The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  A crowd of Companions and satraps, slaves, and soldiers had gathered outside Alexander’s apartments, but it was Cynnane who beckoned me.

  “My brother is dead,” she said. She shed no tears, but her gaze held steady where her daughter, Adea, stood across the way with Arrhidaeus, their heads bent together. I doubted whether either of them felt deep pangs of grief at Alexander’s passing. Adea was too young to truly know her famous uncle, and the gift of Arrhidaeus’ simpleness would protect him in the days to come from fully feeling the knives of grief.

  I envied him that.

  “Alexander died alone in the early hours of the morning,” Cynnane said. “His body was already cold when fresh sentries came to relieve the night guards,” she added, meeting my gaze for only the briefest moment. “Thessalonike sits with him, but I must stay here,” she said, jutting her chin toward Adea and Arrhidaeus even as her hand tightened on the hilt of her sword.

  I realized then why she’d taken up such a post, for as Alexander’s nearest surviving relative, Arrhidaeus stood to gain an empire this day or become the target of someone who sought to succeed Alexander. “I’m sure my sister would be glad of your company,” Cynnane added.

  “Of course.” I squeezed her arm and slipped past the guards. Alexander’s chambers were filled with people, many still dressed in their night-robes and without their curled beards and eye paint. I pushed through the spectators to where Thessalonike sat vigil next to her brother. She might have been Alexander’s twin, an Amazon warrior with a lion’s mane of blond hair tamed into a braid. Antipater bent and placed a polished gold stater bearing the likeness of Bucephalus in Alexander’s mouth to pay Charon, the ferryman who transported the dead across the river Styx, almost as if the regent had kept the coin ready for this very moment. His son Cassander stood apace, his gaze drawn to Thessalonike like iron filings to magnetite.

  Antipater cleared his throat. “The great Alexander has left us as he journeys to the Fields of Elysium. The task of administering his empire now falls to us, his faithful subjects.”

  “To us?” Ptolemy shouted from across the room. “Or to you?”

  And thus, the war for Alexander’s throne began.

  Had Hephaestion lived, he might have tempered this fight as he had so often done, or perhaps, with the army’s support, he’d have seized Alexander’s many crowns for himself, not because he wished to rule but merely out of duty to his dead friend.

  Tears clawed at the back of my throat as they so often did when I thought of Hephaestion, but I blinked them back, staring at the ceiling until they cleared.

  Without Hephaestion, anyone might claim the vast empire, especially while Alexander’s heirs had yet to be born.

  The babe growing in Stateira’s womb was still a secret, but my sister and Parysatis were widows now, as was Roxana, although the former Queen of Queens was nowhere to be seen in the tumult of Alexander’s chambers.

  In a world turned upside down, Roxana’s absence made no sense, for the Bitch of Balkh had barked and growled like a guard dog at anyone who’d dared to approach Alexander for the past eleven days. Why had she abandoned him at the moment of his death, unless she thought to protect herself and her unborn son by escaping the turmoil of the succession?

  I wanted nothing more than to leave the crowded apartment full of men’s shouts, reminding me as it did of another death chamber still fresh in my memory. Roxana’s lingering spikenard perfume and the encroaching odor of death threatened to choke me, but I paused to touch Thessalonike’s shoulder. “I’ll be with Stateira,” I murmured in her ear. “You’re welcome to join us if you’d prefer some peace and quiet.”

  She gave a sad smile. “It’s difficult to say good-bye to Alexander, much less think, with all these vultures hanging about.”

  “Order them to leave,” I said. “They’ll obey if you roar loud enough. After all, you’re Alexander’s sister.”

  I’d scarcely turned my back when Thessalonike’s strong voice echoed off the stone walls, so that even the painted flowers overhead seemed to tremble. “Get out, all of you! Alexander’s shade doesn’t wish to listen to your arguing, and neither do I!”

  I smiled to myself and hurried down the corridors to Stateira’s sprawling apartments. At least I knew that Thessalonike would survive her grief.

