The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  “Antipater can dine on dirt for all I care. He may have been Alexander’s regent, but he’s no king. The military supports Arrhidaeus and thus, he and Adea will wed with every one of Alexander’s soldiers at his side.”

  I frowned, feeling as if I were staring at a fresco with a gaping hole chiseled out of the center, unable to discern the final image. “And why would the military support such a match?”

  “Because the Macedonian veterans here have longed to return home since before Alexander marched to India, and Arrhidaeus will happily grant their request when we leave to accompany Alexander’s body to Macedon. The rest of our troops are Macedonians and Illyrians bred on tales of despotic Persian barbaroi who let long-legged vultures eat their dead. Any child born to Adea and Arrhidaeus will be fully Greek, not a half-blooded Persian, a heritage not even Roxana’s sprat can boast.”

  I marveled to see my sister’s fighting instincts transferred to politics. “I assume Antipater won’t be invited to the wedding?”

  She snorted. “Not if I can help it.”

  I grinned. “Have I ever told you what a genius you are?”

  My gruff Amazon of a sister reached out to ruffle my hair as if I were six years old again, the way I’d wanted her to do a thousand times when I was a child. “Thanks, little sister,” she said, making me beam still more at her. “I couldn’t ask for a better partner at my side.”

  And so it was that we left the palace with Arrhidaeus and Adea later that afternoon, bound for the main encampment of soldiers along the Euphrates’ banks. I’d invited Drypetis to join us, thinking she might benefit from time outside the palace, but she’d demurred, retreating into Babylon’s Tower of Silence to lay her sister and her cousin to rest. The entire city mourned for my brother and his slain queens; women had shorn their hair and men smeared their foreheads with ashes, and courtiers and slaves alike scratched their cheeks so they might cry tears of blood for Alexander, conqueror of the greatest empire on earth.

  For the first time in his life, Arrhidaeus was outfitted as a Macedonian soldier, a heroic cuirass depicting Macedon’s eight-pointed sun creating well-defined muscles over his soft belly, a too-tight helmet set in place of his laurel crown, and Alexander’s sun shield strapped to his forearm.

  “It pinches, Nike,” he whimpered to me, trying to shove his fingers beneath the brow of his helmet, but I only stood on tiptoes to kiss his nose, almost missing as our chariot lurched over a rock.

  “You can hold it instead of wearing it if you promise to stand still during the ceremony,” I said, patting his cheek. “Pretend that you’re a tall tree waiting for a bird to land on your head while all the soldiers march past you.”

  Arrhidaeus wrenched the helm from his head and grinned, his hair sticking out in all directions. “I like birds.”

  “And I, brother,” I said, smoothing his hair, “like you.”

  I recognized the cunning of Cynnane’s plan as soon as I espied the army, and easily identified the Illyrian helmets from her mother’s homeland at the forefront of the Macedonians. These were the troops freshly sent from Greece that would soon join the veterans of Alexander’s remaining army from the Indian campaign. Their commanders stood at attention before the sea of men, and my hand tightened into a fist to see Cassander positioned next to Alcetas, one of the Macedonian commanders.

  I trusted none of them.

  Arrhidaeus fidgeted while the men newly placed under his command made the customary march between two halves of a disemboweled dog, its stomach now twin caverns gaping with white rib bones and bloody sinews. I’d seen the same scene of purification played out after my father’s death before the army bent its knees to Alexander, and prayed to the four goddesses that this would be the last time I witnessed such a grim processional in my lifetime.

  “Men of Macedon and Greece,” Cynnane’s voice rang out. She too was dressed in full battle armor, her unadorned Illyrian helm and menacing silver-studded Macedonian boots marking her as an equal to all the men present. “Today you dedicate yourself to Arrhidaeus, son of Philip and brother of your beloved basileus, Alexander of Macedon.”

  At this, the Macedonians banged fists upon their shields in a gesture of respect and mourning. Even in death, Alexander demanded their love and affection.

