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His hand jerked madly at his side. Arsinoe couldn’t remember a time when she’d seen Ganymedes so unnerved. And though they walked back to the palace together, her tutor didn’t speak another word.

Elder

T
he atrium was close and sticky, even though the doors and shutters had been flung open. It seemed the very air meant to thwart her. Nereus certainly appeared determined to. Claiming fresh reports from abroad, the old man had requested a meeting of the councilors, and so Berenice found herself shut away with Pieton, Thais, and Dryton as the old man held his haughty court. She stared at her aging adviser as he twisted his signet ring back and forth across a gnarled knuckle, spewing forth his relentless news.

“Our spies in Rome tell us that Pompey supports your father’s claim,” he went on. “And he has urged the Senate to give the Piper the men he requests. Without Dio to counter, it seems almost sure that he will gain a Roman army.”

The words struck hard, as if the blow was intended.
Your mother is dead,
they threatened.
Your father will descend on Alexandria. Your rule will crumble.

“My queen.” The old man’s voice grew strained. “I know you have suffered great losses, but you must listen.”

“I do listen, Nereus, and I’ve not suffered such losses as that,” she snapped, gathering her attention up, cloaking it around her grief. There would be an escape from this too. Even if her father gained a Roman army, there would be ample time before the legions arrived. Berenice had already called up her troops from all across the Upper Lands. She was prepared to fight. Keen to, in fact.

“And tell me, Nereus: how will these legions arrive from Rome?” she asked.

“By ship, I imagine, my queen.”

There lay her glimmer of hope. Her ten-oared galleys would outmatch Roman sixes with ease. The Republic’s guard would either have to make a long journey by land or face her royal warships on the sea. In landlocked Rome, men loathed battling aboard ships; they preferred to fight in the field. That was to her advantage: flanked by a great river, lake, and sea, Alexandria suckled her soldiers on the water.

“The Romans won’t seek a naval battle,” she said with certainty. “And it will take some months to reach Alexandria from Rome, or even Asia, by land.”

Nereus cleared his throat, rubbing at his pockmarked chin. It seemed he could not bear to stand completely still. “It is possible, my queen, that—”

She interrupted the old man. “Tell me, Nereus: how many victories has the great and glorious Pompey enjoyed upon the waves? Or even that younger general who’s busy gallivanting about among the Gauls?”

“Julius Caesar,” Thais cut in, simpering. “I believe that is—”

“His name doesn’t matter to me. The point is this, Nereus: how often do the Romans—any of them—seek an engagement on the sea?”

“The wars against Carthage—”

“I meant in recent times, not stories that might have frightened my grandfather’s grandfather.” In her agitation, Berenice felt the sweat pooling in the sticky crevices of her knees and elbows. The weather had grown unseasonably warm, and her dark woolen mourning garb trapped the heat against her skin.

“Not often, I admit,” Nereus answered, “but I would point out that Pompey did win some great sea battles when he cleared the waters of the Cilicians.”

“The Cilicians were pirates—skilled, but pirates nonetheless,” she reminded the old man. “You might not value our soldiers highly, but even you must think our two hundred war galleys more formidable than that.”

Nereus swallowed at the bobbing apple in his throat and argued no further.

These men irked Berenice, but they no longer seemed fearsome. They’d been her father’s councilors before they’d been hers—and they were a fickle group. Except for Pieton, she could not be sure where any of their loyalties lay. How many of them secretly longed for the Piper’s return?

“Pieton.” She cleared her throat at the eunuch. He was now leaning back on the silken pillows of his divan, his fingers dangling near one of the couch’s lion-crested feet. She’d noticed that Pieton looked overly comfortable during these sessions, as though he already knew how each part would play out, what her advisers would say, and how she would respond. She deserved his full attention. “How many clerics have we recalled to mount our Cypriot attack? We must divert these soldiers to prepare to fight my father instead.”

Pieton straightened up, folding his legs neatly over the side of the settee. “We have perhaps ten thousand now in arms. But the harvest has been poor thus far, my queen, which should come as no surprise. The Nile ran low this year—too low. We nearly emptied the granaries seeing that the Upper Lands didn’t starve. I don’t imagine we could pay for more than another ten, fifteen thousand at most.”

“Twenty-five thousand on foot, then,” she interjected, lumping all the infantry together. It sounded like more that way, though far from enough. Ten thousand might have been equal to taking Cyprus unaware—but this? To battle a rested set of Roman legions? “And how many on horse?”

“We didn’t recruit horses for Cyprus, but we might muster three thousand,” Pieton answered. “Perhaps fewer. Our equestrian order has been greatly depleted. The upkeep of charges costs more than that of men.”

“How can there be so few?” Berenice shook her head in frustration. The fault lay with her as well. Her father had been absent for nearly a year—and what had she accomplished? Not nearly enough. Her plan to keep Rome neutral had failed. Dio was dead. She’d shored up some support among the natives in the Upper Lands, but she’d cemented enemies as well. She needed to act now—and quickly.

“The time has come for me to wed.” She spat the words as much as spoke them, thrusting them from her lips quickly, so they could not be unsaid.

“An excellent notion,” Pieton chimed, all attention now. His ready agreement disappointed Berenice; she’d hoped that he might for once be shocked. “It’s high time you wed the elder of your two younger brothers.”

Her stomach churned at the notion. She’d seen what little good wedding her brother had done for her mother, how she’d ended up whelping monsters year after year, ruined and betrayed. She’d known that someone would suggest it, but not Pieton—he’d seen what the Piper had done to Tryphaena, what the Piper had done to
her.

