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An edge had slipped into Merytmut’s voice, so slight that Berenice scarcely noticed it at first. As a girl, Berenice had been weaned on tales of native resentment, stories of failed rebellions and fallen egos, but she’d never imagined that she would encounter this hatred within her own walls. The rebellions, she knew, were real enough, but she’d always assumed they were to do more with low floods than with any deeper malice. That part she’d supposed was a mere rumor that eunuchs told their Macedonian charges to stoke their nightmares.

Berenice kept her tone light. “Why come to Alexandria if you hold my house in such contempt?”

“I don’t hold you in contempt, my queen. Although I admit I was curious to see Alexandria and her masters for myself.” Her words grew reckless now, as though Seleucus’s murder had granted her rights to freer speech. “‘The usurpers,’ my father always called your ilk, as though he himself could remember a time when Greeks didn’t rule the twin lands.”

The girl’s voice faltered; she began to tremble once more. She proved both craven and courageous. Perhaps every brave woman had to battle the coward the world made her out to be. Berenice dismissed the thought. The words sounded too much like her mother’s. If she wanted to be brave and strong and never soft, she would be.

Berenice broke the taut silence. “And so you fancy yourself a fighter for your people’s freedom? I’d have thought you wiser than that.”

“I’ve told it to you all wrong. My father wants to shake the Ptolemy yoke, but my father is useless and a drunk. I am neither.” Merytmut spoke quickly now; her nerves had caught up with her. “What difference does it make to me whether a Greek man or an Egyptian rules? The power would still lie far from the goddesses of old, far from mothers and daughters and wives. The priestesses taught me that as well.”

“I see.”

“And they’ve come to favor you,” the girl added, almost shyly. “You’ll always be welcome in Thebes, among the priestesses of Mut. But you know that already.”

Berenice laughed. Mut’s priestesses. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? She supposed she imagined them as shrunken as their goddess. All but drained from the earth. “And they were the ones who left me that vulture amulet? That token of their esteem?”

“The vulture is the mother’s symbol, my queen.”

“So it is,” Berenice replied thoughtfully. “So it is.”

When at last she returned to bed, Berenice fell asleep at once. A deep sleep bursting with propitious dreams.

Younger

G
anymedes squatted with unaccustomed grace, feet flush against the stone. His eyes slipped over the garden, the dancing nymphs, the purple columns, the cypress colonnade. Arsinoe had rarely seen him look so grave. But these were grave days: Seleucus was dead, and his men clashed with Berenice’s in the alleys and on the battlements. At night, Arsinoe heard their fighting too.

And it was her fault. She hadn’t meant for Berenice to kill her husband. It was Nereus that Arsinoe had wanted dead, in vengeance for Alexander. And that’s why she’d left out bits. She hadn’t told her sister that the Seleucids plotted to kill her. Besides, who would have believed her then? But now blood was spilling, splashing, spurting in the streets—because of her and her alone. At least this time it was no fault of her dreams.

Her tutor spoke at last. “I’m afraid I have bad news.” Arsinoe drank in his words with relief; she’d feared that he would come to chide her about her audience with Berenice. “You reveal too much,” he’d scold, and leave her to wonder at his meaning.

Alexander said nothing. He’d been quiet of late, and she avoided him, despite her nurse’s advice. He looked at Arsinoe but she couldn’t meet his eyes. Not now, when he’d already been bloodied by her recklessness. Not when she’d seen him dead and feasted on his flesh. The gods cursed her; she knew that with certainty. And curses had a nasty way of rubbing off on the people she loved most.

“What sort of bad news?” She wondered dully what had happened this time, whether matters could indeed get worse.

“Your father has failed.” The eunuch’s voice scarcely reached a whisper. “He can’t buy a Roman army. He won’t retake the throne.”

Her stomach fell away, sinking into the ground where she could not follow. She should scream and cry and wail as she had at Tryphaena’s funeral, but she felt nothing. Her father belonged to a different world, a dream world where she had been a princess. But that dream was dead and gone. What she had now was Berenice. But somewhere, far away, her other sister lived and died on their father’s fortunes.

“And Cleopatra—is she well?” Arsinoe ventured, though she dreaded the answer.

“As far as I know, both your father and your sister are in good health. They sail now to Ephesus.”

Her tutor squeezed her hand. She didn’t feel the pressure. The hand masquerading as her own at her arm’s end belonged to another girl. “It will turn out. You’ve done well under your sister’s rule. I would not fret.”

Arsinoe nodded. She would not fret.

“What of Seleucus’s men?”

The eunuch raised his brow. “What of them?”

“Will they take the palace?”

Ganymedes laughed, but not unkindly. “I daresay they will not. There will be scuffles, yes, but no more than that. Who would lead them in a palace coup? Their king is dead, and his storied empire dies with him. They’ll engage with the queen’s men, perhaps a few days longer. Some among them might even gather longer still and whisper words of revenge. But Berenice will root them out. The others will choose new masters, either the queen or the Romans who rule their lost lands. There are those who were born to lead, Arsinoe, and those who are meant to follow.”

So that was how it worked: the common folk were formed differently. Soldiers knew only how to follow. She wanted to ask another question, to ask what would happen to the man who’d attacked her and Alexander, the man she’d heard plotting with Nereus. But she didn’t dare. Any mention might remind Ganymedes of her visit with her sister. And she’d no intention of sitting through another lecture on the difference between rashness and boldness.

“Until our lesson, then, my dear.” The eunuch’s knees cracked as he stood. She watched him shuffle off to the palace.

“Arsinoe.” Alexander’s whisper tore the air. “I’m sorry.”

