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“Queen Stateira suffers from
dyscrasia
, an imbalance in the four humors. Her first digestion is inhibited, thus prohibiting the second, third, and fourth digestions,” the senior physician proclaimed that same night. Glaucus was as thin as the snake-entwined staff of Asclepius, the patron god of Greek physicians. “She possesses too much yellow bile, likely a result of the excitement of her marriage and the passion that ensued.”

Stateira moaned in pain and mortification. Her tent was freshly erected but already smelled of stale sweat and bile despite the slave girl’s having left to empty her befouled pail.

“The pain in her bowels comes from her overindulgences in hot foods,” the fattest of the physicians added, his three chins wobbling as he spoke. “I recommend withholding food during the paroxysms and introducing a diet of cucumbers, cold chickpeas, and a well-watered
ptisan
of barley for at least a week once the disease gives way.”

Another moan from Stateira. I couldn’t blame her, for the idea of barley gruel made my gut churn.

Alexander delayed our procession several times to better accommodate his Queen of Queens, but it was impossible to halt the journey altogether. Despite Stateira’s stubborn illness and our slow progress, we arrived in Ecbatana during the month
Ābān
, the time of waters or, according to the old calendar, the season of wolf killing.

It was there that the illness seemed to spread.

The city contained seven concentric walls all painted in different vivid hues and into those walls poured three thousand artists, actors, and singers from the greatest cities in Greece. Thus, Alexander plunged the entire army into an array of spectacles, each grown more extravagant than the next. Hephaestion dragged himself from his poetry and I from my schematics so we could be seen at bardic recitals and feats of sportsmanship. One night we returned from a display of Aristophanes’ comedy
Lysistrata
, a performance that had made me laugh so many times I lost count as the Greek women—masked actors dressed as women, of course—attempted to strong-arm their men into surrender by withholding sex during the Archidamian war between Sparta and the Athenian Empire.

“Perhaps something can be learned from Aristophanes’ little satire,” I said on our way back from the theater, smiling to myself as I kicked a rock and watched its trajectory before it hit the city’s third wall, painted the same scarlet as a whore’s lips. Come to think of it, the shade was exactly the same color Roxana had recently taken to wearing.

From the third wall we still had to pass beneath the blue, orange, silver, and gold battlements in order to reach Ecbatana’s palace and our new chambers. “If all the women of Persia had risen up, we might have stopped Alexander at the Gates of Ishtar. Of course, that would have also meant that the Persian women would have missed out on the joys of the Lioness on the Grater.” I’d been reading Philaenis of Samos and her studies on sexual positions and aphrodisiacs—much to Hephaestion’s delight—and the position mentioned in
Lysistrata
involved bending forward on all fours like a lioness crouched and ready to spring. I gave Hephaestion a sly smile. “Perhaps we should experience its joys ourselves tonight.”

I expected him to chuckle or expound the virtues of the position, but his brows were knit together and his face was pale against the torchlight.

“I know Aristophanes isn’t your favorite playwright,” I said, nudging him in the ribs, “but surely
Lysistrata
wasn’t so terrible.”

“
Lysistrata
was palatable, although the women were worse rascals than even you,” he said, but then he swayed on his feet. I yelped when he stumbled, halting his fall by grasping him around the waist. “I feel as if I’ve poured out all my blood on a battlefield.”

He panted as I pressed my palm to his forehead and frowned at the fire burning there. “You’re ill.”

“I’ve never been ill a day in my life.”

“There’s a first time for everything. It’s to bed with you as soon as we reach the palace.”

He rubbed his temples with one hand and gave a weak smile. “It seems you’re always trying to get me into bed.”

At least he wasn’t so ill he’d lost his sense of humor. I gave him an evil grin. “You’ve created a bit of a monster.”

He pulled me close and nuzzled my hair. “Sadly, I fear the Lioness on the Grater may have to wait.”

I let him lean on me for balance and gave a rather dramatic sigh. “I suppose I’ll grant you a reprieve. At least until tomorrow morning.”

Laughter rumbled in his chest and once we reached our new extravagant chambers in Ecbatana’s citadel, I sent a eunuch to fetch a physician and helped Hephaestion into bed myself. The leather thongs beneath the feather-stuffed mattress groaned with his weight and I piled blankets on him to ward off his shivering.

