0451472004 (28 page)

But not all men . . .

“What have you done?” Parizad shrieked next to me. I tried to yank him to the ground, but he shook me off. “You’ve killed Ahura Mazda’s chosen king in cold blood!”

Bessus glanced down at Darius’ corpse. “Thank you for pointing that out, boy. Otherwise I might not have noticed.”

A rumble of laughter started, but ceased when my brother stepped out from beneath my silken awning. “Do you really think men will follow you, the great murderer of kings? Or shall another
satrap
follow your example, slay you and claim the precious eagle diadem for his own?”

I was already scrambling toward them both. “Great King—,” I began, but Bessus pointed his dagger at Parizad, then gave an easy nod to the archers. “Kill him.”

“No!” I screamed, falling between Bessus and Parizad, my arms spread in an attempt to stop them both. “Don’t hurt him!”

No one moved, but then Bessus flicked a hand.

“Stand down,” he ordered, and the archers lowered their quarrels so they were no longer aimed straight for Parizad’s stupid, noble heart.

But I was a fool to think Bessus so charitable as to forgive the brother I loved.

With a sharp gleam in his eyes, Bessus removed a helmet from one of the archers and tossed it toward Parizad, where it rolled haphazardly to a stop at his feet. “Since you bear such love for Darius, I charge you with protecting our former king from the marauding
daevas
who will seek out his rotting flesh.” He yanked the embroidered bee scarf from my head, tearing away several pins and strands of my hair. “A final gift from your beloved twin,” he said, throwing the gleaming scrap of fabric at my brother. “To tie over your nose when Darius’ desiccated corpse becomes too rank to breathe!”

A snap of his fingers and a guard unlocked one of Darius’ golden fetters and clamped the metal over Parizad’s wrist.

I fought then, lunging toward my brother even as soldiers held me back. My love for my twin had spared him a quick execution and instead bought him a lingering death beneath the sun’s screaming heat with only a dead king for company. My struggles against the guards made them clasp my arms tighter than Darius’ golden manacles, and scalding tears blinded my view of my beautiful, doomed brother.

“Parizad, Parizad,” I said, my brother’s name tumbling from my lips like a fountain. “Parizad!”

But there was nothing I could say or do to save my stupid, gentle brother. I’d endured whippings, mustard seed poisonings, and even become Bessus’ pliant harlot, but Parizad had thrown it all away with a few treasonous words.

And now I would lose him.

“Cease your sniveling,” Bessus commanded, grabbing my chin between his thumb and forefinger so tightly that fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “Or I’ll slay him where he stands and leave you to mourn his traitorous corpse.”

“Go,” Parizad whispered from his place in the dust, even as Bessus’ men threw Darius’ body into a derelict goat cart, dragging my stumbling brother with them.

“I’ll stay with you,” I said, wrenching my chin away from Bessus.

My beautiful brother shook with terror, but tried to steady his voice. “Go, Roxana, and be a queen.”

But Parizad was my other half. Panic welled in my throat, for we had never been apart and now he was abandoning me for a dead man. He had torn out my heart with both his hands, leaving a gaping, bleeding wound in my chest that would never heal.

“But I love you,” I whispered.

“And I you,” he said, tears spilling down his soft cheeks as he lifted his irons in a gesture of helplessness. “And I swear we’ll be together again, if only in paradise.”

I wanted to throw my arms around him, but instead forced myself to turn my back on my brother, part of me dying with every step that took me farther from him even as Bessus lumbered to his waiting chariot.

I spared a last glance at Parizad, so tall and so handsome, his nose already beginning to redden under the sun’s glare as it had when we were children.

Even if I did become queen, a crown would never fill the place where my heart had been.

•   •   •

W
eeks of traveling to the capital of Bactria passed in a blur. I was sentenced to days spent in a lonely oxcart without Parizad at my side and resigned to nights spent bathing Bessus and using my long hair to dry his great folds of flesh before he took me on the ground, the bed, or anywhere he wanted. The people cheered for their newly crowned King of Kings as he approached them draped in an impeccable purple robe and golden cape he’d stolen from Darius’ baggage cart. His thick waist was bound by an exquisite girdle woven of golden thread, like a colossal net crafted of the sun’s rays. His gilded chariot was blinding, as were the two stunning white horses that pulled the vehicle while a eunuch rode beside him with a screen of goat hide and a bronze fly whisk.

