Keeper of the Flame (38 page)

Past her private chamber where she had hidden for so long.
Shedding her isolation with each painful step. “
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.”

Yes, she felt that keen sorrow. Felt it swell in devastation through her heart, yet somehow give strength to her climb.

She was nearly to her roses when she heard the yelling.

It bubbled up from below, echoing through the central shaft. They had breached the Base, had entered the tower itself.

She slipped out to her garden platform. The roses were open to the moonlight tonight, their blooms spread wide, so vulnerable and so beautiful. The scent of them drowned all others, as though the city were not filled with smoke.

She stood at the doorway, listening.

The voices below were too muddied together to distinguish words. But they were moving upward. She waited, her heart pounding.

Their shouted conversation grew clear. Greek, with some Egyptian woven through. Not Latin. Not Romans.

But they would find a Roman when they reached the beacon chamber.

She strained to hear. How many?

Two, she thought. Or perhaps three.

She searched the platform for a weapon. An unlit torch. Several heavy terra cotta pots.

Should she yell to warn Bellus? Or remain silent, to attack in surprise? Her hands fluttered in indecision, then settled on the torch.

They would have two tiers to climb after her attack. That should be time enough for Bellus to ready himself.

She waited.

They pounded upward, heedless that she stood outside the
door at the top of the ramp, the torch held out from her body like an oily club.

Slap, slap, slap
. Their sandals beat an even rhythm. Sophia pictured them circling upward, measured their progress.

She took a deep breath, adjusted her grip on the torch. And then the first came into view.

She swung. And she yelled.

The Egyptian soldier dropped like a stone thrown into the sea.

But it was not a second Egyptian soldier who violated the purity of her rose garden.

The entrance filled with the tall figure and patrician face of Pothinus.

Sophia’s torch dipped. She jerked it aloft again.

“Come, Sophia,” Pothinus said. “We are not brutish soldiers, we are scholars. I have come for the Proginosko and nothing more. No one need be hurt.”

Another soldier appeared behind Pothinus. Sophia raised the torch but he caught the end with both hands and wrenched it from her.

She scowled. “I would sooner let the Romans have it!”

Pothinus laughed. “Yes, one in particular, I hear. But I doubt even the Proginosko could purchase the affections of a Roman for you.”

The truth of his words pierced the vulnerable place in her heart, but still she had hope for the scholars and the Proginosko. She could not defeat Pothinus herself.

But she had opened her lighthouse to another, one who might be their only salvation.

Forty-Six

C
leopatra stood on the roof of the royal palace with the harbor and the city burning beneath. Her eyes were not on the flaming ships, however. Nor the riots in the streets, nor even the lighthouse and its yellow flame.

Instead, she watched the man at her side, his chiseled profile fit for sculpture, his shoulders held back and his chest out.

“How goes the battle?” she asked, not taking her eyes from him.

His brow puckered. “We have them running.”

She did not know whether his words were truth or mere bravado. With all the scheming and backstabbing and even royal assassinations she had witnessed in her privileged life, Cleopatra was still unfamiliar with war.

She shifted between overflowing flower pots to get closer to the wall. “The warehouses are burning.”

“Hmm.” Caesar’s response told her nothing.

“So much fire.”

He glanced at her. “Do not blame your burning city on me. Your crazed citizens are the ones shooting their flaming arrows as though they are nothing but children’s toys.”

Cleopatra held her tongue. His mood was dark.

Her mind played with possible outcomes.

If the Romans should fall to the incoming Egyptian army and the city’s mob, would she be able to convince the people of her right to rule alongside her brother? Or would her father’s wishes, his will, be disregarded?

Caesar crossed his arms over his chest and growled at some loss below.

If the Romans crushed the Egyptian army, would Caesar let her stand at his side? After all these weeks together, still she could not be certain of his feelings.

It is all waiting now
. Between two armies, her fate hung suspended, uncertain.

She could do nothing now to sway the affections of the people. But she was not powerless. Not by far.