  Cynnane gestured for young Adea to join her, and I hoped no one else could see the way her daughter’s hands trembled. Thirteen-year-old Adea too wore a leather cuirass and greaves, but being so slight, she looked like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s armor. “With your support, Arrhidaeus shall rule for many years,” Cynnane continued. “To that end, you are also here to see your new basileus wed his fair niece Adea, Philip’s granddaughter and Alexander’s niece, ensuring the peaceful continuation of Alexander’s empire for generations to come.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, broken by Illyrian stomping that shook the earth as if a thousand giants strode across the plains. Of course Cynnane’s countrymen would approve of such a match, setting a queen of their blood at Arrhidaeus’ side.

  I shrugged away my shock to see that the first officer to step forward and bend a knee was Cassander, prompting the rest of the men to fall into line behind him. Arrhidaeus began to mimic Cassander’s bow until I touched his elbow. “They bow to you,” I whispered as Cassander backed away and Alcetas, a second-rate general from Alexander’s Indian campaign, filed past Cynnane. “You can nod to them, but a basileus never bows.”

  I resumed my position as Alcetas stepped forward, his eyes downcast as befitted a general paying homage to his ruler. His sword remained sheathed at his hip as he genuflected to my brother.

  But he bowed too low, his hand darting for his boot and the weapon secreted there.

  Acting on instinct, I shoved Arrhidaeus behind me, drawing my sword to protect him with the same fluid motion. But I misjudged Alcetas, for he sought a different target from my brother.

  And in the days and years to come, I would never cease blaming myself for not guessing his murderous intent.

  Alcetas’ hidden dagger thrust up and to the right. The world slowed as I realized helplessly that the pale flesh of Cynnane’s throat was completely exposed.

  A warm spray of blood spattered my face and Adea screamed, one long ululating cry as her mother crumpled to the ground beside her in a burnished halo of wild hair and a heap of worthless armor. Alcetas lunged as if to slay Adea too, but this time I blocked his attack with a cry of rage and a wild parry that would have felled a smaller man.

  “Run!” I yelled to Adea, but she clung to Cynnane and continued screaming even as my panic-stricken brother tried to pull her away.

  Alcetas drew his sword and came at me hard then, but my fury was equal to his forceful assault and I deflected his every blow until our blades were clenched. My eyes bulged and the muscles of my arm screamed in protest as I tried to advance, intent on disarming him. I could see his death in my mind, how I would plunge my blade deep into his bowels, how he would drop his sword in horror just before my sword arched up to behead him.

  But even that wouldn’t bring back Cynnane.

  Perhaps he sensed my weakness, for his free hand darted under my sword arm to scoop the hilt of my weapon and twist my wrist, disarming me in one quick motion. My blade slipped from my sweat-slicked palm and fell to the earth with a dull thud. His foot to my groin sent me flying back, landing so hard that all the air was knocked from my lungs. I lay on the earth, deaf and blind from the pain, unable to move and panicking as I struggled to draw air into my lungs, waiting for the deathblow.

  And then my vision cleared and I stopped trying to breathe, for Cynnane lay scarcely an arm’s length from me, her glazed eyes staring into mine as blood poured from the gash at her throat.

  I had lost her. My idol, my protector, my sister, gone.

  Because I’d failed to protect her.

  My breath returned then in a stra
ngled choke and the world roared with sound again, and I wanted nothing more than for Alcetas to kill me. But I’d take the foul traitor with me.

  Through slitted eyes, I saw that a soldier had taken a position between Alcetas and me. Alcetas kept his sword pointed in my direction as he yelled to the men over the clamor of Adea’s screams.

  “Cynnane, the foul, conniving bitch from Illyria, sought to make a laughingstock of us by setting her daughter and herself above the regent and even your new basileus,” he shouted, waving his sword at Arrhidaeus, huddled on the ground next to Adea. “First a simpleton set above us, and now we’re to be ruled by two women? Alexander would curse us all the way from Elysium to know that we’ve allowed ourselves to be so cowed!”

  I didn’t care if he stabbed me and sent me to Hades, not so long as I could drag him to the river Styx with me. I struggled to my knees, my weapon lost, but prepared to fight with my bare hands, until the man between us spoke.

