Queen of Kings Read online

  By the time he reached the boundary of the city, the Gate of the Sun was open, and the boy skittered through it, toward the Roman camp. A tall, broad-chested man emerged from the tent and looked at him carefully, his lips tight.

  “Did you see him?” he asked the boy.

  “I did,” the boy said proudly.

  “You’re certain?”

  “It was Antony,” the boy insisted. “He fell to his knees when I told him the queen was dead.”

  The man shook his head, and the boy wondered if he was angry. He turned and led the boy back to the tent where he’d first received his assignment.

  A slight, light-haired man sitting on a three-legged stool waited there. He appraised the boy with pale gray eyes.

  “Your messenger has returned,” the boy’s guide said tersely. “I would not have had it done this way. Antony was outnumbered. It was only a matter of time.”

  The gray-eyed man lifted his chin and shot a fierce look at his general. “Do you question my honor, Agrippa?”

  Agrippa did not answer. He looked steadily at his cohort for a moment and then turned on his heel and left the tent. The boy nervously watched him go.

  “I did not ask for your advice,” the boy’s benefactor called after Agrippa.

  His expression changed as he looked at the boy. “You’ve delivered my message to Antony?”

  The boy blushed with pleasure at having completed his mission successfully.

  “It is done,” he said.

  “Good,” said the man, and winced slightly. He closed his eyes for a moment. “Good.”

  6

  There was a sharp clattering from above, rocks being thrown against the window bars. Cleopatra jolted up from where she was kneeling, the knife still clutched in her hand. Who was coming for her? Antony? Or Octavian?

  Charmian ran down the stairs, her face pale.

  “Your husband is here,” she whispered, her voice panicky. “His men have brought him.”

  Brought him? What sort of phrase was this? He’d lead his men, not be led. And why did he not come through the passage?

  “Tell me what the matter is!” Cleopatra snapped, gripping the girl roughly by the shoulders.

  “They’ve carried him here on a stretcher. He’s covered.”

  Cleopatra was already running up the stairs to the window, her heart pounding in terror. This was her fault. She should never have let him go back to battle. She’d known better, after what she’d witnessed at the window the night before. Antony’s gods had left the city, declaring the war a loss. There’d been an invisible celebration as Dionysus departed through the center of Alexandria, his procession unseen but raucous with trumpets and harps, the beat of dancing steps, drums, and trills.

  In the room behind her, Antony had stretched out his arms to her.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” he asked.

  “Looking at the moon,” she said. “Full and golden. A good omen.” She did not say for whom.

  “We will win this war,” she told him, thinking of Sekhmet, imagining herself more powerful than any omen. “We will win this war.”

  “Come back to me,” her husband replied, getting up from the bed as if to see for himself what drew her attention, but she pushed him back. They made love as though time had stopped, as though they had no battles to prepare for, no danger in the morning, no end to nights like these.

  Cleopatra had sent her beloved out into battle unprotected and now she was paying for her arrogance.

  She threw open the barred shutter, her body leaning out the window, a target for any archer. Antony’s personal guard was below. She knew the men well. And there, on a litter, covered in a cloth—

  Cleopatra felt herself swaying. There was a bloodstain on the sheet, the crimson spreading on the ivory ground.

  The leader of the guard looked up at the queen. Cleopatra could see the grief on his face.

  “There was a false message,” he said. “He believed you killed yourself, and he sought to join you.”

  “Is he dead?” she whispered, scarcely able to make the words leave her lips.

  Antony’s hand rose to push aside the cloth that covered his face and chest.

  “Not yet,” Antony said. His face was gray with suffering, his hand bloodied where it pressed the wound.

  Cleopatra clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. How could this have happened? Had she followed her original plan, had she not stayed, thinking to tame the gods, she should have been beside him shipboard, the green and silver sea, the coast of India, their children safe in their beds belowdecks.

  “I come to die with you,” Antony said. “Will you have me?”

