Queen of Kings (7 page)

Tentatively, she stretched her fingers back into the light, and they blistered as though doused in boiling oil. She snatched them back, cradling her hand to her breast. Her eyes watered and sparked with the sun. Hissing with pain, she slammed the shutters closed again.

Had she offended Ra as well as his daughter? Might she throw open the shutters and die in the sunlight?

No. As she watched, her hand healed with agonizing speed. Where the flesh had been burned, there was smooth skin again. Soon, it was as though the burning had never happened.

It seemed that even this pain would only cripple her, and that only temporarily. She tried to calm herself by counting her heartbeats, but she could not find them.

She checked again. Nothing. Silence where there had always been motion and song, emptiness where her soul had been.

The goddess had taken her heart, her soul, her
ka
.

Cleopatra curled in the corner of her chamber, shaking, her hands clasped to her breasts, feeling the place where the darkness had touched her. Even if she died, without a heart to be weighed she could never enter Egypt's Underworld. She could not follow Antony. She imagined herself ferried across the water to the Island of Fire, Osiris standing on the shore waiting to judge her. What would she offer him? She had nothing.

She sat in darkness, listening to the sound of nothing, listening to the beat of nothing, feeling the hollow space within her breast.

At last, after days of Cleopatra's solitude, Eiras and Charmian arrived to dress the queen's hair and paint her face for her audience with the emperor. The maids held up a mirror of polished metal so that the queen could catch her reflection. In it, she was beautiful but for the sunken cheeks that no paint could hide, and the mark of Sekhmet's fangs bright against the skin of her throat.

Cleopatra looked into her own eyes for the first time since Antony's death and saw a stranger inhabiting her skin. She drew in her breath sharply.

This stranger hungered to kill everyone in the palace, she realized for the first time. Everyone in the city. Cleopatra's fingers flexed, endowed with strange fire. The thing inside her, the thing she was not ready to accept as her own, hungered to kill everyone in the
world
, and perhaps it was capable of doing so.

Everyone except herself.

She felt a sound rising, humming behind her lips, a roar that might shatter glass, that might avalanche a city, and from deep inside her body, from deep inside her mind, something spoke to her.

You are mine,
the voice said, dark and shining as any night
.

Cleopatra shuddered, panicked. What thoughts were these? What voice had stolen Antony's words? Flickering images paraded through her mind, lakes of blood, cities destroyed. Things she'd never seen. Things she would never have wished to see.

Charmian took her hand, concerned.

“Are you well, lady?” she asked. Cleopatra straightened her spine, feeling flickers of flame running down it, willing herself to stay seated. Madness. It was clearly madness. She must resist it. She touched her brow, expecting to find it burning, but it was as cold as marble.

Eiras dabbed at her eyelids, painting them the gleaming green of sacred insects, bordering her lashes with warmed kohl.

“Perfect,” said the girl, though her brow furrowed as she brushed her mistress's strangely icy lips with carmine.

Together, Eiras and Charmian braided her hair, frowning at the thread of silver that had appeared in it since Antony's death, a glittering ribbon.

She was no longer young, Cleopatra realized suddenly. The sun god had seen her face for thirty-eight years, though he saw it no more. She felt ancient, and yet she was no closer to the grave than these girls were. Death did not want her.

“He is yours, lady,” said Charmian, draping the fine linen gown lower on Cleopatra's bosom, arranging the lapis pendants and diadem to better frame her face. “Your Caesar was this man's kin. Surely, they share the same temptations. No man can resist you, if only you smile.”

“You'll bewitch this man, as you have every other,” Eiras assured her, daubing perfumed oil behind Cleopatra's ears, scattering flecks of gold dust on her naked shoulders. Somehow, the maids had forgotten what they'd seen in the mausoleum, or were too loyal to speak of it.

Charmian twined a jeweled snake about Cleopatra's arm and wrapped a silken veil around her throat to hide the evidence of the goddess. There was that, at least, to prove Cleopatra's memory. Those two fang marks, swollen at the edges, burning with an invisible fire.