  “Killing Cynnane was the act of a traitor.” Cassander’s deep voice bellowed so that it was clear he addressed neither Alcetas nor me, but the thousands of soldiers gathered before us. “You men pledged yourselves to Arrhidaeus and now you’ve witnessed his sister slaughtered before your very eyes. I swear on the twelve Olympians that there shall be no more blood spilled here today.”

  But the sound of hundreds of swords being drawn filled the air and I looked up to see the Illyrians’ blades pointed in our direction, whether at Alcetas or the rest of us, I couldn’t tell.

  No one moved then, for not even the winds dared to breathe.

  “Take King Arrhidaeus to his palace,” Cassander commanded me as he hauled me to my feet. “Now.”

  Too late I realized that Cynnane had committed the same act of hubris as our father, shunning a contingent of personal guards who might have protected her today and leaving that critical job to someone woefully unprepared for any real battle.

  Me.

  Somehow, I pulled Adea from her mother’s body and dragged Arrhidaeus with us. I shoved them before me into the chariot and maneuvered the horses back toward the palace, whipping their flanks as if they might carry us all the way home to Macedon.

  I half hoped they would.

  • • •

  I’d once boasted to Antipater that I’d ride halfway to Hades before I ever returned to Pella. Today I’d done more than that, visited the rocky depths of the pit of Tartarus and had my still-beating heart ripped from my chest.

  Once back in the palace, I’d armed myself with a fresh sword and done my best to comfort Adea and Arrhidaeus as they howled in grief until I’d finally ordered them both dosed with poppy milk. I’d tripled the guards at their doors and windows while they slept, then taken up a position in the courtyard where Alexander’s funeral carriage had been assembled. I stared blindly at his sarcophagus. The priests had embalmed my brother’s body in a mixture of honey and spices, and now he lay entombed in a borrowed golden coffin that bore his armor and famed Trojan shield, all protected beneath a pillared canopy sewn with lustrous pearls and glittering jewels. There were paintings as well, hastily composed to depict Alexander in his prime: laying the first stone of Alexandria-in-Egypt, marching into India with his elephants, and accepting homage from his Macedonians and Persians.

  And in the courtyard’s shadows was a second sarcophagus hewn from a single block of Pentelic white marble, engraved with scenes of a lion hunt, Hephaestion’s bones protected within its graceful walls.

  I felt as if I too had died but been forbidden the comfort of the bleak Fields of Asphodel and instead sentenced to serve an eternity as a witless shadow in this fresh hell of a world.

  I could hear Cynnane’s voice in my mind, barking at me to stop wasting time crying over her death, her earlier words of praise echoing over and over.

  I couldn’t ask for a better partner at my side.

  But I had failed her and now stood stiff before our brother’s sarcophagus, numb and exhausted, trying to reconcile myself to the fact that she was truly gone.

  While I grieved for Alexander and Hephaestion, the brothers I’d lost, it was Cynnane’s death that had truly shattered me.

  I reached out to trace a depiction of Alexander as he led his Companions into battle in a nondescript desert. “You may have been brave and beautiful, brother of mine,” I said. “But I hope that Hephaestion and Cynnane are wringing your neck for the mess your death left behind.”

  I almost laughed then, for Alexander, Hephaestion, and Cynnane together would be a magnificent and terrifying thing to behold. I hoped that the god Hades had a strong constitution.

  Cautious footsteps sounded at the courtyard’s main entrance and I drew my sword to defend myself. But it was only Drypetis, still swathed in the same black raiment she’d worn when she disappeared into the Tower of Silence.

  A lifetime ago.

  “I heard what happened,” she said, her face drawn as she paused to run a hand along the foot of Hephaestion’s marble coffin. She looked at me with tear-filled eyes. “I’m so sorry, Thessalonike. I’ve come to help you in any way I can.”

  “But your sister’s rites . . .” It was difficult to think through the fog of grief enveloping my mind. “I thought they took five days.”