  Sobbing, she threw down the rope and let his men rig him in it. She and her handmaidens pulled him up to the window, the wound in her hand opening again as she held the fibers. She watched his face as he rose toward her, feeling every pain he did. He would not cry out in front of his men. By the time she had him in the mausoleum, her garments were covered in blood. Her limbs felt dipped in wax, slowed and numb.

  “Antony,” she murmured, stroking his face, his chest, his arms. She knew every part of him. The old war wounds, white stripes in his sundark flesh, and this new wound, still gaping. His eyes focused on her suddenly.

  “Why did you betray me?” he whispered. “I would have done anything for you.”

  “What are you saying?” she cried, but he was not listening.

  “Wine,” he called.

  He was too weak to lift the cup. She held it to his lips, hoping to ease his pain.

  “You must not die without me,” she told him, but he looked at her, unseeing. Never, in all the years she’d known him, had he looked through her. She was always his focus, and when his gaze landed on her, she felt her skin warm, as though she walked through a ray of light sent from Ra himself.

  “I will see you again,” Antony said, and smiled.

  Then he was still.

  Everything was still, the air, the smoke of the incense, Cleopatra’s own heartbeat. The maids stood, wide-eyed, watching for a breath, and none came.

  A tear fell from Cleopatra’s face to Antony’s, and she watched as it rolled down his skin. The bloodstain on his tunic spread, larger and larger, and he did not move.

  A scream rose up in Cleopatra’s throat.

  “You will not die without me!” Her throat convulsed with sobs, and she doubled over, holding him tightly, her hands gripping his bloody tunic. Her body shook, every place he had touched her, every place he had kissed her.

  This could not be the end of their story.

  Running feet and shouting outside the building, swords clashing, Antony’s men engaging with Octavian’s. They were coming for her.

  She staggered up from Antony’s side and ran into the sacred circle, her hands dripping with his blood. She’d made the paste of honey and ash, added the lion’s fur and cobra’s skin. Now the potion awaited the final ingredient.

  She knelt, her knees cold against the stone of the floor. She threw back her head and sang the spell, her voice rattling the air itself, calling out to the heavens, her hands steady now as she held the agate goblet filled with her own blood.

  Forbidden.

  The warning of the Egyptian scholar appeared in her mind, and she shook her head frantically to rid herself of it. Nothing was forbidden. Nothing. This was her love.

  Though this goddess was meant for vengeance, today she would be called to raise the dead as well.

  Cleopatra drew a shuddering breath and performed the final step of the spell, pouring the blood of kings over the bared teeth of the icon. She watched as the red dripped down into the icon’s throat.

  There was a rushing sound. Time spun around her like a sirocco, a searing, razing thing. The air charged with sparks, and the edges of the treasure glowed out of the darkness.

  In the darkness, there were soft steps on the stone.

  Cleopatra turned, and the goddess was upon her, tremendous. She shone in the endless ni
ght of the sealed chamber with the fire of the sun, her head that of a lioness crowned with a twisting, living cobra, and her body that of a woman, her arms decked in jewels, her fingers ending in talons. Her gown, tight to her form, was bloodred with rosettas over each breast, and the fur of her throat and face was golden.

  She rose to the ceiling, and beside her all the glow of Egypt’s treasure was overshadowed. She was the daughter of Ra, Nicolaus had told Cleopatra, created from the sun god’s fiery eye. Her heat shimmered in the air.

  “Sekhmet,” Cleopatra whispered, and the goddess roared, the sound rattling the coins and echoing from the walls of the mausoleum.

  Where were Cleopatra’s servants? Fallen against the stairs, sleeping as if drugged, guarding the room from intruders. How could they sleep in the presence of this?

  Antony slept as well, his skin pale and cold. Dead. A pang of grief stabbed through the queen’s chest, a sudden sense of doom. This was the end of everything, and she’d brought it on herself by thinking she could have everything and pay no price.

  “Bring him back,” she ordered Sekhmet. Her fears did not matter. “Bring him back to me. Help me to avenge this.”

