groan as the herald ushered the three of us toward Alexander’s tent, my mutt following at my heels, even as I longed for a bath and bed. The path glowed with sputtering flames, a showy gift from the residents of Korkura, who wished to impress the victor of Gaugamela and thereby escape his irascible and unpredictable temper. Inside, a richly spangled baldachin hung overhead and my armpits dampened with sweat from the naphtha fires burning in a hundred different oil lamps, while Alexander crowed about how he’d tamed the wild oil.

  I ignored his boasts and joined Stateira and my grandmother to lean back on the silver-footed traveling couch farthest from Alexander, silently chanting the recipe of clay, egg whites, and goat hair to make sārooj, a special waterproof mortar, to keep from nodding off during the meal. Despite the Macedonians’ best attempts to provide a sumptuous, movable court, there were grains of sand embedded in the leather. I picked at them idly, wishing I could find a more comfortable position but failing miserably due to my infernal hand.

  “Where’s tonight’s singer?” asked Alexander, his voice carrying over the din of conversation. Barsine perched at the foot of Alexander’s couch while Hephaestion and the other Companions lounged nearby, laughing heaps of muscle and sinew that had somehow survived Gaugamela while so many others had died. “I would have a song,” Alexander commanded.

  A boy with a face as plain as milled flour entered the tent then, and I recognized him as a singer with a girl’s voice who often entertained Barsine, plucking the strings of his lyre with a curved talon stolen from a golden eagle. His elbows and knees jutted at odd angles, for he was just on the cusp of manhood, and he clutched his harp tightly, as if afraid he might drop it. He scurried to bow before Alexander, gazing up at the conqueror through his mop of hair with lovelorn eyes.

  “Perhaps a recitation of The Song of Ilium?” Barsine suggested, pouring Alexander a cup of unwatered amber wine, one so fresh and young that several pieces of half-fermented grape also splashed into the cup.

  I glanced about for a sarissa with which to gouge my ears, but sadly, there wasn’t one at hand. The sun might stop rising if Alexander didn’t get to compare himself to his idol, the shiftless, corpse-defiling demon Achilles.

  “No,” Alexander said. “I crave a new tale. One of Darius fleeing at Gaugamela.”


  I clenched my good fist, thinking to feign a headache. In the two years since our capture at Issus, I’d clung to the image of my father as a brave hero who would vanquish the Greeks from our lands, but that was harder to do now that my father had run from battle not once, but twice. We’d suffered listening to Alexander’s men sing songs and boast of my father’s cowardice, comparing him to a whipped dog and worse. I wasn’t in the mood to suffer through more of their insulting ditties.

  Yet before I could slump over the arm of my couch, Alexander beckoned in my direction. “And I would have our Persian guests come closer, so they may better hear our singer’s sweet voice.”

  With leaden feet, I followed as Stateira glided toward Alexander with a serene smile, her bronze hair sewn into perfect whorls that gleamed through her transparent veil. We arranged ourselves as the singer began to pluck his lyre and then sang in a watery voice, gaining strength with each verse.

  “He was King Darius, the King of Kings, the Lion of Lions, who turned tail and fled like a mewling house cat from the field of battle—”

  I stopped listening.

  Fortunately, Alexander wasn’t listening either, a fact that caused the singer to wring the strings of his lyre as if strangling an obstinate chicken.

  “We know that the naphtha will blaze,” Alexander announced to no one in particular. He leaned over a golden urn at his feet, filled to the brim with the black oil that fed the Eternal Fires. “But will it consume that which it burns?”

  Any half-wit knew that fire of any sort would eventually consume its fuel, be it wood, oil, or some other material. But I refused to give Alexander the satisfaction of an answer.

  Hephaestion swirled his wine in a fluted silver griffin goblet, looking far too robust and entirely without a hint of the blood poisoning I’d wished on him. He avoided looking at the fire, his gaze searching everywhere save the flames. “I’m looking forward to inspecting the Hanging Gardens once we reach Babylon,” he said as if he hadn’t heard Alexander, his finger rapping an agitated tattoo against the goblet. “I wonder if something similar could be constructed when we return to Macedon?”

  Alexander scowled briefly, then turned his attention to the rest of us. “Naphtha will be difficult to use as a weapon if one is unaware of its full properties.” His voice rose in combat against the singer’s wails. “What do you think, Drypetis?”

  He’d caught me off guard, yet I tried not to let it show, ruffling my dog’s ears instead. “I know little about the substance.”

  “You’re interested in engineering and weapons. Would naphtha consume its fuel or would it burn itself out, leaving all it touched unscathed, as it does with water and earth?”

  Alexander asked my opinion about a weapon he surely sought to use against my father and Persia, just as I’d once blurted out the suggestion of using iron chains in Tyre instead of rope. I’d thought it impossible to hate him any more than I already did, but my loathing of him expanded in that moment.

  “Olive oil scorches, sputters, and smokes,” I said, forcing myself not to snarl like a rabid wolf. “Why wouldn’t naphtha?”

  “But olive oil burns and sputters even on water,” Alexander said, taking a swill of wine. “Naphtha doesn’t. One is like a beautiful courtesan, the other a common bath slave.”

  Stateira flushed and became suddenly entranced with the weft of her sleeve. I gave Alexander a terse smile. “I defer to your vast knowledge of courtesans and bath slaves. But surely naphtha would burn anything weaker than water or earth, be it wood, fabric, or even flesh.”

  “What I really need,” Alexander said, “is a test. Preferably on someone still living.”

  I recoiled as the music fell suddenly silent.

