Stealing Fire (20 page)

Bagoas opened his mouth and then shut it again. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I could. In Persia and in most of the kingdoms of the East that is a eunuch's job. If one is lucky, when one's looks have faded and one is no longer a royal favorite, one learns how to run the Household. Amina is a Persian lady of noble rank. If she is the principal lady in waiting to Eurydice, she would expect to work with the eunuch who runs the Household.”

“There is also Eurydice's aunt, Berenice,” I said. “She seemed very sensible to me, though she only speaks Greek too. But I think she will be useful in time.” My left arm was cramping where I leaned on it, the muscles in the lower arm beginning to ache again, and I shifted, lying more on my side and shoulder, though it turned my head away from Bagoas. “Come to Alexandria. I will speak to Ptolemy about it. Will you come if he asks you?”

His voice was low. “I will come if he asks me,” Bagoas said. “But I am not asking you to do me favors or intercede with me at court.”

I stretched my arm where it was cramping. “I am not doing you favors,” I said. “I have a job I do not know how to do, and you are the one who does. Consider rather that I am recruiting someone who will make my work easier. If you take the problems of the palace and Eurydice off my hands it is I who will owe you a debt of gratitude.” Raised in Miletus as I was, I understood the obligation of favors. I did not want Bagoas to owe me, especially when the coin he had to pay was not something I should like to claim. At least not as obligation. I ducked my face against the couch pillows under the cover of stretching my sore shoulder.

And should I want it if it were offered freely, not in repayment of favors?

I should be mad not to, I thought. Where in the world was there another so beautiful, whose company I enjoyed more? Would not any man be mad to refuse those green eyes and that whiplash-fine body, honed by years of dancing and acrobatics? I had seen him dance once, in the games after Gedrosia, and though my heart had not been in it, I could hardly have missed how beautiful he was, each long, slow walkover demonstrating perfect control.

We had both aged since then. I thought with a shock that it had been nearly five years. It didn't seem so long. But Alexander had been dead two and a half years, and Sati almost five. In two months I should be twenty-nine. Surely Bagoas was not much younger.

Of course I would want him. But I knew enough to say nothing. It is that way, in friendships with women or eunuchs. If one truly wishes for friendship, one must never admit the possibility of anything else.

“You would like Alexandria,” I said, my face still turned from him, stretching casually against the couch pillows.

“And what is it that I would like?” he asked. He sounded relieved that we ventured back onto safer ground.

“It's beautiful,” I said. “The harbor is a perfect crescent, white sand and blue water. And along the main streets the city is growing, with fine houses and markets and everything else. When it's done it will be the most beautiful city in the world. And Alexander will have the most magnificent tomb ever built, better even than the Mausoleum at Halicarnassos. Believe me when I say the Egyptians know how to build tombs!”

At this he laughed as I hoped he would. “I have been to see the pyramids,” he said. “And the ones at Saqqara near where the tombs of the Apis bulls are. Is it true that Ptolemy means for Alexander to lie there?”

“Only for a little while, perhaps,” I said. “Until his tomb is ready in Alexandria. But for now he must remain within the city walls of Memphis.”

“Perdiccas.”

“Perdiccas,” I agreed. “He will come in a few months, as soon as he has had time to assemble his army. And I am useless.” I stretched out my hand on the cushion. It would go flat only with effort.

“Surely not useless,” Bagoas said, and I felt him shift behind me. “There is more to you than your hand. Must you be in the front of the charge? Cannot you command from the rear?”

“I suppose,” I said doubtfully, trying to straighten my forefinger entirely. “It's not done.”

“In Macedon,” said Bagoas, taking my hand in his and straightening it gently, his fingers digging into my palm where it was sore. “But why would Ptolemy want to be rid of the man who stole the hearse and brought it to Pelousion? Even if you can't fight on horseback there is nothing wrong with your mind.” He flexed my fingers again, working the muscle below my thumb. “Does that hurt?”