She wanted to disappear, to die as she had been meant to die, but instead, the first citizen of Rome desired her to dine with him. He feared that she was planning a death by starvation, a martyrdom that would reflect badly on him.

“Eat something,” Eiras begged, offering her a platter of sliced figs, in better days her favorite fruit. The scent, the seeping red centers, revolted her. She would starve to death if she only could. Her stomach twisted with hunger; her mouth was parched with thirst; yet water nauseated her, and wine held no allure. She could not eat.

She'd kill Octavian, she promised herself. He would pay for Antony's murder. It
was
murder. Antony had been alive when the legionary stabbed him. She would make the emperor of Rome pay for her lover's death, no matter what it cost her.

“The emperor approaches,” Eiras whispered.

Cleopatra looked up, but it was not Octavian who entered the room. He'd sent her children instead.

The ten-year-old twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, ran toward Cleopatra. The sun and moon, she and Antony had named them, imagining themselves, the royal parents—oh, she regretted it now—to be the sky. The baby, Ptolemy Philadelphus, just four, scampered in behind them, grinning wildly at his mother, his face smeared with sweets.

He had them, Octavian was telling her. They were at his mercy should their mother not provide what he desired.

An icy wave of misery ran through her. She loved her children. She'd often dismissed the governesses and tutors, and spent hours teaching her children to talk and write and read, sharing with them her command of the languages of the world. She'd cooed at them in Arabic, chided them in Greek, praised them in Egyptian, denied them in Macedonian. She'd fed them in Hebrew, and now that they were growing tall, she advised them in Latin.

“Mama,” Ptolemy cried, the joy in his voice crumpling what was left of her calm. The cleft in his chin, the tilt of his head—

Her children were the images of Antony. Each face brought his face back to her, the nights spent drinking and dancing, his hands on her waist, his lips on her throat, and the memories grieved her anew. She could see it as if it were happening again, the two of them sharing one cloak, walking the streets of their city, pretending to be common people. They'd thought themselves immortal, but he had been wrong. And she? She had not imagined they would end like this, herself bereft of a husband, her children bereft of their father, and all of them broken.

She could feel the absence blasting through her center even now, the horrible feeling she'd had in the mausoleum, the emptiness, the bleak, black sky, and her heart missing, her skin frozen, her love halting and hopeless.

Ptolemy climbed into her lap, nuzzling into her arms, and though she tried to stay strong, she clutched him. She did not want to show Octavian that she loved them. If he knew this, he'd be more likely to kill them.

“Send them away,” she ordered, desperate to keep herself from crying in front of her children. Their father was dead. Did they not know it? Cleopatra had grown up with only a father, her mother having died birthing her. Did her children not feel the strangeness inside her?

“But, Mama,” said Ptolemy, tears already streaking his face. He had a toy with him, a small lion carved out of ebony, and he showed it to his mother. His fingers on the toy were chubby, and she knew he would never survive without her. He was a baby still. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she held him tighter for a moment, then let him go.

He stared at her, bewildered. His eyes looked just like Antony's had in those last moments. Antony, who'd been convinced she had betrayed him.

The twins comforted their brother. Cleopatra Selene, the beautiful, black-haired daughter, looked back as she was led toward the doorway. Her eyes smoldered at Cleopatra.

“Who are you?” she asked, her tone sharp. “You are not our mother.”

Cleopatra was silent for a moment, though her daughter's words felt as the sun had, searing and blistering. What did her daughter see?

“I am not well,” Cleopatra told her finally, her voice shaking. “Your mother is not well.”

“They say you betrayed our father,” Selene said.

“They lie!” Cleopatra shouted. Her sons cringed away from her, and she pushed herself back into her chair. She should not scream at this child. Her own child. “Who told you that?”

“They say that you killed a man in the mausoleum,” the daughter persisted, her eyes wide and scared but her tone harsh.

“Who says that?” Cleopatra asked again. “Tell me who.”

“Is it true?”