  And yet, I knew not how Stateira would handle Alexander’s passing, whether this would lay her even lower than her illness and pregnancy had already done. We were two sisters who became brides on the same day, now two widows before the year was out.

  We were all we had left.

  Stateira’s chambers were located in the farthest wing of the palace so she might benefit from the quiet rarely afforded those near the main courtyard, but I’d gone only halfway before I was met by a harried Bagoas, moving at twice his normal, controlled gait.

  “Greetings, Princess Drypetis,” he said to me, every word enunciated with crisp vowels despite his heaving chest. “Is it true? Is Alexander dead?”

  “He is, claimed by a fever while he slept.”

  Bagoas’ entire face contorted with panic and fear. “Then we must hurry.”

  I shivered suddenly, despite the morning’s warmth. “What do you mean?”

  “A messenger came before dawn,” he said, his voice cracking. “He ordered me to wake Stateira and give her this letter from Alexander.”

  I nearly ripped the letter he retrieved from his hands. It was written in the Script of Nails, but in a hand that I didn’t recognize.

  My dearest Stateira,

  I have rallied against Hades and long to gaze upon your sweet face and the swell of my son in your belly. I await your presence in the gardens.

  Your king and husband,

  Alexander

  The letter was counterfeit, certainly not written by Alexander as he lay cold and dead just hallways from here, never having rallied this morning. My pulse thrummed and an acrid taste filled my mouth as I read and reread the first sentence.

  The swell of my son in your belly.

  Only Alexander, myself, Bagoas, and perhaps a few other trusted attendants knew of Stateira’s pregnancy. And perhaps one other soul . . .

  “Does Roxana know how to write?” I asked Bagoas, dreading the answer.

  He shook his head. “She can scarcely use her fingers to count, but Parizad was tutored in the Script of Nails.” A terrible understanding dawned in his eyes and his long fingers fluttered to his mouth. “And I’ve been intercepting herbs that Roxana bribed Stateira’s attendants to sneak into her food. I didn’t wish to worry Stateira in her condition—”

  I crumpled the letter in my fist and raced for the gardens even as Bagoas sank to his knees, his cries at my back begging my forgiveness. It was the last I ever saw of him, for without Alexander’s protection, he fled rather than face Mithra’s justice.

  My legs moved faster than they ever had before as I shoved past attendants in the corridors and finally burst into the famed Hanging Gardens. I darted within the same grove of trees where Hephaestion had once confronted me about fomenting rebellions against Alexander, and screamed Stateira’s name into air filled with the scent of damp earth and running river water, fragrant cedar bark and lush greenery.

  But Stateira didn’t answer.

  Instead, another woman called my name.

  “Drypetis?”

  I turned toward the entrance to see Thessalonike, the last person I expected, as she should have been still mourning her brother.

  “Bagoas came running for me,” she said. “He said you needed help, something about Roxana and Stateira?”

  “They’re not here,” I said. “I don’t know where they are, but we need to find them, and fast—” My words and the beats of my thudding heart were interrupted by a woman’s scream.

  “Stateira!” I shouted, and sprinted into the corridor toward my sister’s terrifi
ed voice, tearing around the corner to a tiny tiled courtyard shaded with potted cypress trees. In its corner was a wide well with an inlaid wooden cover, the source of fresh water for the palace’s bathing pavilions.

  Standing at its edge were Roxana and Parizad.

  Beads of perspiration glistened at Parizad’s temples and his robe was stained with a dark flower of what might have been scarlet were it not for the shadow of the cypress that fell upon him.

  “Where is Stateira?” I demanded, hearing Thessalonike unsheathe her sword behind me.

  We’d startled Roxana and her expression snagged between fear and fury, her glorious hair loose down her back and her swollen belly covered with orange silk embroidered with florid golden stars.

  “It’s done,” Roxana said, her eyes wide as a wild grin erupted across her face. She was breathing hard as she wiped her hands down the front of her robe, leaving two smears of wetness.

  “We must go, Roxana,” Parizad said, clutching her wrist and pulling her toward the entrance.