“Only in a good way,” I admitted. “Mostly it hurts all the time, my hand and my wrist and my arm.” It was good to be appreciated, I thought. It was a nice piece of work stealing the hearse, and I did not at all mind being told so.

“Let me see what I can do,” Bagoas said, shifting about again so that he sat beside me, one hand on my arm above the elbow.

“I am sorry I fell asleep on you when you worked on my shoulder before,” I said. “It was the wine, and it was very late.”

“Well, you are supposed to relax,” he said, and I heard the smile in his voice. He plucked at the back of my chiton. “Take this off and let me get at it properly.”

“If you don't mind too much,” I said. I had never known the removal of clothing to be the duty of the conscientious host, but I thought that while fortune favored the bold generally, it would not in this case. Better to let him set the pace, and to be certain what he wanted. I twisted about trying to pull my chiton over my head with my one good hand.

“Let me help.” He untwisted my sleeve where I had gotten tangled up and took it gracefully.

I had never adopted the Persian fashion of trousers, except occasionally to ride, so this left me in nothing but my skin, stretched out on my stomach on the couch. Not that I felt I had much to hide. After all, you're always nude in the gymnasium, and ten years on horseback does develop your posterior.

“Here.” He pulled the leopard skin from the end of the couch and tucked it over me from the waist down. “You wouldn't want to take cold.”

“No, of course not,” I said. I was beginning to see where this was going as he began to knead my sore shoulder with scented oil. Not many people keep a bottle of scented oil within hand's reach during dinner! Even I am not quite that dim.

I found it difficult not to drift into a stupor under his expert attention. “It smells wonderful,” I said. “What is it?”

“Lemon,” Bagoas said, “and some other things. Nabatean myrrh oil, which warms the skin, rose and star of the sea.”

“You're so much better than the boy at the gymnasium,” I mumbled.

“I should think so,” Bagoas said, and there was a smile in his voice. “In Persia we do think one should be properly trained before one is sent to the Great King.” I had never heard him speak of his life before Alexander, and I wondered at it. I did not suppose that it could have been very pleasant, serving Darius. He was perhaps not a cruel man, but a vain man and a coward does not make much of a master. I had been a slave myself, and there were certainly many men I would not have cared to serve in the bedroom.

“Did you have lessons?” I asked, wanting to know more of him without putting in at any bad bit he should not like to remember.

“I did indeed,” he replied. “It is a great deal of work. There's a good bit more to it than being pretty. There are pretty boys in every marketplace.”

“Yes, I see,” I said. Thais had said much the same once. There are pretty slave girls everywhere, but an Athenian hetaira is something else entirely.

“I had lessons in this, how to serve at the bath and at the table, and in all of the ceremonial of court, and of course in dance and music, though I fear I am not much of a musician.” His hands were both gentle and thorough. “Some eunuchs keep a sweet voice all their lives, but I had not much of a voice to begin with. Something of a disappointment,” he said, and I heard the edge in his voice again.

Yes, I thought. A disappointment like a colt one has bought because its sire was fleet as the wind, only to find out the colt takes after its dam. We are no more than that, when we are slaves. We are no more than the colt.

“I think a beautiful voice is overrated,” I said.

“Do you?” he said, and I heard him smile.

“I can't sing either,” I said.

“No one expects a cavalry general to sing.”

“Well, is there much call for the Master of the Household to sing either?” I asked.

“I am not yet Ptolemy's Master of Household,” Bagoas said, but there was no heat in it. I had steered away from that edge.

Then he began to work on the backs of my thighs, and I found it difficult to keep a thought in my head.

“Turn over,” he said at last.

I took a deep breath. “That will be rather… um…” I said, trying to turn over while keeping the leopard skin strategically draped. “I can't help it that…”

I looked up to see him smiling down at me, his long black hair nearly sweeping across my chest. “I can be more discouraging,” Bagoas said, and leaned down and kissed me.

