The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  I know not how much time passed, only that the stench of sweat and blood hadn’t dissipated when I heard a sound sweeter than the clearest honey.

  “I’ve bested them again, haven’t I?”

  His voice was a mere croak, better suited to a crone’s mouth than to a golden lion, but it might have been mistaken for the trill of Apollo’s lyre to my ears.

  “You’re an utter fool,” I said, trying to snarl even as my voice cracked with relief. “Scaling the wall first and giving the Mallians the whole of you for target practice. The next time you want to die, I’ll save everyone the trouble and kill you myself.”

  “A god cannot be killed by mere men,” Alexander said.

  I recalled Alexander’s head wound at Granicus, his thigh wound at Issus, and a stone strike to his head just before Sogdian Rock. It was a wonder the man was still alive at all.

  Still, he needed to learn a lesson, right here and right now.

  I wormed my thumb beneath the bandages at Alexander’s chest so hard that he cried out, then shoved my thumb under his nose.

  “This is the blood of men,” I said. “Not golden ichor. And this,” I added, revealing the spear shank stained with his blood, “is the arrow that almost killed you.”

  He stared at it a moment, then grimaced. “We should add it to my collection,” he whispered, closing his eyes and brushing the scar on my arm. “For I still have the arrow that gave you this.”

  “You almost died,” I whispered.

  He grimaced. “That explains why I feel less than godly. Where is Bagoas? And Roxana?”

  “I sent them away,” I said. “You’ll have to make do with me.”

  His eyes fluttered and his lips curled up in the hint of a smile. “Good,” he whispered. “It shall be just like old times.”

  And just like old times, I kissed him, although his lips were pale and dry instead of wine-spiced and demanding, then maneuvered myself around him until we fit together on the cot, provided neither of us moved too suddenly and toppled the other onto the ground. And I sang to him then, songs of our boyhood that would usher him to sleep and away from the dark allure of Hades and the Fields of Elysium.

  There would be time for death later. For now, Alexander would live.

  And that was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 18

  325 BCE

  Cassope, Greece

  Thessalonike

  The myths all claimed that the gods came down to earth, but I’d never seen one. Unless you counted Olympias in her sapphire peplos with its golden snake shoulder clasps and her hair studded with tiny seed pearls—and she possessed an incinerating glare worse than any goddess’ as she stalked into the potter’s yard. I eyed the kiln, but it was too cramped for me to crawl inside and escape Olympias’ inevitable rage.

  Her eyes flicked disdainfully over me, at my hair in a straw-colored braid, at the dog hair that covered my dark chiton, and at my hands streaked with the rose madder dye I’d used to paint a clay soldier for Adea. “You look like a shepherd’s daughter,” she said.

  My skin tingled at the insult even as the heat of Olympias’ temper receded into her typical icy demeanor. I’d brought eleven-year-old Adea to the local potter this morning, and been bored to tears until I’d watched her gasp with pleasure as the ruddy-faced potter released clay figurines from the terra-cotta molds. The dolls held no allure for me, but the visit was a reward for having sparred with Adea at Cynnane’s behest. I’d felt no small rush of pride at the suggestion, as if I possessed skills worthy of teaching Cynnane’s daughter. Now Adea clutched a finished soldier figurine. A quick nod from me sent her scuttling inside.

  Olympias snapped her fingers and a waiting slave came forward with a letter. “This just arrived from Alexander,” she said, jutting her chin toward the rumpled scroll. “You should read it, for it concerns your future.”

  I hesitated, for we’d received so much bad news of late, first word of Alexander’s Mallian injury and then the loss of many of his soldiers to disease and famine on the terrible retreat back to Persia. We’d had rumors of Alexander’s growing Persian affectations and how he had kissed his eunuch Bagoas after a dancing contest in view of the entire army, then how my brother had demanded his Persian and Greek friends perform the proskynesis, bowing and kissing the tips of their fingers as if in reverence to a god.