  But I blocked their path.

  “I won’t ask again,” I said, my voice ringing out across the courtyard. “Where is my sister?”

  My skin prickled at Roxana’s hollow laugh, her brown eyes emptier than that terrible sound. “I’m afraid Stateira is rather indisposed at the moment.”

  And then her eyes darted toward the well.

  And I knew.

  I screamed and scrambled for the well even as Roxana and Parizad darted for the exit behind me. Thessalonike lunged after them, but I had eyes only for the well. The ground was slick with splashed water, but beyond the puddles, spatters of scarlet decorated the dry tiles like tiny rubies. I tore the wooden cover open and threw it aside.

  And then I screamed.

  Below the water’s surface billowed one cloud of purple silk and another of pale yellow. Two women floated atop the other, their mouths and eyes half-open as if they were drifting off to sleep, the water around them pink with flags of crimson still seeping from the wounds to their necks.

  Stateira. And Parysatis.

  Their names in my throat were like the burning embers of a fire, and I screamed them over and over as I scrambled to pull their waterlogged bodies from the well. It took all my strength to heave them onto the tiles with violent splashes. Parysatis’ limbs had already gone cold, but Stateira . . .

  My beautiful sister might have been only napping, her body still warm with life. I felt for her pulse, but the blood in her veins had stopped save the graceful crimson rivulets that leaked in a steady stream down the gaping open wound at her throat. My poor sister, terrified of water since our brother’s death, had been stabbed and then drowned in the very waters she feared.

  It was the nightmare from my childhood all over again, watching as our brother was pulled from the Euphrates, his lips blue and his chest unmoving.

  I wanted to die a thousand deaths as I tugged Stateira’s body into my lap, hugging her in a fierce embrace as if I might trap her soul with me where it belonged. I rocked her like an infant and crooned into her wet hair, which still smelled of roses, begging her to stay with me.

  The clash of weapons and a scream of pain overwhelmed the roar in my ears. I turned to see Thessalonike parry hard with Parizad at the edge of the courtyard, his sword coming down to slash the soft skin of her arm. She howled with fury and stumbled back as blood streamed from the wound. Parizad raised his sword for the deathblow, but Thessalonike feinted to the side, her sword arcing low to slice into his unprotected ribs. Her next thrust buried her sword into his belly so hard that the blade emerged out his back, slick with his blood and viscera. Parizad looked down, his gaze transfixed on the blade sheathed in his abdomen. Then he laughed, scarlet pouring in a torrent from his lips as his fingers fluttered at his bloody navel.

  “Oh, Roxana,” he said, his voice garbled with blood. “The things I’ve done for you . . .”

  He fell to his knees as Thessalonike yanked her sword from his body, kicking him so he fell back to gaze with blind eyes at the rags of blue sky above us.

  “Where’s Roxana?” I cried, but the Bitch of Balkh was gone, escaped while her brother had fought and died for her.

  “I’ll find her,” Thessalonike said, then tore from the courtyard in a storm of echoing footsteps. I sat by the well with my sister’s head in my lap, staring at the placid water that had poached the last breath from her lungs.

  I wished to keen then, to scream my grief and outrage at the gods and the world, but I was numb. I saw only death in Parysatis’ calm face with its ruined lip that matched the gash in Stateira’s neck and frail body, driftwood bones from her long illness beneath luminescent skin.

  I know not how long I sat there, only that Thessalonike finally reentered, her bloodied sword hanging in her hand. “Roxana’s disappeared,” she said, her chest heaving and covered with Parizad’s lifeblood. “I sent the guards to find her, but the palace is in chaos. She might have gone anywhere.”

  I pressed my sister’s cool hand to my cheek, then stifled a sob as I closed her eyes and folded her arms across her belly, feeling my heart shatter into a million irreparable pieces as I remembered the unborn babe inside her womb. I choked to think of all I’d lost this day—this life—and sent an errant prayer to Hephaestion’s shade to welcome them into the afterlife.