“You poor beast,” I said, tucking a fleece over my husband’s chest. My meager skills at nursing had improved slightly with Stateira’s recent bouts of illness, and I stoked the coals burning in the brazier to heat the room as Glaucus entered.

The aging physician made a great show of opening his portable medical box, an ingenious contraption with bronze doors and an immaculately organized collection of scalpels, ointments, drills, and hooks that I’d already riffled through once while he’d examined Stateira. He palpated Hephaestion’s chest and limbs, smelled his breath, and felt for his heartbeat, all the while ignoring my husband’s bellows to leave the blankets on before he froze to death. Finally, he straightened.

“Your pulse is sluggish,” he said to Hephaestion. “And you burn with a fever because you have too much yellow bile. You must drink an infusion of holly, partake in a diet of only cold foods, and consume plenty of
ptisan
until your temperature stabilizes.”

This time it was me who groaned at the familiar diagnosis and treatment. Stateira’s chambers smelled so of the foul barley sludge, I feared that all her silks would need to be burned and replaced. Now it was my room that would smell worse than a sickbed.

“I’ll arrange a tray for you,” I said, dropping a kiss on Hephaestion’s still-flaming forehead.

“A perfect opportunity to poison me,” Hephaestion muttered.

“How do you know I’m not already?” I asked, offering him my sweetest smile.

He gave a wry chuckle, then winced. “Because I’d wake with an ax of Damascus steel in my back if you were trying to kill me. Although it feels as you’ve already plunged it into my skull.”

Glaucus pledged to return in the morning and an attendant entered with a tray of the prescribed and utterly tasteless foods. Hephaestion took one look and waved them away with a grimace. “I’d sooner starve,” he said.

“Then starve you shall, husband,” I said, kicking off my slippers and sidling into bed next to him. I’d sleep on one of the couches tonight to avoid the great oaf’s fevered tossing all night, but for now, being next to him was the warmest place to ward off autumn’s encroaching chill.

I retrieved a book from an inlaid walnut chest. Our belongings were beginning to merge, but it was a simple matter to locate the right one, as Hephaestion kept his books ordered by subject in a more stringent manner than Glaucus’ medical box. “And while you starve,” I said, “I shall read you to sleep.”

He closed his eyes. “So long as it’s not more drivel from Aristophanes.”

“Even better,” I said, dropping my head scarf to the ground and snuggling in closer to him. “Aristotle’s
Metaphysics
. I’m particularly interested in his treatise on the Pythagorean theorem and how it can be applied to laying the corners of a rectangular building.”

Hephaestion groaned as if he were truly dying. “Where’s my sword?” he asked. “You may as well kill me now.”

I thumped his chest with the book. “Cease your prattle,” I said. “Or I’ll shove Glaucus’ chickpeas down your throat.”

“Fine,” he harrumphed. “But only because you have a lovely voice, when you’re not droning at me, that is.”

I read from Sappho instead of Aristotle that night, continuing until I was sure Hephaestion had drifted off to sleep. Yet as soon as I shifted, his fingers threaded through mine.

“My heart is tight, Drypetis.”

He spoke not in Greek, but in flawless Aramaic. I stared hard at his profile in the dark, wondering if he knew what those words meant in my language.

Surely not . . .

“I’ll send for the physician,” I said, but his fingers didn’t release mine.

“Not from the illness,” he said. “From you.”

“I don’t think you understand what you’re saying, at least not here in Persia.”

“You still think I’m just a thick-skulled soldier, don’t you?” He sighed, but squeezed my hand. “It means that I love you. And I do, much against my better judgment.”

“That’s the fever speaking,” I protested weakly, but Hephaestion released my hand to retrieve something through the folds of his discarded
chiton
.

“This is for you,” he said, revealing a thick gold chain that ended in a heavy pendant. “Icarus on one side of the bulla and his father, Daedalus, on the other. They were engineers, just like you.”

“I know who they were,” I said, my throat tight as I let him press the gift into my hand. I pushed the clasp and exclaimed as the pendant opened to reveal a hollow compartment.

Hephaestion chuckled, then winced. “I think most women would hide perfume in there. You could probably use it for a spot of axle grease or a spare nail or two.”