  I scanned past the salutations written in Alexander’s pristine hand to the bottom of the missive. My brother described feasting for seven days on a platform drawn by eight horses through Gedrosia, the parade of purple-canopied chariots that followed behind to carry the harpists and singers, and the dancing girls celebrating the rites of Dionysus. His men wore no helmets and held no weapons during that week, he claimed, and were instead crowned with flowered garlands while they raised golden goblets to their own glory.

  My throat grew tight as I read about his lack of precautions. Alexander believed no harm could come to him, but that was pure hubris, the same that had slain our father.

  “He commends you for your swift action against Antipater,” I said, shaking my head as I came to the end. “And asks that you do whatever necessary to ensure Antipater’s power remains in check.” I folded up the letter and placed it in her open palm.

  “Alexander is in need of fresh men after his disastrous journey from India,” she said, gazing toward the east, where, somewhere, her son sought still more lands to conquer. “Antipater and his son will rendezvous with him in Persia with extra Macedonian forces. With any luck, Antipater will die on the way and save us all the trouble of killing him.”

  “It seems a thorough plan,” I said drily, bending over and pushing kindling into the kiln’s fire chamber. If Antipater weren’t such a bore, I might have felt pity for him for earning Olympias’ ire.

  “It is indeed a thorough plan,” Olympias said. “Most especially the bit where I send you to accompany him.”

  I slammed the kiln door shut so fast I almost caught my thumb in it. “What? You’d send me to Persia?”

  To Persepolis with its famed Gate of Nations, the Hundred Columns Palace, and the Tomb of Kings. To Babylon with its Ishtar Gate and Hanging Gardens.

  To a war to be fought, and battles to be won.

  “If that must be my punishment,” I said calmly, although it was difficult to speak as my thudding heart had leapt to my throat in excitement.

  Olympias’ lips thinned to a tight line. “You shall accompany Antipater and prove your renewed loyalty by reporting on his movements and those of his son.”

  “When do I leave?”

  “The ship is already waiting in the harbor.”

  And just like that, Olympias would excise me from her life, like a surgeon slicing out gangrenous flesh. Would that I could do the same to her.

  “I’d take Cynnane with me. And Arrhidaeus.”

  Cynnane for protection, although I could handle a sword almost as well as she now that I’d seen twenty summers, and Arrhidaeus so he wasn’t left unprotected from Olympias. After all, save for Barsine’s illegitimate son, Arrhidaeus was our family’s only male heir should anything happen to Alexander. I couldn’t leave my brother in Olympias’ clutches.

  “Take them,” she said. “I have no need of them here.”

  “Thank you,” I said, forcing a smile. “I shall do my best to ensure Alexander’s continued success.”

  She kissed my forehead and I had to force myself not to cringe. “See that you do.”

  • • •

  “An army is no place for a menagerie,” Antipater said, scowling, as I approached the entourage of soldiers and baggage waiting to escort us the remainder of the way to Babylon. Once again, I’d almost died from a sour stomach on the ship from Cassope to Pella and was thankful that the rest of the journey would take place overland by horse and cart.

  I’d give at least a year of my life to never
see the ocean again, five years to never step foot on the heaving deck of a cursed ship.

  Olympias had commanded that I attend her Dionysian sacrifices for Alexander, and I could still smell the copper-coin reek of blood on my hands and feel writhing snakes on my skin. Now the road to Babylon and beyond stretched before us and my fingers itched to crack my whip overhead and race the whole way there. Antipater, on the other hand, looked ill as he gestured toward my baggage cart, stuffed with every sort of basket and cage imaginable. “Is all this really necessary?”

  “I couldn’t leave my darlings behind,” I said as a slave lifted Aristomache’s basket onto the top of the load. It might be well worth the punishment to hide my lovely little snake in Antipater’s cot one night, just to hear him squeal like a child.

  “Thessalonike is the protector of all creatures lost and broken,” Cassander said to his father, in a tone that might have been mocking or serious.