At which point there was really no more need for words.

THE GATHERING
STORM

I
dreamed, and in my dream I stood in the desert. Above us, the dawn sky stretched pale blue, the last stars disappeared. We had marched all night. It was easier thus, with so little water.

Now we camped in a steep wadi whose sheltering walls would give us some respite from the sun. I took my helmet off and scrubbed my whole left hand across my sweat-damp hair. Sati had already pitched our tent and was putting a handful of lentils to soak in a scant handful of water. Sikander was playing in the dust beside her, one little hand clasped around a pretty stone. The horses drowsed heads down in the picket line. We would have some rest before the next night's grueling march.

I turned because Ghost Dancer had suddenly gone up on his hind legs, fighting Hephaistion's groom. I started toward him, wondering what was wrong as he jerked the bridle from the boy's hand and took off at a full gallop, his long, lean legs covering ground.

Behind him, I saw it, a sudden puff of vapor in the air up the wadi and behind it a rolling sound like thunder. Somewhere, perhaps hundreds of miles away, a violent rainstorm had broken, and now all that water came roaring down the narrow channel of the wadi straight toward the camp.

The boy groom shouted, and I saw one of the King's squires turn around.

Slowly, so slowly as though we all moved underwater, I saw Sati lift her head, saw her brows knit together.

I ran. I always ran. In this dream as in life I ran so slowly, so endlessly slowly.

She dropped the pot, the precious lentils spilling on the ground. I saw her scoop Sikander onto her hip, saw his mouth open in a startled wail.

I ran. I ran toward them, straight toward the wave high as temples that crashed down, tossing horses in the picket lines like straws, tents and men and all. I ran straight toward the wave and Sati ran toward me, Sikander on her hip.

My arm closed around her and the baby, and the wave broke, her mouth open in a soundless scream.

The water tore me loose and threw me hard against something, the weight of my steel breastplate holding me down. Holding me underwater. Holding me underwater.

I
WOKE GASPING
for breath stretched beside Bagoas and struggled up from covers and pillows.

I sat on the side of the bed and buried my face in my hands.

Bagoas said nothing, just put his arm around my back, and when I said nothing began to stroke the back of my neck. I wondered how often he had done this before, and for whom.

“I can never get there any faster,” I whispered. “No matter how many times I do it, I never get there any faster.”

“You never will,” he said.

“I know,” I said. Even in my dreams I would know that was not true. “They were burned on a pyre with the other dead, their ashes scattered to the desert winds.” I bent my head. “I should have died. I should have died too.”

“You were simply lucky,” Bagoas said. “As was I.” He had been there too. But he was not a child and he could swim.

“I am not sure that I am lucky,” I said. “I am not sure I would have wanted to live.”

“If you had not, who would remember them?” Bagoas asked.

Tears fell from my eyes. “No one,” I said. Who in all the world would mourn the passing of a bad-luck bride, of a baby who lived ten months under the sun, who was nothing to anyone except me, because he was my son? Who would ever remember them?

“Their memory would blow like their ashes except for you,” Bagoas said. “So you must live and remember, and perhaps one day tell another son of his brother that was, that he may pour a libation too.”

“I will never have another son,” I choked. “I will never marry again.”

“You should,” Bagoas said, his hands working gently on the back of my neck. “You need someone to take care of you.”

“I do not,” I said.

Bagoas chuckled. “Yes, you do. You should find a good woman to take care of you. You are meant for a family.”

“And you?”

Bagoas shrugged. “What has that to do with us?”

“I know it's usual, but it seems so very complicated.” I lay back down at his urging, and he leaned across my back, his long hair brushing my shoulders. Most men had a wife and a lover both, but I had no idea how I would find the energy. It seemed hard to manage both at once without bad feeling and neglecting one or the other. It was on the tip of my tongue to mention Alexander and Roxane, but I thought better of it.