“What benefit would that bring?” she replied coolly, as though she spoke of only the politics. There were men here she didn’t trust—and she wouldn’t show them she was soft. “He is a child; he has no men, no arms, no horses unless you count his piebald pony.”

“The way I see it, my queen,” Pieton pressed on, “you have two choices: you either fight the Romans or convince them you are the rightful ruler of Egypt. The Senate won’t send legions against a reigning brother-sister pair. They’d be mad to.”

From the corner of her eye, Berenice could see Thais’s nodding, bowing head, splashed with the afternoon light pouring from the window. His chin always inclined to the last opinion spoken. It disgusted her. And she would not become her mother, no matter what the eunuch said.

“Begging your pardon, my dear friend,” Nereus cut in. “But how do you propose the queen wed her brother Ptolemy? I was under the impression that—despite our exhaustive searches—no man had seen hide nor hair of the boys. Unless you’re privy to some secret knowledge?”

That she couldn’t believe. It wasn’t possible: Pieton wouldn’t think of speaking to the concubine, to the woman who’d stolen her father’s love and wrecked her own claim to the throne. But when she looked to the eunuch and saw his fingers twitching at his chin, stroking his imagined beard…Perhaps he had. This was a nervous habit of his. Did Nereus’s accusation contain some slip of truth?

“I have no special knowledge,” Pieton answered, “but I am confident that there are ways, Nereus, of getting word to the mother of those children. And she would surely approve of the idea. She worries more for her boys’ safety than for her husband’s.”

Dryton joined in, chewing at the discord like a wild dog. “Strange, Pieton, that you know so much of these children’s whereabouts, of their mother’s state of mind…”

Sometimes Berenice thought they all spoke merely to provoke her, to drive her shrieking to her grave. She’d listen to no more of this—that wasn’t why she’d broached the topic.

“Enough bickering,” she told them firmly, as she might a roomful of children. “My mother’s body is hardly cold. I won’t disgrace her memory by marrying one of the Piper’s bastard sons.”

The eunuch’s eyes narrowed to slits cut across his gaunt face. “Whom, then, shall you marry? I thought you meant to wed for pragmatic reasons.”

She ignored the jab. They both knew she wouldn’t wed for pleasure—what pleasure had she ever witnessed in a marriage? At least he’d backed away from the sickening idea that she wed one of those little boys.

“There are others I might marry for greater gain,” Berenice told the eunuch. “My house has long wed queens not only to their brothers but also to form alliances with other sworn enemies of Rome.”

“Rome, my queen,” Pieton replied softly, “has few enemies these days. Unless you plan to wed some uncouth Gaul.”

“Rome has one enemy left, and a great one too.” Nereus had planted the notion, and now Berenice clutched at it, echoing his words. “Seleucus, the last remaining son of the Seleucid dynasty, loathes Rome—and he has many legions who follow him, men who would be glad to do battle with the Republic.”

Dryton laughed. “Seleucus? The one they call the Salt-Fish Seller?”

Berenice glanced at the old man. In the midst of his eager attempt to bring her around to his plan, to sell her on the son of Antiochus, he’d neglected that detail. But Nereus said nothing in his prospect’s defense. She supposed she should be thankful for his silence. Pieton would be more likely to agree if the old man didn’t argue in favor of it.

“Or perhaps you meant to neglect your favorite’s name?” Dryton said, mocking Nereus. “Oh, yes, this is what the great son of Antiochus the Pious has been reduced to: a petty
merchant
—”

The eunuch cleared his throat. “He is no merchant. At times, he has been known to traffic goods across the sea. But I fear none of us could say we are innocent of that. And his parentage is remarkable for another reason. He is the son of your grandfather’s sister. Do you remember her, the less favored one who was called Selene?”

She did. Of course. The one who had tried to steal her father’s throne and name her own sons as kings over both the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms. Berenice had a feeling she might have liked the woman, if history hadn’t set their claims at odds.

“Well, I suppose we are meant to think this Seleucus is her last living son,” the eunuch continued.

“It’s not a rumor, Pieton; it’s the truth,” Nereus croaked. “There’s no need to cast aspersions on his birth. He is indeed the son of Selene. And a union between these two would serve to unite those feuding branches of the family.”

“I am less concerned with familial concord than I am with soldiers,” Berenice said, smiling wanly. The conversation had shifted; it edged in her direction now. She could snatch control of it. “Tell them, Nereus: how many men will Seleucus bring?”

“He would bring five thousand on foot, perhaps another thousand on horse. Good fighting men, my queen.”

Five thousand sounded paltry now that the moment had come and Berenice had to choose whether to sell herself. So very few soldiers in exchange for her hand and nearly half of her throne. But she’d said she’d wed, and so she would. Better Seleucus than her brother. Better anyone than him.

“Send word to Seleucus, then, that he should come to Alexandria but leave his armies outside the city gates. I’ll not have foreigners marching into our capital.” The Alexandrians would never stand with her after that. Foreigners were foreigners, whether Roman or Seleucid. And should a strange army tramp through the Canopic Gate, there was no telling how quickly the mob might rise into an angry wave.

“As you wish, my queen.”

Pieton nodded in agreement, and Thais as well. Only Dryton, sneering and scoffing loudly into his hand, gave no sign of approval.

“Is there something you’d like to add?” Berenice asked him sharply. “Do you mean to counsel me against this marriage?”

“No, my queen,” Dryton replied, straightening on his cushions.