Queen of Kings

  “I want only one thing,” Augustus said, resisting her hands. “Cleopatra must be destroyed, by order of Rome.”

  She’d thought him more easily controlled than this.

  “I cannot destroy such a thing,” she informed him, kissing him hard enough to bruise. “And I do not choose to.”

  Augustus sat up suddenly, his hands grappling with her wrists, knocking her off balance. Chrysate was startled to find herself swiftly immobilized beneath him, her wrists held behind her, her cheek against the stone floor. He was stronger than she’d imagined. His injuries should have weakened him sufficiently, but the magic she’d used tonight had weakened her. It had been a hundred years since she’d felt anything like this.

  “Do you serve me, Chrysate?” he asked, his mouth next to her ear, the rasp of his beard against her face. “Or do you serve another?”

  “I serve you,” she said, and then stretched beneath him, emphasizing the point. She had not lost him yet. “You and I are not so different. We both want more than we’ve been given. Do I misunderstand you, emperor of Rome?”

  “You do not,” he said. She could feel him hard against her. One of his hands stroked her throat, pressing roughly. She wondered if he would try to strangle her. There was a thrum of thwarted violence in him, a weak boy made into the ruler of the world, and all she needed to do to rule him was to make him think he’d won.

  “Everything in Rome is yours to command,” she said. “And the world is Rome. I am yours to command. Will you give me what I want?”

  She slowly lifted her hips off the ground until he was nearly inside her. She felt his pulse quicken.

  “Selene,” she said.

  “Yes,” Augustus said, and laughed softly. “You could ask for gold, and instead, you ask for a girl. You can have Cleopatra’s daughter if you want her so desperately. She’ll make a good apprentice.”

  Chrysate arched her back, and he groaned, pulling her closer.

  He thought that he controlled her. Chrysate nearly laughed, but then she found herself moaning. She had not expected to enjoy this. Perhaps she had not been lying when she’d told him they were two of a kind.

  “The box that cages Cleopatra must be locked away,” he said. “There is a room lined with silver, here in my house. I had it made for her. You will place the box there, and it will be guarded.”

  “I agree. She is precious. She should be guarded,” Chrysate said, smiling. Locks and silver would not bar her from the queen, not if she wanted to reach her.

  “Do you not fear her?” he managed.

  “I do not,” she said. “She cannot touch me. You can.”

  They were finished talking.

  26

  Elsewhere in Rome, the senator’s man stood looking at the piece of green stone he held in his hand. It was such a small thing, to have had so many people going to such trouble over it. Nothing precious at all. It looked like old glass.

  Still, he had his instructions. He placed the holding stone on the ground, taking little notice of the way it glimmered and shone in the dark. He was paid well for this task.

  The senator’s man picked up the hammer he’d brought, and with a single blow, he smashed the witch’s stone. Shards of it flew everywhere, but it was broken irrevocably.

  With his heel, he ground the remaining bits of magic into the dirt of Rome, and then, with a grunt of satisfaction, he walked on.

  Suddenly, she was falling, pulled deep into the darkness, deep into the cold. The burning of the silver net where it had melted into her skin disappeared. The walls of the silver box itself disappeared, and the bed of ash beneath her body was gone as well.

  She was adrift in the night sky, or falling through the earth, but she was not alone. Someone held her hand in his, and as they fell, she felt his grasp tighten. Every part of her demanded that she turn back, told her that she did not belong where she was going, but he pulled her deeper, deeper, until she lost herself in his determination. Her body resisted, but there was nothing to be done. Around the hole where her heart had been she felt ice crystals forming.

  She gasped, and then darkness took her.

  She awoke to cold fingers on her flesh. She was being carried, her body held in rigid arms, her legs dangling. Cleopatra’s head lay against a shoulder she would have known anywhere. She tried to sit up.

  “Stay still,” a voice—his voice—whispered. “Don’t open your eyes. Trust me. I am yours. You are mine.”