“I am not looking for a patron,” Bagoas said, stretching. “I don't want that.”

“I know,” I said. Like Thais, he had his pride, and would come and go as he pleased. Like Ptolemy, I respected that.

I did not suppose he had ever had the choosing of it before, to say yes or no as he wished. I could not imagine that the King had been unkind, but he was the King, and one does not say no.

“Perhaps Ptolemy can find someone for you,” he said. “I imagine he would if you asked him.”

“I'm not about to ask Ptolemy for a bride,” I said, but I wondered. Who but me should remember, and should I be the last? Did I have any love left to offer a young woman, a new baby? I would not want to marry and give her nothing except memories and bitterness.

“Maybe something will come up,” Bagoas said. He pressed his lips to my shoulder.

“Maybe it will,” I said. It seemed less wrong to put those things on Bagoas, who understood sorrow, and who was anything except young and innocent. If he could bear my scars, I would bear his.

In truth, we did not fit badly. If he found me mild and yielding, he did not complain of it. Rather he seemed to enjoy leading instead of following, playing the lover rather than the beloved. It has always been my nature to yield rather than conquer, much to the amusement and pleasure of Sati, who was at first amazed that I was not done in ten minutes, but barely begun. Bagoas, slower to pleasure by virtue of his situation, did not seem to find it amiss either.

“Don't worry so much,” he said, and ruffled my hair. “You have plenty of time for all of that.”

“I suppose so,” I said, and wondered if I did. I had grown used to never counting the days ahead. What would happen if I did count them again, if I did say to myself, I shall do such and such in the spring? If I began to imagine a future in which the seasons turned and I were still living? Months, even years, might pass and I might live.

I laid my head down against the pillow. I did not know if I could begin that.

“Perdiccas will not come for many months,” Bagoas said. “Did you not say that yourself?”

“I did,” I said.

“Well, then.” He lay beside me, his arm about my shoulders. “Then you have so long and you know it. Nothing will happen until then.”

“That is true,” I said. A few months. I could decide to live until Perdiccas came. I turned, and took him in my arms.

I
T WAS TEN
days later, on a day when Ptolemy had no need of me, that I found my way to the temples of Memphis again. This time I did not go the Temple of Thoth, but along the walls of the city where they rose forty feet from the surface of the river. To the west I could see the temples at Saqqara, on the edge of the desert above broad cultivated lands, lush and green with date palms. There was a lake there as well, fed by irrigation canals, where the white birds sacred to Ptah lived. A little ferry boat was at midstream, running back and forth as it always did across the expanse of the Nile. The river was deep and swift opposite the city, though upstream there was an island where the waterbirds nested.

The walls of Memphis were high at this point, and gave a good view. Just a little farther along was the Temple of Sobek, where they kept the sacred crocodiles.

There was a broad rail high as a man's chest carved with warning signs, but I could lean on it and look over at the monstrous animals in the temple pool below that gave through a grate on the Nile. Beneath the green water, scales and snouts broke the surface. One monster drew himself up on land to bask in the sun on the sandy bank provided for them. He was at least three times a man's height in length, but not slow for all that.

“They are the avengers,” a voice said behind me, and I turned.

Manetho had come up, and he stood looking over the rail beside me. He looked very young for his pleated white linen, his serious expression.

“The avengers?”

“Sobek is the god of justice,” Manetho said. “They are dangerous, of course. Justice is dangerous. It is a sword with two blades, and may cut the man who wields it as well.”

I nodded gravely.

“You go here,” Manetho said, “not the brothels or taverns? Instead you come to temples?”

I shrugged. “Why should I spend my time in brothels or taverns?”

“For the same reasons most men do.” Manetho's face was mild.

“Everyone seems so concerned with finding me a woman,” I said.

Manetho laughed. “What is it that you want, then?”

“Nothing you can give me,” I said.