  “Roxana will suffer for this,” I whispered through my tears, making the promise to my sister, still beautiful even in death, and to poor, disfigured Parysatis. “I’ll hunt her to the ends of the earth, until the day I watch her drown in her own blood.”

  Only then could I join my family and finally rest.

  CHAPTER 26

  Babylon, Persia

  Thessalonike

  The gold-plated laurel diadem placed upon Arrhidaeus’ head was several sizes too small, akin to a child’s plaything as my older brother grinned broadly at the assembled satraps and generals. My heart nearly broke then, for all my life I’d tried to shield Arrhidaeus from the horrors of politics and war, and now he’d been plunged into the midst of them. I wondered what Alexander would think to know that our bighearted, slow-witted brother was now king of his entire empire, a territory that Arrhidaeus could scarcely locate on a map much less govern.

  Within hours of Alexander’s last breath, arguments had erupted over who would become the new basileus. Some argued in favor of crowning Roxana’s unborn son even as Barsine’s bastard son, Heracles, was passed over, leaving me to wonder whether his mother would thank or curse the gods for his tender age and muddy lineage. Drypetis and I had informed the generals of Roxana’s crimes, but Alexander’s first wife had fled, whisking away her precious unborn son and any chance of immediate justice. There were whispers that she was heading to her father in Paropamisadae, but surely there was no shortage of satraps and petty rulers who would happily harbor the mother of Alexander’s heir.

  She would be found, and her son too, but right now the world cared only for who would rule in Alexander’s place.

  It had taken until Apollo roused himself the next dawn and drove his sun chariot across the sky for the generals to broach a fragile compromise. As our father’s last surviving son and despite my many protests, Arrhidaeus was proclaimed king with the military’s backing, to rule alongside Roxana’s possible son. Still, no one expected either to be an active ruler; they were mere placeholders until the situation could be fully resolved. My hand on the hilt of my sword, I’d made the generals swear that Arrhidaeus would never come to harm, that when the time came, he would be gently set aside, not murdered. Until then, Antipater would serve as their regent.

  Alexander had died, but his men and his empire still lived.

  At least for now.

  Rumors abounded regarding Alexander’s final wishes, that he had ordered the siege in Arabia to continue, for the harbor in Babylon to be expanded to hold a thousand ships; that he’d whispered only
the strongest should succeed him.

  Worse still were the rumors about what had killed him, that Antipater and Cassander had poisoned his wine at the ill-fated banquet where a slave had sought to supplant him. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the two men murdering my brother in retribution for their removal from power and Cassander’s humiliation in Alexander’s throne room.

  And across the chamber from me, Cassander watched as Arrhidaeus fingered the diadem at his brow. Antipater stood behind him, whispering in his son’s ear as they bent their knees to their new basileus.

  Cassander’s gaze caught mine for a moment, and I gave him a stony glare, wishing I could see into his heart.

  “We must protect Arrhidaeus,” Cynnane said, dispelling my dark thoughts as satraps and generals filed from the throne room after our brother’s hasty coronation. “He’s an easy target for anyone seeking a taste of power: Antipater, Olympias, even Ptolemy.”

  Our brother’s empire would be better ruled by a pack of wolves than by a suspected poisoner, a cold-blooded murderer, or an ambitious and oiled courtier.

  “They swore an oath—,” I protested, but Cynnane waved her hand.

  “Oaths are meaningless in times like these.”

  I rubbed my temples, willing away the ache gathering there. “What do you propose?”

  “A wedding,” she answered, and I almost laughed until I realized she was serious. “Arrhidaeus will marry Adea. And then you and I shall help them rule.”

  I scoffed. “Have you been inhaling Apollo’s vapors?”

  “Arrhidaeus is too vulnerable without us to help him. Surely you must see that.”

  I did, as I’d seen every threat to my sweet brother stretching back to the noblemen’s sons who’d pelted him with insults and rocks. And I’d been my brother’s protector since I was old enough to wield a slingshot.

  I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous, especially for Arrhidaeus and Adea. Antipater thinks to seize power for himself, not hand it over to the likes of two women.”