  “In life,” Cleopatra whispered.

  “And thereafter,” her husband answered.

  Together, they walked downward in darkness.

  BOOK OF LIGHTNING

  And thereupon shall the whole world be governed by the hands

  Of a woman, and obedient everywhere.

  Then when a widow shall o’er all the world gain the rule,

  And cast in the mighty sea both gold and silver, also brass and iron,

  Of short-lived men, into the deep shall cast,

  Then all the elements shall be bereft of order.

  When the God who dwells on high shall roll the heaven, even as a scroll is rolled,

  And to the mighty earth and sea shall fall the entire multiform sky, and There shall flow a tireless cataract of raging fire,

  And it shall burn the land and burn the sea, and heavenly sky and night and day

  And melt creation itself together,

  And pick out what is pure.

  No more laughing spheres of light,

  Nor night, nor dawn, nor many days of care,

  Nor spring, nor winter, nor the summer-time, nor Autumn,

  And then of the mighty God, the judgment midway in a mighty age

  Shall come, when all these things shall come to pass.

  —The Sibylline Oracles, circa 30 B.C.E.

  Translated from the Greek

  Milton S. Terry, 1899

  1

  Sekhmet, daughter of the sun, Lady of Slaughter, crouched high above Rome, looking out at her new terrain. Her body quivered with anticipation. It had been so long since she’d had a true form, so long since her strength had been more than a shadow.

  She remembered the day the Nile had turned crimson, when human blood had first filled her hands, her mouth. She remembered the beauty of her task. Kill the betrayers, her father had told her, and she had done his bidding, until Ra forgave them and betrayed his daughter.

  He flung Sekhmet into nothingness, gathered his human children into his arms, and soothed their fear, kissing them and singing to them, while his daughter suffered.

  The goddess had barely survived, fading with the passage of time, the sacrifices made by her few remaining priestesses growing smaller and smaller until she was fortunate if a rabbit was killed in her name. Ra forgot her, grew ancient and frail, and fled the bloody, joyful, rageful earth for the sky.

  Egypt forgot her.

  Everyone forgot her, except Cleopatra.

  It had been three thousand years, more, since Sekhmet had felt so strong. A queen as her worshipper. A queen laying waste to the world on her behalf. A queen set on fire. The heat of the flame had brought Sekhmet back entirely. It was as though she dwelt in Ra’s eye again.

  But Cleopatra was invisible to her now, gone somehow beneath the earth to Hades, the dwelling place of the Roman dead. Sekhmet was banned from the Underworld, and in any case, there was no blood there. The goddess could wait for her servant to emerge, but still, she needed sacrifices.

  Her father had promised her things, but he had never given them to her. Now Sekhmet had only the tears she’d shed after her father’s abandonment. Those tears had created seven companions for her loneliness. Seven shining children.

  She’d given them names, one by one as they were created, each stronger and more beautiful than the next. Plague and Famine, Earthquake and Flood, Drought, Madness, and Violence.

  The goddess looked down over Rome. There were so many bodies there, and all of them would be her prey. She’d destroy their temples, destroy the p
laces their gods received sacrifices, and take their worship from them, whether they believed in her or not. They would ask her forgiveness, but she had no forgiveness for humans.

  Gods were meant to destroy.

  Sekhmet stretched her arms and pulled the quiver from her back, glorying in her newfound strength. It had been thousands of years since she’d seen her children. They’d weakened along with her, but now, fed by Cleopatra’s sacrifices, fed by the fire in the arena, they strained for release. She could feel them humming. She had strength enough only for one thus far, but there would be time. She would see the others again.

  She removed the first of her Seven Arrows, feeling it shudder in her hands as it woke. It opened its glittering eyes, and the goddess looked into them, welcoming it back from its sleep.

  She kissed the Slaughterer’s sharp face, feeling its many rows of needlesharp teeth, feeling its hunger, feeling its ferocious claws stretching for prey.