  Cleopatra lifted her crown from her head. Egypt would belong to the old gods again. Farewell to Isis, farewell to the Greeks and the Romans. She would give the country back to its beginnings, to its lions and crocodiles, to its jackals and falcons and cobras.

  The goddess gazed at her, a flicker of amusement in her wide, yellow eyes.

  Not enough, she said, or didn’t say. It was known. More would be required. The heart’s blood of the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra knew suddenly. That would be the sacrifice required to bring him back from the Duat, Egypt’s Underworld.

  “Take what you wish,” Cleopatra said, throwing her arms out from her sides, offering her throat, her breasts, and her wrists. She’d survived worse than this. She was surviving it now.

  The goddess leapt over the treasure, her teeth bared, her talons extended, and her skin began to shine with the pitiless glare of the noontime sun. Her fingers and limbs smoked, blurring with heat, and Cleopatra steeled herself for the agony that was to come. A burning brand, a sizzling impact, she thought. But this was not to be.

  Sekhmet transformed. A tremendous serpent coiled before the queen. It looked deep into Cleopatra, assessing her weaknesses.

  Cleopatra was grateful. Serpents were the sacred creatures of her line. They were beautiful things, snakes, and this one was no exception. Its scales were gilded emeralds, the eyes cruel rubies.

  Cleopatra glimpsed a flash of diamond fangs as the goddess struck her throat. Still no pain. Only a sense of time stopping, a spinning, the sound of air rushing past. Then her neck burned with a pain that was not pain but a brilliant heat. An overpowering sweetness swept over her.

  Cleopatra discovered that her feet were no longer touching the floor. Her body—she felt such tenderness for it now, for this fragile, mortal body—hung from the serpent’s teeth, and as though from miles away, she watched her own skin pale. Her fingers clenched and then released. Her vision filled with the places beyond the night sky, the blue-white shine of the edge of the moon. She was dying, and yet she cared nothing about it, nothing about anything that had ever happened or that would happen in the future.

  Then the goddess pulled away, and agonizing pain tore through Cleopatra. She was a tree, and each leaf was on fire. She was a city, and every building was pillaged. The streets ran with boiling oil, citizens fleeing, their hair clouds of smoke, their clothing gusts of flame, orange and blue. She was a volcano erupting, and her skin was furrowed with the passage of lava, deep tunnels of searing, searching heat. The soles of her feet melted where they touched the floor, and she staggered to keep from collapsing. The goddess was the light of a thousand suns, and Cleopatra felt her skin peeling away, exposing her very bones. She was turning to ash. No human could live in flame. Her eyes dilated, blinded.

  You think to summon me to serve you? You, who have forgotten your gods?

  The words appeared in Cleopatra’s mind, echoing there like the sound of men stomping over decks, readying themselves for war. She could smell her own blood slipping down her throat and over her breasts, and she could smell the scent of rage as well, emanating from Sekhmet to wrap about the queen’s arms, binding them to her sides as though she were mummified already.

  You are not one of our kind. Do you think I wish for your blood?

  “That is all I have,” whispered Cleopatra, her voice ravaged by smoke and pain.

  Is it? The goddess laughed, a horrible sound. Somewhere in the room, a glass goblet shook, shattered, and turned back into the sand from which it had come. I think you have something more.

  “Anything,” Cleopatra managed, looking at Antony. “Anything I have is yours.”

  And then Cleopatra felt a change. The pain was blinding but uncertain. Where did it come from? What had been taken? A sudden sense of loss, a hole at the center of her being. Her body convulsed around this absence, and she screamed and could not stop screaming. She was a husk, as thin as eggshell, and inside her was nothingness, black night, rushing chill, the frigid glow of dying stars. She gasped, searching for air, and found nothing. She was drowning, and her heart, her heart—

  Her beloved moaned.

  She spun toward him and saw his eyelids flutter.

  Joy rose up inside her, replacing the emptiness that had been there only moments before. She was whole, with him beside her. She was herself again.