  “Test your theory on your most humble follower,” the musician said, collapsing to his knees before Alexander. His lyre clattered to the ground with a discordant twang. “I offer myself to you, Alexander of Macedon, that you may determine what sort of weapon you have.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” my grandmother hissed, but I could see that was exactly what this empty-headed singer was.

  “His face is plain enough, so nothing shall be lost if your theory fails,” Hephaestion mused, finally glancing our way and raising his cup of wine to the singer. It was impossible to discern from his droll tone whether he spoke in jest.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said to both him and Alexander. “Light yourselves on fire if you wish to test your theory on a living, breathing man.”

  “Or perhaps you’d make a fitting test subject,” Alexander said. After traveling for so long with the Macedonian conqueror, I recognized the gleam in his eyes, a harbinger of his wildest mood.

  A pinch on my back, so hard I cried out.

  “My apologies for my granddaughter,” my grandmother said. “I fear she may have hit her head as well as her shoulder in Gaugamela.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear her. “And if not, I’ll do the job myself once we return to our tent.”

  “Enough of this,” Hephaestion said in a low tone to Alexander. “Fire is nothing to toy with, as you well know.”

  “This won’t be like that, Hephaestion,” Alexander muttered. “We’re no longer children.”

  I wondered what he meant, but Alexander studied me through slitted eyes. I shivered as he patted the singer’s shoulder. “Let it not be said that I lit Darius’ daughter afire, especially not when we have a willing and pleasant subject.”

  The boy fairly preened with the feeble compliment.

  Alexander gave a wild grin and tossed his cup of wine to the ground, spilling scarlet over the silken carpet as he grasped the golden urn of naphtha and poured it over the singer, then touched one of the hundred oil lamps to the boy’s dripping flesh.

  “Alexander, no!” Hephaestion lunged forward, but he was on the other side of the pavilion, too far to stop his madman lover.

  I leapt from my couch with a wild cry of fury, but I was too late.

  For a heartbeat I thought Alexander was right, that the Eternal Fire would do no harm. But in the span of a breath, the orange flame consumed the singer’s chest, then snaked down his arms and legs. He lifted a hand and for a moment that plain face lit with wonder as he marveled at the flames dancing from his fingers.

  Then he howled like a demon trapped forever in the flames of Duzakh.

  The sound seared itself onto my memory, more terrible than my mother’s death cries as she struggled to expel my brother from her womb. My dog howled and barked as the singer dropped to the ground, burning yellow and blue so only the dark silhouette of his writhing body could be seen through the flames.

  “The rug,” I cried, but everyone remained rooted with shock. I shoved the gaping Alexander from my path and tried to roll the burning boy into the precious silken carpet. The threads began to singe; he was flailing around too much to suffocate the fire. Strong arms shoved him down and held him immobile, and someone dumped a krater of wine atop the boy, finally quenching the flames.

  Steam and the terrible stench of singed flesh filled the room, like some sort of altar sacrifice.

  “Unroll him before his flesh adheres to the carpet,” my grandmother said. She was holding an empty terra-cotta krater, the last few drops of wine dripping from its mouth.

  The singer’s skin peeled away in great sheets on his chest and limbs, the edges tinged charcoal black. The boundary of the flames remained a livid shade of crimson, raised and mottled like a slab of unpolished marble. His breathing came in lurches, as if the fire had seared his lungs. Only his face and left hand were blessedly untouched.

  He still might pluck his lyre, then, but his right hand was ravaged and burned so deep that patches of red muscle showed through. Blisters were already beginning to form, pale pockets of shining skin filled with clear water. My stomach lurched and Stateira retched into the empty krater held by my grandmother. Barsine hurried her and
my still-barking dog out of the tent and into the night air, but I fell to my knees alongside my grandmother, her clear gray eyes already ascertaining the damage.

  “Can he be saved?” came a man’s voice.

  Alexander hovered above us. “Interesting,” he continued. “See that he receives the proper medical attention.”

  “You dim-witted, arrogant monster,” I said, gritting my teeth. I stumbled to my feet, but Hephaestion stepped between us. My grandmother grasped my bad hand to stop me, eliciting my yelp of fresh pain.

  “You have your answer,” Hephaestion said to Alexander. His fingers were singed and a fine sheen of perspiration covered his face. I realized then that it was he who had helped me with the rug. “Sisygambis is an accomplished healer and will need full access to your physician’s chest of herbs.”

  “Of course,” Alexander murmured, the mercurial gleam in his eyes finally banished as he snapped his fingers at a slave. “Fill a chest with the singer’s weight in gold, a fitting reward for such a noble sacrifice.” The slave nodded and scurried away, likely worried he’d be the next to be doused by naphtha.

  “Noble sacrifice?” I choked. “You tortured your own singer! What songs will they sing of you now?”

  I knew instantly that I had gone too far.

  “You shall not speak,” Alexander ordered in a frigid voice, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. “Lest I be required to send your father a letter detailing the death of his youngest daughter.”

  The singer moaned, but his pain-glazed eyes still stared up at Alexander. The foul Macedonian knelt and reached down as if to touch the boy, then recoiled. My rage burned hotter than the flames at the Father of Fires, for Alexander couldn’t even bring himself to touch the ruined creature he had created.

  “The basileus thanks you,” Hephaestion said to the singer, and I was shocked to see his eyes shining, but then he blinked and I thought perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. Alexander’s slave returned then with the medicine chest and my grandmother poured a draft of poppy milk and dribbled it into the singer’s mouth. It wasn’t long before the boy’s eyelids drooped, allowing him blessed peace.