  “And apparently half the animals on earth as well,” Antipater muttered as Cynnane mounted her stallion beside me. Pan, my shaggy goat, let out a loud baa as her lead rope was tied to the wagon. She’d given birth to a pair of kids while left behind in Pella and would provide fresh milk during our overland trek.

  I’d never thought of myself as a protector of broken creatures, but Arrhidaeus sat in the cart with my newest companion nestled in a cage on his lap: an owl named Athena whose broken wing I’d healed. An excellent hunter, she was a sort of replacement for my orange cat, who had died of old age while we were in Cassope. Adea clambered into the cart next to Arrhidaeus and giggled as she fed the owl a strip of dried oxhide. Cynnane had insisted that her daughter accompany us in order to continue her military training, but that was a ruse to keep Adea away from Olympias.

  And hidden in a secret compartment at the bottom of the owl cage was a letter Olympias had given me that morning, along with the command that it was for Alexander’s eyes only.

  We’d see about that.

  We left behind Pella’s fields of barley and grapes, passing men harvesting olives and sun-browned women braiding together green garlic stalks to dry. We rode until twilight spread across the sky like a black tide. The pace we kept was comfortable to accommodate the baggage train, but despite my training with Cynnane, my legs trembled as I dismounted late that night, ignoring Cassander’s proffered hand.

  “You’re still with us, I see,” Antipater sniffed, as if he hoped that I might beg him to let us return to Pella instead of continuing on to Persia. Or that perhaps I’d expired in my saddle.

  I gave him a honeyed smile, sweeping past both men with a flounce of road dust that made Antipater sneeze. “Dearest Antipater,” I said, “I’d ride halfway to Hades before I returned home to Pella.”

  Little did I know but that threat would one day come true, in ways I could scarcely fathom in that moment.

  I stroked the top of Athena’s feathered head through the bars of her cage and huddled into my himation before a roaring fire, shivering in the night cold and finally daring to pull loose Olympias’ letter while everyone else collected their portions of teeth-snapping barley groats, chewy dried dates, and hard white cheese. Several of the common soldiers ate a gray gruel straight out of their helmets, even dunking black strips of dried tunny into the mess.

  My ears perked up at the rumble of men’s arguing voices, and I thought I detected Cassander’s low tone and his father’s barked commands, but I cared little for their family squabbles. Let them suffocate each other in their sleep and save us all the trouble.

  With the fire shielding me from the rest of the royal entourage, I made as if warming my hands, holding Olympias’ parchment close enough to the flames that the seal grew soft. The warmed paper gave off the scent of Olympias’ musk perfume, as if she were scowling over my shoulder. I eased the wax away and read quickly, swallowing my disappointment.

  Dearest Alexander,

  It is with no small measure of relief that I deliver your siblings to you so that I might better attend to your interests in Macedon and Epirus during your prolonged absence. Antipater has answered your convenient summons to Babylon, in order to serve in whatever capacity you see fit. In the meantime you may rest assured that I shall govern the lands of your birth as you would rule them.

  Your dutiful and loving mother,

  Olympias of Epirus and Macedon

  I resisted the urge to crumple the paper and throw it into the fire. There was nothing damning or inflammatory in Olympias’ words, nothing I hadn’t already heard from her lips countless times.

  So annoyed was I that I didn’t hear the heavy footsteps approaching until a shadow fell over me.

  “I have one of those too,” Arrhidaeus said. His paws were full of gray barley crackers with precarious towers of dried dates balanced atop them.

  I rolled up the paper and hid it within the folds of my himation. “Have what?” I asked.

  “A letter,” he said. He jumped as the wood popped and hissed, then dropped all his dates and crackers as he clamped both hands over his mouth. “Olympias made me promise not to tell,” he said, his gesture likely in response to both the spilled secret and the upset food. “She told me bad things would happen if I told.”

  “Nothing bad will happen,” I assured him as I knelt to pick up his treats, but my curiosity was piqued. Olympias could scarcely stand to be in the same room as my simpleminded brother, yet now she recruited him to deliver messages to Alexander?