  “I left early. Stateira wouldn’t want you to be alone now; she’d understand.” She hesitated, then pulled me into an embrace scented by the temple’s sacred fire, a bold move considering the sword held tight in my hand.

  Her simple touch splintered something in me and I dropped the sword, letting it clatter to the tiles. Unable to speak, I’d have fallen to my knees had it not been for Drypetis’ strength. Instead, I sobbed into her shoulder, great, gasping, terrible sobs that threatened to tear me in two. And all the while she stroked my hair until her face was wet with her own tears, both of us cast adrift without our sisters.

  • • •

  The bleak horizon swallowed the sun like a soul welcomed into the afterlife before Cassander arrived at the palace. He lifted his hands, revealing that he’d left his weapons elsewhere. Unarmed, then, to put me at ease.

  But I’d never be at ease again. Not until I was home in Macedon, and perhaps not even then.

  Drypetis rose, smoothing the front of her black robe as the last light faded from the courtyard. Attendants entered as if on cue, lighting a few scattered oil torches. “I’ll sit with Adea and Arrhidaeus for a bit,” she said.

  I nodded. “Thank you. And promise me you’ll think about my request.”

  She smiled, a forlorn gesture as she glanced once again at Hephaestion’s sarcophagus. “I will.”

  I watched her go, knowing how Atlas felt with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  Cassander waited until Drypetis disappeared before he spoke. “You asked her to come to Macedon, didn’t you?”

  I glanced sharply at him. “And if I did?”

  He shrugged. “There’s nothing left for her here. I’d guess it’s a welcome invitation.”

  He sat next to me unbidden and I shifted to put more space between us. I caught a whiff of the lemon used to sweeten his linen, at odds with the crimson stain on his chiton, already darkening to brown.

  Cynnane’s blood.

  How many times could a heart break in one day?

  “Where is she?” I whispered, my eyes feeling as if they’d been scoured with sand from this day’s tears. An eternity cursed with the oblivion of Asphodel’s Fields would have been a kindness compared with this all-consuming grief that threatened to lay me low.

  “She lies on her shield in the throne room, away from prying eyes,” he answered. “Adea and Arrhidaeus can see her when they’re ready.”

  “And Alcetas?”

  “Gone,” he said stonily. “The army denounced him today, but refused to act against him. I’ve set Ptolemy and the other generals to find him, but he’d as like fall on his
own sword before allowing them to take him.”

  Thus denying me the satisfaction of watching him die a slow and painful death.

  My hands curled into fists, my grief making me bold. “And was it your father who coerced him into killing Cynnane? Just as he convinced you to poison Alexander?”

  I expected Cassander to sputter in anger and deny the accusations, but he only stared at me, his face settling into harsh lines. “What purpose would Alexander’s death have served me?”

  “He demoted your father. And he insulted you in his throne room.”

  Cassander gave a coarse chuff of laughter, but the sound was flat and empty. “You think I would kill a king because he insulted me? I’m constantly awed by your low opinion of me.”

  “So you don’t admit to helping your father kill Alexander?”

  “My father’s power is an illusion,” Cassander said, waving an impatient hand. “He’s thrown his support behind Arrhidaeus, but everyone knows that Olympias will fight him. He won’t live to see the end of this power struggle, regardless of his being named regent.”

  I scoffed. “Then let me guess what happens next: You take his place and rule as my brother once did.”

  Cassander shook his head. “No one could rule as Alexander did. But someone shall rule and it won’t be Arrhidaeus or a babe yet to be born.”

  “It would have been Cynnane,” I said, clasping the cold edges of my bench. “She’d have made a worthy successor to our brother, an Amazon to follow in his footsteps as she guided Arrhidaeus. But she wasn’t given the chance.”

  “The men wish to carry out Cynnane’s plans,” Cassander said slowly. “The Illyrians spoke first, demanding that Arrhidaeus be allowed to marry Adea. The other regiments lent their voices to the order. They were much impressed with Cynnane, and don’t wish for her to have died for nothing.” He reached out as if to touch me, but his hand fell to his side. “Your sister was a rare woman.”