I was carried in a holly-wood sedan several lengths back from Bessus, my wrists circled by golden bracelets topped by lynx head finials glowering with green jade eyes. Tiny golden doves perched on miniature altars dangled from my ears and I wore the finest silk robe I’d ever seen in my life, black as a winter night and embroidered with fearsome griffins. Bessus had promised me even more gold once Alexander was killed, claiming that he would drape my naked body with gold thread and weave gems and coins into my hair before he tumbled me on the floor of his treasury.

I’d wanted gold, pearls, and silk and now I had them in droves, and my own eunuch too, a lithe young man with a lilting voice named Bagoas. He had reputedly pleasured Darius but was taken as part of the spoils from Darius’ baggage cart, then reassigned to serve my every whim. He did so with such silent dedication that I imagined myself with a collection of pretty eunuchs one day, far more impressive than a stable of matched horses. Even as Bagoas hooked the dangling doves through my ears, I knew that just weeks ago this largesse would have made me shriek with joy. Yet I would never be happy again, not while the sun bleached my brother’s bones.

I would not cry. Not here, in front of the crowd.

Instead I forced myself to smile and nod at the mass of Bactrians until we passed beneath the gate to Bessus’ palace. His waiting nobles bowed and thronged behind him in a perfumed current to carry him to his throne room. If I’d been Bessus’ queen, I might have been permitted to follow and sit behind a filigreed screen, but as a mere concubine I was expected to wait on Bessus’ pleasure in his chambers. Still, Bessus had sent his wives away for safety, two to Persepolis and one to the fortress at Sogdian Rock, so I had his undivided attention here in Bactria.

And I planned to make good use of the opportunity.

I took Bagoas’ proffered hand, softer than silk and more lustrous than pearls, and stepped from the sedan with my head held high despite the many stares in my direction. One man in particular, Ariamazes of Sogdiana, had traveled alongside Bessus and leered at me every chance he had.

“I need a moment,” I murmured to my guards, then hurried to the nearest alcove before tears of grief and frustration spilled down my cheeks. I’d scarcely leaned my forehead against the cool stone wall when a rough hand grabbed my elbow.

“You seem to have done well for yourself, spreading your legs for Bessus.”

I clamped down on my cry of shock to see my father, his bottom teeth thrust forward while his eyes darted from me to the final carts and horses trickling through the palace gate. I could tell he was adding the figures for how much wealth Bessus had accumulated by seizing Darius’ baggage train, his beady eyes bulging as he approached the total.

I smoothed the front of my robe, my palms suddenly sweaty. “I
have
done well.”

“As well as could be expected,” my father said. “For a whore.”

That stung more than I cared to admit, but I squared my shoulders. “I have reason to believe that Bessus will soon marry me.”

He snorted and waved Bagoas away, making the hump of his shoulder even more misshapen. “You’re a fool to think that,” he sneered. “Where is your brother?”

I looked past him, willing my eyes to stay dry.

“Dead.”

A bolt of shock exploded on his face. “No,” he said, shaking his head. And I could see then that, somehow and probably against his will, he’d felt some sort of affection for Parizad, a feeling that had never extended to me.

I almost reached out to comfort him, seeking a father’s reassuring embrace—even if Oxyartes was a miserable excuse for a father—and wondering what it would feel like to feel his arms around me.

The fantasy didn’t last long.

“Give me those bracelets.” His gaze lingered on the golden lynx bracelets and I could well imagine him wiping the drool away with the back of his sleeve.

“No.” I clutched them protectively. The courtyard had emptied as everyone followed Bessus, leaving me to fend for myself against my spider of a father.

“You still belong to me without Bessus’ wedding girdle around your waist. And you will obey me when I tell you to hand over your pretty bangles.”

“So you can melt them down?” I sneered. “Or sell them in the market? Have your foundries not proved as valuable as you’d hoped or have you already squandered all their earnings?”

My father stared at me. “You may spread your legs for the
satrap
—”

“King of Kings,” I corrected him. “May you well remember it.”