  She fit it into her bow, pulled taut the golden string, and loosed Plague into the world.

  The thing was beautiful, a glowing streak, a glinting, flashing, fiery star making its way across the heavens. A young woman pointed up into the clouds, and she and her mother watched it come. There was no tremor with its fall. It disappeared, and the village did not connect it with the illness that came upon them.

  First, an elder of the village fell sick, spiking a high fever that left him trembling in his bed. The old man’s skin blistered, as though he’d been exposed to a blazing desert sun, and then it turned black, charred as if over a cook fire. The old man looked out from his body with bright, horrified eyes, screaming in agony as his wife tried to soothe him. The room filled with smoke and smelled of burning, and at last, the old man was dead.

  He would be the first but not the last. Within a few hours, the town, from the tiniest children to the elders, had been taken ill, and within a few days, they were gone.

  The neighboring villages packed their belongings and headed into the hills, where it was cooler, but Plague traveled with them, killing rapturously, killing indiscriminately, killing hungrily, and those who were well shut their doors to the sick, and those who were sick ran through the streets in search of comfort, throwing themselves into wells and springs, spreading their disease.

  Townspeople became terrified of one another, fighting their neighbors for food and space, fighting their friends, fighting their families, and dying all the while.

  The Slaughterer’s mouth stretched into a tight, fanged smile. It fed its mistress, and this was a new and vulnerable country, with no understanding of the goddess and her ways.

  There had once been protective spells, but the world knew nothing of such things now.

  The Slaughterer traveled, streaking through the blue and shimmering sky, lighting the countryside afire in places both known and unknown.

  It visited India and Gaul, Parthia and the iced-over countries of Oceanus. It fell upon an island, where it was worshipped. It was a god for a time, and then it did as gods do and killed every inhabitant. It swept the dead out to sea, where their bodies would tangle in nets and bring disease to fishermen.

  Heat smothered the spheres. Lightning crackled in the heavens. A soft cloud of black smoke filled the clouds as the Slaughterer flew, and it inhaled the smoke, expanding the razor-sharp feathers its body was fletched with and spreading them in the air. It did not need the wind. It did not need anything but Sekhmet.

  The Slaughterer made its way over the earth, feeding here and there, leaving only Rome, the center of the world, untouched for its mother’s pleasure.

  Overhead, the Sun Boat shone brilliantly down on the world, but Ra saw nothing. He was old, and he crossed the sky with his eyes shut, prostrate on his cushions, flying blind.

  It was a beautiful day.

  2

  In her bed in the imperial residence, Auðr sat up with a choking gasp, her heart racing. The fates were suddenly shifting more quickly than she could spin them. She felt the Old One’s thread divide, and another strand arc away from it. Where that strand went, lives ended.

  The tear in the tapestry of the fates, once centered in Rome, had begun to spread throughout the world.

  Frantic, Auðr focused herself to search for Cleopatra’s fate in the tangle. The queen had been tied to Sekhmet. Had she escaped from the box she was caged in? Was this how the goddess drew new strength? The seiðkona’s fingers twisted in the air, plucking at strands, but she could find nothing. Where Cleopatra’s fate had been, an endless thread too strong to cut, too entwined with the fates of the world to remove, there was now an absence.

  The queen was gone.

  Auðr felt Cleopatra’s thread descend into the world of the dead, and disappear there.

  For the first time, she wondered if Sekhmet and the queen could truly still be their own beings. Though Auðr had not been able to separate their fates, for the moment Cleopatra was free. What she did now might shift her destiny.

  The future was open, and Auðr watched, her eyes wide in the darkness, as the Slaughterer flew through the world, destroying everything in its path. She watched as Sekhmet’s fate grew stronger.

  After a moment, she focused herself on what she should have been thinking of from the beginning. A weapon to destroy an immortal. She did not possess such a thing. Even at the height of her strength, Sekhmet would have been beyond her, and she knew it now.