  “We could read it,” I said slowly. “Together.”

  Arrhidaeus made a face as he bit into a hardened barley groat, then snapped the cracker in half as he shook his head, his shaggy brown curls swinging over his forehead. “Silly Nike. I can’t read.”

  I shrugged. “I can read it to you. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  He shook his head gravely. “I won’t tell.”

  The tickle of guilt I felt for making Arrhidaeus into my accomplice dissipated as soon as I began reading.

  Arrhidaeus’ letter was much more profitable than the one I carried.

  Dearest Alexander,

  As your mother, I shall speak plainly. It is dangerous for a man whose rule spans both edges of the world to remain without an heir. It is time for you to set aside your childhood toy, your eunuchs, and your mistresses. You must take more wives and set about the business of creating many sons to secure our family’s legacy.

  In addition, there is the matter of your siblings. As Philip’s only other surviving son, the simpleton Arrhidaeus must remain unmarried and childless. You should have no qualms with Cynnane’s refusal to remarry as that deprives the would-be Amazon of the opportunity to rally some new husband’s forces against you.

  Thus far, Antipater thinks to match together his son Cassander and your troublesome sister Thessalonike, but that hope shall die when you make Antipater heel like the dog he is. I send Thessalonike to you and bid you to use her marriage as an alliance, perhaps with one of your generals: Hephaestion, Ptolemy, or the like. Regardless, you must use the pieces at hand to your best benefit.

  Your loving and dutiful mother,

  Olympias

  I stared at the parchment and then flung it into the fire.

  “Nike, no!” Arrhidaeus yelled, then gaped as I burst out with empty laughter.

  “It was a silly letter, Arrhidaeus,” I said to him, watching it twist and burn as I threaded my fingers through his and gave them a squeeze. “One that would have upset Alexander.”

  Olympias thought I should marry Ptolemy or Hephaestion? I wasn’t averse to the idea of a husband, but I was averse to Olympias dictating who that husband should be. I sobered at the thought of marrying Ptolemy with his hair that stank of goose fat and his even oilier personality. But then I wondered what it would be like to have Hephaestion feed me olives at our wedding ceremony and take me to our marriage bed. . . . I colored then, thankful that no one could he
ar my thoughts.

  Arrhidaeus was still looking at me anxiously, so I smiled and laid my head on his shoulder. He might be simple, Cynnane a misfit, and me . . . I didn’t even know what I was, like an extra shell in a child’s game of ostrakinda that no one quite knew what to do with. Despite our different mothers, we were Alexander’s family, come what might. I hugged Arrhidaeus’ arm, but my hand clasped the dagger at my waist when a man cleared his throat behind us.

  “Put your knife away. It’s only me,” Cassander said. The man was almost Arrhidaeus’ size, but he made less noise than a snake on sand even as my owl hooted at him. “I only wish to speak to you, if you have a moment and Arrhidaeus doesn’t mind, that is.”

  “I don’t mind,” Arrhidaeus said, scrambling to his feet before I could stop him. “I’ll play animals with Adea before bed.”

  And just like that, my brother was gone, leaving me without the shield his presence would have provided.

  Antipater’s son tapped on Athena’s cage and sat next to her on the trampled grass. “I fed your overgrown sparrow some jerky earlier,” he said. “But I’d wager she’d prefer fresh mice to military rations.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Try to get on my good side.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you had one,” he said, tossing blades of grass into the fire as if trying to divine some message from their smoke.

  “I’m overweary from the journey,” I said, feigning a yawn and lifting Athena’s cage so fast that it jostled her from her perch. She hooted in indignation and rustled her tail feathers. “I think I’ll retire for the night.”

  “You’re a miserable liar,” Cassander said, glancing up as I stood. “Even a man as blind as Homer could see that traveling agrees with you. Or perhaps you’re simply happy to be free from Olympias with the promise of the campaigns still to come.”