“But you’re still just my mealymouthed daughter,” he said, pointing a grubby finger in my face. “And you’ll obey me or face Mithra’s justice.”

“I will
not
.”

I flinched when his open palm hurled toward my face, then screamed at the unexpected agony in my ear. My hand came away bloodied when I touched the fire in my earlobe, but gold glinted in my father’s hand.

My dove earring.

“You filthy, vile whoreson,” I started, but recoiled when he lunged toward me again.

“You’re a fast learner, Roxana,” he said, grinning to reveal sharp teeth as he tucked the earring into the red
kamarband
at his waist. “I taught you well, perhaps too well. This little bauble only begins to cover the loss of my investment in you.”

“I’m not an investment!” I screamed, still clutching my ear. “I’m your daughter!”

“You still believe that?” my father scoffed, then spat at my feet, the glob of yellow spittle landing on my hem and quivering atop one of my golden bees. “You’re no seed of mine.”

“What?”

He grinned, as if he reveled in uttering the words. “Your whore of a mother was born with a barrage of nursemaids to carry away her shit buckets and a pretty betrothal to some pampered noble’s son, but she had fleas for brains and spread her luscious white thighs for some stableboy. No one wanted the soiled dove once her belly began to swell, that is, until her desperate father brokered an agreement that I take the empty-headed idiot off his hands along with her weight in gold. He got the better end of the deal, though, for she shat out you and your brother and then turned up her toes.”

I sympathized with my mother, for any woman would have been tempted to die at the thought of Oxyartes of Balkh as her husband for the rest of her days.

I looked at him, really
looked
at the man I’d always thought to be my father. “There must have been any number of sewers you might have dropped us down, plenty of midden heaps you might have abandoned us on.”

“I thought you might prove useful once you were grown.” He leered again. “But even your mother’s family knew you for the worthless bastard you are. Your brother might have been something, but you’ve repaid my generosity with treachery and deceit.”

I stared at him, then burst into laughter, the first time I’d laughed since abandoning my brother. Parizad would have whooped with glee to know we hadn’t been sired by the rotten seed of Oxyartes of Balkh.

“You beat and whipped us, treated us worse than rabid dogs. You might have been father to the Queen of Queens one day,” I said. “But you’re dead to me now. I hope you die alone, miserable and neglected.”

He moved as if to rip the other earring from my ear, but I raised my voice. “Guards!” I called, sidestepping Oxyartes of Balkh. I tilted my chin like the Queen of Queens as my men snapped into place around me, forming a protective barrier and forcing the spider to let me pass unscathed.

The man who was no longer my father gave me one last festering smile. “Misery and neglect are dreams I share for you, Roxana.”

I stormed from the courtyard with my ear still streaming blood. And I vowed in that moment that from this day forward, I needed no one except myself.

•   •   •

B
essus used me hard that night, bending me over a bed of silks and furs to pound into me until tears squeezed from my eyes and I feared he would tear me in two. Afterward, I wrapped a priceless leopard fur around me with trembling hands, breathing in the scent of animal musk.

Pain overwhelmed pain. . . .

“I’m going to miss these little interludes of ours,” Bessus said, scratching the mat of hair on his belly as he sat in a chair near the fire, his shaft shrunken and glistening with the clear scrum of his seed.

“Miss them?” I asked, doing my best to sweeten my voice as I knelt before him and laid my head in his lap. He often liked to play with my hair and he did so now, threading his fingers through the dark strands. “But I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re going to the fortress at Sogdian Rock,” he said. I jerked away, yanking my hair from his hand.

“What?”

“My third wife has family nearby and is already there for safekeeping until I’ve dealt with Alexander.” Bessus spread his naked legs and slouched farther in the chair. “Your father suggested that I send you as well.”

I opened my mouth to inform him that Oxyartes of Balkh was
not
my father, but promptly snapped it shut. Oxyartes was the poorest of nobles and a worthless man to claim as a sire, but the other option was to admit that my true father had been a callus-handed and manure-footed stableboy. Bessus’ wives were all his cousins with illustrious pedigrees stretching back to at least King Xerxes. A stableboy’s misbegotten bastard could never be Queen of Queens.