She sidled closer to Caesar, wrapped a warm hand around his upper arm, still crossed and tensed.

“We must finish this tonight,” he said. “The army is close, too close.”

“The Egyptian fleet was foolish to attack without their army in place.”

Caesar laughed, a condescending sort of chuckle that made her shoulders tighten. “Silly girl.”

She realized her mistake. Caesar had engineered the start of the battle early, to weaken the fleet and the city before the army’s arrival. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and studied the chaos below, breathing so hard she felt her nostrils flare.

From the palace roof the battle sounds were muffled, and a view of the entire harbor was afforded to her. She held her fingers aloft and formed a circle that encompassed all she could see.

Would that my fingers were a net I could draw around it all
. A net drawn tight to secure her world, control it.

“Your friend is causing us some trouble.” He jutted his chin toward the lighthouse.

She dropped her hands. A flower brushed at her side and she
tore it from its stem. “The lighthouse has always been Sophia’s duty to preserve.”

“Sophia.” He huffed out her name in derision. “You are young and naïve, Cleopatra. Too young to know when you have given too much power to someone who should not hold it.”

Cleopatra shredded the red flower petals and let them float to the rooftop. “Or perhaps I have secured the loyalty of those who
already
hold power.”

He looked sideways at her, his eyes narrowed. “No matter. She will not hold it long.”

“What have you done?”

He shrugged. “The light needs to be extinguished tonight. Our ships are all in the harbor. We do not need to guide in our enemy’s reinforcements.”

Cleopatra followed his gaze out to the lighthouse. Would he have Sophia killed? She wavered between the need to remain at Caesar’s side and the instinct to warn Sophia.

I need her. No one else loves me like she.

Caesar did not comment when she slipped from his side and crossed to the steps from the rooftop.

In her own chamber, Cleopatra lit an oil lamp and pulled out papyrus and ink. She leaned over the desk and scratched out a warning, then blew on the words to dry them. Some of the ink spread with the force of her breath. No matter. The message would be received.

She rolled the papyrus, tied it with a leather cord, and went to the door, intending to call for a servant to deliver it.

The door burst inward.

Cleopatra cried out, stumbled backward, dropped her missive.

They were Egyptian, that much she saw in the flash of dark
skin and white skirts and angry eyes. She smelled the odor of sweat and battle, heard their exultant shout at finding her, and then their hands were on her arms like iron clamps.

They dragged her from the room. She did not go quietly.

In the hall outside her chamber she saw two guards in a pool of their mingled blood, throats slit.

Fear mixed with bile in her chest.

She dug her heels to the stone, pulled at their arms and yelled. They clawed at her, trying to keep their grip.

One of them let go to cut down another palace guard. But the guard hacked her attacker’s arm, before the sword went through him, and left him unable to hold both sword and Cleopatra.

The other grabbed her around the waist and flung her over his shoulder.

She pounded his back with her fists and kicked her feet into his gut.

They ran through the palace hall, and the memory surged of Apollodorus, bringing her to Caesar, rolled in a carpet, and slung on his back.

So long ago.

Footsteps pounded behind them. She tried to lift her head.

A shout, a clash of swords, a thrashing of legs and clothes and hair.

She was on the ground. Eyes closed. Breath coming in gasps.

Unhurt.

She bolted upright, swept the hall with her gaze.

Her attackers lay dead. Three Roman legionaries wiped their swords.

And Caesar knelt before her and swept her up in his arms. She closed her eyes and leaned against him.

“Are you hurt?” He touched her arms, her legs, her belly.

“I am well. Thank you. For rescuing me.”

He crushed her to himself. “I could not live if you had been taken from me.”

She smiled in his embrace and closed her eyes, a warmth spreading through her.

The road ahead stretched out with some uncertainty, but there in the arms of Rome’s most powerful man, Cleopatra knew her world was forever changed. She was learning new lessons in power now, and in the future she would wield the power with sure and steady hands.

She thought of the scribbled message to Sophia, still lying on the floor of her chamber. But it was only a fleeting thought, for in truth, she did not need Sophia any longer.