  She flew to Antony and knelt at his side, her hands on his chest, feeling it expand as he took his first breath. She ran her fingers over his bare skin and felt it warming under her touch. Her pain, if not gone, no longer mattered.

  Antony’s dark eyes opened, and she kissed him. She brushed her fingers over his stomach, felt the edge of the wound that had killed him, and sensed it healing. The goddess had done as she’d promised.

  “Te teneo,” she whispered in Latin. “You are mine.”

  His hands rose to cup her face, stroking her jaw, her lips, her earlobes, her hair.

  “You followed me,” he said, and smiled. “I did not think you would.”

  She realized that he thought they were both dead, traveling together to the Duat.

  “No. We live,” she told him. “I’ve brought you back.”

  She laid her face against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. “I am yours,” she said. Her eyes brimmed with tears.

  Antony moved uncertainly, restless, silent. His hands brought her face up to his, and he looked into her eyes.

  “You betrayed me,” he said.

  “Lady! You are taken alive!” Charmian shrieked from the staircase, and then flew from the stairs to the opposite side of the room, pursued by one of Octavian’s legionaries. He’d somehow penetrated the sanctuary, scaled the walls, removed the bars, and fitted himself through the window.

  Cleopatra spun, searching for Sekhmet, but the goddess was gone. Gone! How dare this man, this plebeian, break into her sacred place? How dare he force the goddess out?

  Cleopatra threw herself in front of her husband, blocking the soldier’s access to him.

  “You are in the presence of a goddess,” she told the invader, and her voice did not shake. She was herself again, the queen of Egypt, fearless. “Leave this place or face the consequences.”

  She needed only a few minutes more for Antony to recover himself, and then they would go forth, together again. She would show compassion. She would let this man go.

  If not—she grasped her ritual knife. It was a once-in-a-lifetime act, the summoning of such a power, and she had lived through it only by luck. She’d given all the blood she could give and still walk the earth. She could not bring her love back a second time.

  The legionary rushed toward the queen and her beloved, his sword drawn.

  Suddenly, Cleopatra was racked with knowing. She could smell the legionary’s sweat, the sweat of an endless, unpaid march, of years of bat
tle. And more than that. She could smell his children back in Rome, their hunger and hope. She could smell the sea in his hair. She could smell his longing for a woman, any woman. The Whore Queen, that was what he believed her to be. She heard it now, his thought of taking her as a chained captive to present to his master. He thought her weak.

  The fool. He was nothing to her.

  Her heart swelled with a clean, white fury. Her limbs shuddered in their sockets, her spine became a sword of flame, and her lungs filled with the heat of the desert sand.

  She heard herself gasp, felt herself consumed, and then the world went black.

  Cleopatra looked down at her hand, feeling something strangely heavy. Her head spun, racked with pain, and she narrowed her eyes, trying to focus on what she held.

  What was it? She gazed at it for a moment, uncertain, her fingers pressing into its slippery, scalding edges. The thing ran purple over her fingers, weighty and profane, still trembling with its last life.

  His heart.

  She’d torn out his heart.

  She screamed and flung it away from her, away from Antony. Her servants crept along the wall, their eyes wide with horror.

  Against her will, Cleopatra found herself looking down at the legionary’s ruined body. She had the taste of metal in her mouth, blood running from her lips to soak her garments.

  What had she done?

  “Lady,” Charmian whispered. “Lady?”

  Antony took a rattling breath, a cry of agony. Cleopatra turned and saw the legionary’s sword piercing her beloved’s body. It had been thrown in the struggle and was pinning him to the floor. The blood. The smell of iron, the taste of honey. She gagged, clutching her mouth in horror, and her hands came away from her lips covered in scarlet.

  “Cleopatra,” her husband whispered. “Come to me.”

  She stumbled to Antony’s side and touched his skin. Stiffening. Cooling.

  “You will not die now,” she told him, her voice breaking. “You cannot.”

  She pressed her mouth to his, breathing her air into his lungs. When she pulled away, the legionary’s blood stained Antony’s lips.