She wanted to turn back to him, to throw her arms about his neck and weep. She wanted, more than anything, to be comforted. But she had to be strong. She knew—she knew with certainty—what her dreams meant. She hadn’t merely seen Alexander’s death: she’d played a part in it. The closer they grew—the more their lives knit into each other’s—the more danger she put him in.

She held strong; she didn’t turn. Cruel, harsh, she answered, “Why?”

It shouldn’t be so difficult to drive away his love—she’d destroyed everyone else’s. Or else, perhaps, she’d never had it at all.

“I’m sorry that your father did not get his army.”

She shrugged and walked away. She would cast no more corpses.

As the weeks slid by, Alexander still sought her out to play, dogging her steps. But Arsinoe remained cold as ice, though at night she wept from loneliness. In time, he grew tired of her distance, and took to ducking her as well. She saw less and less of him outside their lessons, when she was forced to encounter those wounded gray-green eyes.

One afternoon, once Ganymedes had concluded a discussion of Plato’s early dialogues, Alexander left, again in silence. He’d turned so quickly on his heels that Arsinoe couldn’t have stopped him if she’d tried. Not that she would have tried. A child’s tears stung her eyes, and she buried her head in her hands. She dug the heels of her palms deep into her pupils. She wouldn’t succumb to weeping.

“Come now, my dear,” the eunuch said, placing a soothing hand on her elbow. “What’s this between you and Alexander that brings you so much grief?”

“What do you care? You’ve never liked him.” She didn’t trust Ganymedes’s pity.

“Your moping wearies me. It’s nearly impossible to teach two children who won’t so much as look each other in the eye.”

Arsinoe looked up and studied her tutor’s face, the worn lines along his eyes and mouth. Perhaps she could tell him after all. Maybe he would understand. She longed to confide in him—to confide in someone. If Cleopatra were here…But Cleopatra wasn’t here and never would be. Her sister had vanished across the wine-dark sea without so much as a letter of regret. Arsinoe did not know if she’d see her again. It was foolishness to seek her tutor’s counsel; she knew too well what he thought of visions. The delusions of madmen and fools.

“We’re not as close as we once were.” She shrugged. “That’s all. I don’t know why.”

Ganymedes’s expression softened; the lines smoothed along his brow. “My poor child. My poor, lonely girl. How many summers have you seen?”

“I’ll be ten soon,” she answered proudly. “Before the Nile falls.”

“And Alexander?”

“He turns twelve not long after.”

Her tutor gave her a sad smile, revealing only the tips of his broken teeth. “You see, my dear, this is why I wish Aspasia and Hypatia had remained. When you’re too young to tell the difference, a boy serves as well as a girl. But now—”

“What do you mean ‘too young to tell the difference’?” Did Ganymedes think her daft? She’d heard servants talk. She’d read the plays of Euripides. She knew what happened between a man and a woman.

“Someday, my dear, you’ll grow into a woman—”

“I know that!” She blushed roundly just the same. It was strange to hear Ganymedes talk of such things, all the more so since the eunuch would never grow into a man.

“And Alexander into a man,” her tutor went on. “And that day is no longer so very far off. He can’t remain your innocent childhood companion forever. At nearly twelve, he already begins to change. And these differences will only grow more…troublesome.”

Ganymedes was wrong. That wasn’t the way it would be with her and Alexander. What had sprouted up between them, between two abandoned children, had grown thicker, tougher than ordinary friendships. That was why she had to cut Alexander off. “You don’t understand. That isn’t what is happening.”

“What is it, then? If it’s not the natural separation of man from woman? You said that you yourself weren’t sure.” She heard the pity in her tutor’s voice. And hated it.

“I’m sure it’s not
that.
Our friendship’s made of firmer stuff. The silly sentiments that crop up between man and woman can’t spoil it. Alexander would follow me to the ends of the earth, down even to the depths of hell to capture Cerberus if I asked him.”

“Perhaps he would. But if that’s the case, you must ask yourself, Why does he slink away in silence? What drives this stake between you two, the best and greatest of friends?”

Arsinoe chewed on her thumbnail. She couldn’t tell whether the eunuch mocked her. If he even believed in friendship. After all, he didn’t have friends. He only had her.

“The truth isn’t gentle, little one,” her tutor said. “But I don’t tell it to wound you. I wish only to warn you of the changes to come.”

“But Ganymedes.” Her tongue battled her wiser nature.
Only fools believe in such madness—priests and witches and lunatics.
“There was—there is. There is something else. I had a dream—”

The eunuch’s hand trembled. He curled his lips and snapped, “Dreams are but the afflictions of a sick and troubled mind—nothing more. I told you not to mention such things to me again.”

That night, again she couldn’t sleep. Arsinoe didn’t dare close her eyes; otherwise, some wretched dream would come to haunt her. Myrrine thought they were blessings that foretold the truth. Ganymedes thought her mad.
The afflictions of a sick and troubled mind.
She tossed and turned and tossed again until she’d wrenched the coverlet clean off her mat. As she blinked at Pharos’s beacon, calling the sailors home, she knew what she must do.

It was not the first time she’d snuck from her rooms. When she’d been a frightened girl, she’d often crawled to Cleopatra’s bed on dark nights when the moon had shrunk to a sliver. Her sister would wrap her arms around her and keep her safe from Tryphaena’s shrieks. But this was different. She passed not only out of her chambers but into the cool sea air. Escape—if she could call it that—was easy. Myrrine slept as she always did: soundly and with snores so loud that they sometimes cracked Arsinoe’s fragile dreams. Luck ran in her favor: the day was dedicated to Apollo, and the guards had drunk more than their fill. They didn’t stir at a barefoot child’s steps.