Caesar is mine.

Forty-Seven

F
rom his dark and smoky vigil beside the extinguished lighthouse flame, Bellus heard the cry below him.

He leaped to his feet, sword drawn in one fluid motion, ears strained to hear any approach.

But the fight was far below, and only the strange acoustics of the lighthouse had carried the sound to him, as through a huge, vertical tunnel.

He stood inside the doorway of the uppermost tier, ready to spin down the steps.

Had the two servants brought help?

He tightened his grip on his sword, his jaw clenched. If he allowed them to light the fire, more troops would come and everyone in the lighthouse would be slaughtered. Could he kill a few innocents to save many? To save Sophia?

But then another cry shot upward to him, and he knew the voice.

It was hers.

He took the steps in pairs, twisting downward through the circular tier, then through the next doorway and down the steps of the octagonal. He slowed. The angry words were close now.

In the rose garden.

The thought was incongruous, somehow.

He braced his feet on the bottom step of the second tier, his back to the wall. Slowed his breathing. Listened.

A cultured laugh, arrogant and condescending. A mocking comment about himself, he suspected, that hardened the muscles of his arms and tightened his jaw.

A moan came from the floor near Bellus’s hiding place. Another voice joined the conversation, this one dulled with pain, near Bellus’s feet. “Kill her, Pothinus. Be done with it.”

Bellus flexed his fingers around the hilt of his gladius. He pivoted off the step, jumped over the figure that lay doubled on the floor. His blood surged, hot and fierce, in his veins.

Sophia saw him there behind Pothinus and another soldier. Her face was pale as the full moon, her eyes dark. A rush of desire to protect her filled his chest.

The Egyptian soldier whirled, in his hand an unlit torch. He swung it outward from his body. Bellus stepped to the side, out of range. He felt the thorns of blood-red roses prick his calves. Pothinus retreated to hide behind Sophia.

The Egyptian lifted the torch above his head, and Bellus felt a twinge of regret that it was not Pothinus whom he must kill.

The torch crashed down, but he dodged. Sophia cried out. Bellus spun an arc around the Egyptian and brought his sword between them, a sure and steady defense.

He saw Sophia move toward them, behind the Egyptian.

No, Sophia. Step back.

The Egyptian sensed his moment of fear, saw his distraction, knew the cause. He grinned, then swung the torch backward.

The heavy wood caught Sophia in the stomach. Bellus heard the air whoosh from her lungs, saw her crumple over the club.

Battle fury filled him.

Before the Egyptian could regroup for another thrust, Bellus ran at him. A scream tore from his throat. He drove the end of his sword into the Egyptian’s middle. The man’s eyes bulged and Bellus yanked the sword from his gut, breathing out his revenge.

Sophia lay on her side on the platform amid her roses, watching him with silent, smoky eyes.

His mind and heart churned with fear and with regret.
Sophia
.

He heard his sword clatter to the floor. He fell forward to Sophia, his eyes on hers.

But the emotions had made him foolish. Behind him, the scrape of sandals on wood. He turned only a moment before the second Egyptian fell upon him with a short dagger.

He scrambled for where his sword should have been sheathed. Not there.

The Egyptian’s blade dug into his shoulder.

Other side. Pugio
. Fingers closed around it.

Up from below, into the side of his attacker.

The blade was too short for death to be instant. The Egyptian’s fury carried him past the pain and he raised his own knife again.

From deep within, a yell of rage raced through Bellus’s chest, his throat. He brought his forearms against the man’s chest and shoved.

Back, back across the platform. Through the doorway. Past the steps upward. Past the ramp downward.

To the center shaft. Still he pushed and the Egyptian scrambled backward, until they slammed against the low wall that formed the shaft. Bellus stared into the whites of the man’s eyes until they tipped away with his head and shoulders, then were joined by his chest, his trunk, his legs. The Egyptian screamed as he fell, and the sound of it filled the shaft, as though he pitched straight into the Underworld itself.