“You must not speak to your mother that way, Selene,” said a voice from the doorway. “It is not respectful. She is your queen.”

Cleopatra raised her head slowly.

There the monster stood, a slight blond man with unsettlingly pale gray eyes. He had not bothered to put on formal dress for the meeting.

Ptolemy ran to the conqueror, and Octavian scooped the child up into his arms. Cleopatra stood up, her muscles aching with the effort of remaining on her own side of the room. She must keep them safe. She must pretend she didn't care.

Octavian put Ptolemy down and waved his hand at Cleopatra's twins. They let themselves be led from the chamber, only Selene looking back.

“You betrayed
us
,” Selene said. “They say you betrayed our father, but you betrayed us.”

Then they were gone.

Octavian sat down disrespectfully in Cleopatra's chair, leaving her standing. He appraised the queen, slowly looking her up and down. Discomfited, she sat on her couch. She would not be forced onto the bed.

“I thought you'd be beautiful,” he finally said, “given all the lives you've ruined.”

In spite of her pain, Cleopatra nearly laughed. Was this the conversation they'd have, here, now, after all that had come before? Did he think beauty mattered to her? And yet, even as she thought this, she wondered what she looked like. Was she no longer beautiful, even gilded and glittered, wrapped in diaphanous silks like a gift to the conquerors? No. She'd seen herself in the mirror. He was merely trying, in his small way, to wound her.

She was disgusted to realize he'd succeeded.

“Just as I thought you would be a man,” hissed Cleopatra. “It seems we are both disappointed.”

“You've dallied too long in the company of eunuchs and drunkards,” Octavian said. “It is no wonder you do not recognize a man when you see one. Your consort—”

“My
husband
,” Cleopatra corrected.

“My sister Octavia's husband, Mark Antony, was a glutton. He never saw wine nor woman he didn't sample. You were an exotic meal, nothing more. He tasted Cleopatra, and then he moved down the table, dipping his spoon in every other dish. You do not imagine your lover was faithful, do you? Not to Fulvia, not to Octavia, and certainly not to you.”

Cleopatra was not injured by this liar. Antony had had a queen at his disposal, ready to make love to him and counsel him on battle, all at once. They'd spent countless nights together, their bedchamber filled with soft silks and sea charts, Cleopatra plotting the routes of his ships even as he kissed her thighs. What need could he have had for other women when he was married to an equal? No. It was not true.

“What is it you want from me?” she asked Octavian. “I have nothing for you.”

“A friendly meeting,” the boy general said, and smiled an unfriendly smile.

In other days, she would have wooed him. Talked sweetly, extended her arms in graceful motions, sung and danced, shown him his importance. She'd done as much in the past and profited by it, with his adoptive father no less, smuggling herself into Julius Caesar's chambers, wrapped in a carpet, then rolling out of it like a spirit and slipping directly into his bed. Time had passed, though, and things had changed. She could not find it in herself to seduce her enemy today. It was as though her past did not belong to her.

And there was something disgusting about Octavian. He smelt of nothing. What was he, this thing adopted into emperor?

“Libations?” she offered.

“I do not drink,” he replied.

“I suppose you don't eat, either,” she said.

“Not while a queen starves before me,” he said, and smiled, revealing small and somewhat crooked teeth. He drew the gilded chair toward her couch.

“Such courtesy is unusual in a barbarian,” she commented.

“I am a family man. My daughter Julia is my chief joy. I would not have your children lose a mother,” he said. “Bastards though they are.”

Her skin prickled with fury. “They are not bastards,” she replied. “Their mother is a queen. I doubt the Romans would understand.”

Octavian leaned forward, his elbow on his knee.

“Unless you dine with me,” he said, his voice and smile unchanged, “I will be forced to slit your bastards' throats.”

She inhaled deeply, scenting this nothing man. She would rip out what heart he had, and she would drink his watery blood.

“What would you have me eat?” she asked, her tone savagely polite. “I see no emperor's banquet here. Shall I dine upon
you
?”