He nodded slowly. His eyes were a priest's eyes, calm and impenetrable. “Perhaps the Black Land can give you something, Lydias of Miletus. Perhaps it is Isis whose gifts you need, the Lady of Amenti with Her mercy.”

“I don't know,” I said, and looked down into the pool of crocodiles. I wondered if he could tell me what it meant that I had wielded the powers of Egypt on the road, that I had seen the Dead City. But I did not know if I could trust him yet.

Manetho pushed back from the rail. “Tell Ptolemy that the gods will not wait forever. He must decide.” And with that he strode away, his shaven head gleaming in the sun.

W
E DID NOT
have much time at all. It was only a few days later that a messenger came to Memphis with all haste. He had slipped out of the port of Tyre at night on a fishing boat belonging to his brother, hoping for vast rewards. He got them, as Ptolemy needed his news badly.

Perdiccas was in Tyre with his army.

Ptolemy rubbed his brow and laid it out, while I and Artashir and Nicanor and several others tried to read the dispatch upside down. “Ten thousand infantry. Two thousand cavalry. Forty elephants. A thousand horse archers.”

I caught Artashir's eye and saw him grimace. He commanded fifty, all that we still had. With the losses I had taken stealing the hearse, even with our wounded who were recovering, I didn't think we could field more than seven hundred cavalry, and perhaps not quite that. Our infantry phalanxes were in better condition. We had eight thousand. And no elephants.

“We're going to have to wear him down a little bit at a time,” Ptolemy said. “Use our natural defenses.”

“The river,” I said.

Ptolemy nodded. “He'll have to come by road to Pelousion if he wants to cross the first branch of the Nile. And the fortress at Pelousion guards the crossing and the river mouth.”

“If he has to besiege Pelousion he has a problem,” Artashir said. “It doesn't matter how much he outnumbers us in elephants or cavalry or horse archers. They're not going to be any use to him.”

“The defenses of Pelousion are good,” I said.

Ptolemy nodded again. “And that's where we're going to meet him. Artashir will go to Camel's Fort, halfway up the Nile from Pelousion to Memphis, as our rearguard. The rest of us will go on to Pelousion. Lydias, you have the cavalry.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again, my maimed hand plain on the table.

“It doesn't matter,” Ptolemy said, and his brown eyes were calm. “Put Glaukos in the front of the charge if you must. But you have the cavalry.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and blinked lest I tear up.

Though what cavalry should do behind the walls of Pelousion I didn't know. Scouting, I presumed. We would be the eyes and ears of the army.

I
REJOINED MY
command at Pelousion at the beginning of the summer, when the crops were in and the Inundation still weeks away. The Delta steamed under the midday sun, the river running slow and sluggish, shrunken by the season. When Sothis rose again in the dawn sky, so the river would rise.

Glaukos took one look at my hand, still withered and twisted-looking. “Well, you fucked that up pretty good!”

“I did,” I said and came and pounded him on the back. “How've you been? Up to a tangle with Perdiccas?”

“Is it true we're outnumbered three to one?”

I shook my head. “No, you know how rumor is. Not even two to one, though he's got elephants.”

Glaukos cursed long and fluently. “I hate elephants. Did I tell you about the time that Alexander sent me to get some?”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “You did. So how are we looking?”

“Six hundred and ninety-six men mounted and well. Ninety-seven, counting you.” He looked at my hand again dubiously.

“You're taking the point,” I said. “I can't ride and use a sword at the same time yet. But Perdiccas isn't going to wait for me!”

At that he laughed as I'd meant him to. “Well, I suppose we can manage. All the real work for me, of course.”

“But with my brains and your brawn…” I grinned.

“We'll get by,” Glaukos said. “Of course we're probably going to all get trampled by elephants. You know that, right? When Perdiccas was in Babylon he couldn't get a bunch of the old Macedonians to go along with his plans, so he had three hundred of them rounded up and trampled to death by elephants. Put the rest of the army on notice, it did.”