I didn’t know what to say.
Thank you
seemed so inadequate, yet I could scarcely form the words.

“I hate to disappoint you,” I finally said, “for unlike Daedalus and Icarus, I have no intention of flying into the sun.”

But Hephaestion only turned toward me and pulled me so my back fit against his chest.

“Don’t argue with a sick man,” he said, wrapping his arms loosely around me. “Wear your new bauble and go to sleep, wife.”

His bold declaration of love had paralyzed me just as surely as a phalanx of soldiers bearing down on me with deadly
sarissas
. Still, I smiled at Hephaestion’s warm breath on my neck and snuggled closer, for his love was an idea I could become accustomed to.

And so I fell asleep, the Icarus pendant around my neck, Hephaestion’s arms around me, and his words of love in my mind.

•   •   •

H
ephaestion was a man accustomed to being obeyed, and as such, he expected this inconvenient illness to follow his orders and depart immediately. Instead, he remained unable to rise from his bed for seven days, his limbs heavy with malaise and a strange spotted rash upon his chest that no compress of lavender or chamomile could chase away. There were no further words of love as his temper grew blacker until it would have been easier to please a bear dragged from its den in the height of winter than to please my ailing husband.

Alexander came to visit Hephaestion every day, often bringing gifts of new books. I remained in the shadows with a book or sketch to keep me busy, for although Alexander offered me the most polished of manners, he skirted me like the sea demon Charybdis, believing me to be unimportant but dangerous if provoked. However, as I cared little for the golden-haired conqueror, it suited me to remain in the periphery while he discussed the latest wrestling tournament or javelin contest with Hephaestion.

“Glaucus says you’re improving,” Alexander said on the seventh day, propping his heels up on a crate of freshly delivered Thessalian wine. “If you can rouse yourself, there will be a chariot race between Ptolemy and Seleucus tonight. I’d like you to award the olive wreath to the winner.”

I frowned at Alexander’s attempts to cajole Hephaestion from bed. Of course he didn’t realize that Hephaestion hadn’t even been able to dress himself today, despite Glaucus’ optimism that he would soon rally. My husband’s cheeks were sunken like those of a man twice his age and he’d lost at least a stone in weight over the past days, making me wonder whether Glaucus’ promises were aimed only to save both Alexander and Hephaestion from browbeating him.

“I shall do my best to please you,” Hephaestion said, struggling to sit, but Alexander waved away the attempt. I watched from the corner of my vision, ignoring the schematics in my lap and instead imagining the two men when they first marched out of Macedon, young and unscarred. The potent stab of jealousy made me feel petty and small. “By the way, congratulations about Roxana,” Hephaestion fairly croaked.

I looked up sharply at that. I’d been so immersed in alternating between Hephaestion’s sickbed and Stateira’s during her recent bout of illness that I’d heard almost no news about anyone else. The entirety of the Persian Empire might have succumbed to an army of India’s giant ants and I wouldn’t have noticed.

“You heard?” Alexander asked, a grin breaking out upon his face even as my heart fell. There was only one type of news regarding the Bactrian harlot that could make him glow hotter than the sun.

Hephaestion gave a weak nod. “I have my sources.”

Most likely he’d wrangled it from Glaucus when I was visiting Stateira. Hephaestion could persuade a rock to tell its secrets.

Alexander laughed. “I seem to recall a time when we did everything from your bed.”

I glanced at the cypress rafters, wondering if Alexander even remembered I was here.

“Those were the days,” Hephaestion said, glancing at me and wincing as he shifted in bed. “Still, it’s about time you had your heir.”

So the foulmouthed Bitch of Balkh—my nickname for Roxana, which never failed to tease a smile from Hephaestion—had finally conceived. If there were any justice in this world, she’d whelp a spotted desert jackal.

“With the blessings of the gods, by this time next year we might both have our heirs.” Alexander’s gaze strayed to me, but I became suddenly entranced with a sketch for a new type of battering ram. My monthly bloods had just ceased and Hephaestion had been too ill to attempt any seduction. “Did your spies tell you that Antipater is due to arrive any day?”

“I feel a headache coming on at the very thought,” Hephaestion grumbled.