  Others were working on the same thing, she realized. She felt in the dark for their fates and found them, one strong and warlike, the general Marcus Agrippa, and the other a historian, fearful and confused. She began to twine them together, quietly, slowly.

  Cleopatra was free of Sekhmet for now, and that meant that the goddess had a weakness. Auðr sought to find it.

  The Psylli sat on the roof of the imperial residence, looking up at the sky and listening to the wind. Her predictions had come true, and now she returned, furious, to tell him of the plague that Sekhmet had brought to the land. She blew across the world, and in some places, she swept through empty villages, over forgotten thresholds, through broken windows. She whipped across deserts and over seas and found that the plague had touched everywhere. She flew beside the Slaughterer and watched its rampage, helpless to do anything. Sekhmet’s arrow rode on the wind’s unwilling back, shrilling with pleasure, flinging itself through the clouds and into the world.

  “What would you have me do?” Usem asked.

  The only way to hurt the Old One is through the queen.

  “And how might I wound the queen?”

  The wind did not have an answer. The silver box that was Cleopatra’s jail waited inside the residence, but Usem’s dagger and poison had only pained her, not wounded her. He did not know what to do. He sat, sharpening his dagger, his snakes coiling about him.

  3

  They crossed Acheron in Charon’s ferry, Antony telling the reluctant boatman that the spirit he carried was a gift for Persephone and that her passage was paid. Cleopatra lay silently as wizened fingers passed over her, determining, after some examination, that she was lifeless. Her skin was cold enough to pass for that of a corpse and scarred with silver veins. The boatman threw a ragged blanket over her body.

  Antony kept his hands on her, and where he touched her, she lived. She knew she’d left her body behind somehow, trapped in the witch’s hands. She knew that she was traveling in the land of ghosts, an Underworld not her own. Still, she was content.

  She was with her love again, and nothing else mattered.

  The boat rocked beneath her. A drop of river water splashed onto her wounded skin, and she felt the tears of tens of thousands of mourners sobbing over graves, strewing flowers and libations into the soil. There were no tears for Cleopatra in this river. The tears of Egypt flowed through the caverns of the Duat.

  Eventually, after what seemed hundreds of years of travel, the boat scraped rock, and Antony carried her onto a bank dotted not with colored wildflowers but with poisonous plants, dark and ashen. The
dead approached, slavering at the sight of one from the world of the living, but then backed away, bewildered by her bloodlessness.

  “How did you get us away from the witch?” she asked, hearing the vessel recede back into the river.

  Her beloved grinned, a strange, sweet expression here in Hades.

  “She may be able to draw a soul up from Hades, but she does not understand Rome,” Antony said. “Everyone is willing to bargain if you have something worth bargaining for. I told the Senate about the emperor and his hiring of witches, and in return, they gave me their blood and stole the stone the witch was using to keep me tied to her in the upper world.”

  “What do you mean when you say they gave you their blood?” Cleopatra asked sharply.

  “A drop of blood reminds us of what we were and makes us feel human, at least for a time. Now I’ve tasted the blood of seven senators, and my bond to the witch is lessened.”

  Cleopatra thought for a moment. Perhaps he would not mind what she had become.

  A ghost approached them, its eyes wide and blank. It offered them a sprig of asphodel.

  Antony pushed it away, and it spun on its heels, bowing back into the grasses, plucking flowers and pressing them into its mouth. The spirit moaned with hunger.

  “He was a philosopher,” Antony said. “Now he is nothing. The longer a soul stays in Hades, the more longing it feels for its past. Most of them wade into the waters of Lethe and drink until they’ve forgotten the human lives they left behind.”

  Cleopatra shuddered. She was not human. She knew it, and so did Antony. He had seen her a snake, a lioness.

  “Am I dead?” she asked, looking at the painful streaks of silver on her skin, a netting melted into her flesh. “Am I a shade? Is that how I come to be here?”