0451472004 (44 page)

“I prefer it this way,” she said. “A quiet country life away from the intrigues of court shall suit me. After all, no one cares about an aging mistress and her bastard son.”

“Take me with you?” I asked feebly, but Barsine only smiled.

“You’ll be happy with Hephaestion,” she said, dimples cleaving her cheeks as she smiled. “If you let yourself, that is.”

She nodded toward a package wrapped in pale silk the color of clotted cream and tied with a bit of string. There was a tag attached with my name written in both the flowing Persian script and blocked Greek letters. “I believe that’s for you.”

“From Hephaestion?” She nodded, and I poked the package. “It’s probably a viper or scorpion.”

Barsine laughed. “Open it!”

I removed the silk wrapping and revealed a carved box, a work of art in its own right with its flock of hook-beaked
Homa
birds along the edges. But the contents of the box were the true treasures.

Barsine peered inside as I lifted the lid. “Is that an ax?” she asked in the same tone she might have used if it were a pile of dung. “And a chisel?”

I nodded and removed the tools with more reverence than if I were holding baby Heracles. Hephaestion’s gifts were plain and utilitarian, lacking embellishments of gemstones or gold. Yet their blades were different from the iron I was accustomed to, likely some strange sort of metal he’d encountered while on campaign. “Hephaestion knows my penchant for tinkering,” I said.

“Either that or he wished to provide you with the weapons for his own murder,” she quipped, motioning for me to stand before her. “He’s a brave man.”

I replaced the tools in their box and spread my arms so she could unclasp my golden girdle and remove my outer robe with its dusty paw prints. I let her finish preparing me, then squeezed her hands as she kissed my forehead one last time. “Be kind to him,” she admonished me. “You might surprise yourself with how happy you can be with Hephaestion, if only you’d stop sniping at him long enough to find out.”

I sat alone on the bed once she’d gone, staring at the olive and laurel branches hung over the doorway—a traditional Greek wedding decoration—but within moments Hephaestion ducked inside as if he’d been waiting for Barsine’s exit, his sheer size suddenly making the tent feel cramped.

“I see you found your gift,” he said, his eyes flicking to me in my diaphanous robe before darting away as if he felt scalded or repulsed. My heart fell. He gestured to the ax and chisel, saying, “They’re Damascus steel, harder than any iron.”

“They’re lovely,” I said, wishing I could duck into an old robe and stuff my elephant hide hat over the perfect curls Barsine had rendered. I felt like a half-dressed fool for all the notice Hephaestion seemed to take of me. “I don’t have a gift for you,” I nearly growled.

Of course I didn’t have a gift for him, considering I hadn’t known I was going to marry him when I woke that morning.

“I’ll take the fact that you didn’t demand to marry someone else on the dais this afternoon as my gift.”

“Was that a choice?”

He ignored me to rake his hands through his thick hair. The beginnings of black stubble darkened his jaw, although I noted a few gray bits had crept in. “If you’re not careful, Drypetis, I swear you’re going to make me regret asking for you.”

“What?” My eyes widened. “Why would you ask for
me
?”

“Because against my better judgment I wanted you!” he answered in a rush of frustration. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Coming from the man who insults me at every turn?” I stood now, flustered and angry. “The same man who has made my life a living hell since we first met outside my father’s tent at Issus?”

Hephaestion’s face darkened like an oncoming storm. “Would you prefer that Alexander asked which woman I wanted from Persia’s stables and I offered to take you to spare him the trouble of breaking you? Do you prefer that version?”

My heart juddered hard against my breastbone. “Would you like to measure my teeth to make sure you made the right choice?”

“What I’d like to do is gag you,” he said. “But I have a better idea.”

Before I had time to react, his lips were on mine, hard and demanding. My hands came up to push him away, but a burst of heat exploded below my belly at his touch, spreading to my fingers and toes like bolts of flame so that it was impossible to care about anything save the scent of his skin, the magic of his hands, and the intoxicating taste of his lips.

I wanted him. By Mithra’s eyes, I wanted him more than I had in the Tower of Silence when I’d felt so lonely and empty that I’d wanted to die. And I could have him.

“It’s time for bed, wife,” he murmured, his warm lips tracing the delicate skin up the base of my throat and making me shudder with pleasure. “Don’t you dare argue or I’ll drag you there myself.”

“Shut up, husband,” I said, pulling him down onto the bed with me, my lips managing to find his even as I loosened the
kamarband
of his robe with impatient hands. “You talk far too much.”

And Barsine was right.

It was earth-shattering.

CHAPTER 20

Susa, Persia

Hephaestion

I’d anticipated my bride gouging my eyes out on our wedding night, or at least threatening to embed her new ax in my skull. Instead, Drypetis surprised me, so much so that I planned on repeating several of those surprises when she woke.

I had no water clock with which to mark the time, yet I lay on the plush bed listening to my wife’s even breathing in the flickering lamplight. Zeus help me, but I grinned like a besotted idiot then, recalling the gasps of pleasure I’d teased from her full lips and the way she’d pulled me deeper inside her. Her fearless approach to lovemaking had been the same as if I were one of her machines, experimenting until she found just the right place and correct use for her fingers, her mouth, or the slick cleft between her long legs. The simple remembrance made me grow stiff with wanting again, and I almost roused her awake so I could push us both beyond the heights of pleasure once again.

Instead, I stood and poured a goblet of wine, swirling the crimson liquid before taking a deep draft. Drypetis lay on her side with her hands folded beneath her sharp chin and her knees tucked up under her. The bronze lamp above cast enough light to accentuate the sweep of her lashes against her cheek, her barely open—and slightly bruised—lips, and the curves and valleys of her breasts and hips beneath the silk coverlet.

Drypetis had changed since those first days after Issus. She was still temperamental but no longer the knob-kneed, reckless girl responsible for the wild chariot escape at Gaugamela and attempts to foment revolts in the streets of Babylon. The years of captivity in Susa had filled her out, softened her body if not her temper. I pushed a stray tendril of hair from her forehead and smiled as she swatted my hand away in her sleep.

And it struck me then that in all my thirty-two years, I’d felt this overwhelming pull for only one other person.

Alexander.

It was damnably inconvenient that no matter how many singers Alexander murdered or how many cities he burned down, I would always love him. And he would love me.

Yet there was more to life than just Alexander. . . .

I stood silently, drinking in the sight of Drypetis until I could stand it no more. I crouched naked beside the bed, letting my hands wander while teasing her nipple with my mouth through the thin silk coverlet, feeling it turn hard and taut even as she groaned with pleasure.

“It’s cold,” she whispered, her eyelids fluttering as she opened the blanket for me, revealing the glorious length of her naked body. “Come warm me.”

I knew not what the future would hold for us, but I knew one thing for certain.

Life with Drypetis would never be dull.

•   •   •

I
’d hoped to be woken by my wife’s deft hands rousing me to ravage her again, but instead we were wakened by a never-ending wail that threatened to make my ears bleed.

“What fresh hell is this?” Drypetis moaned, burrowing her face into my shoulder. “Did you order a herd of angry goats to be slaughtered?”

I’d already reached for my sword in case of attack, but the racket outside was no war cry. It was mournful, as if someone had died.

And it was coming from the direction of Alexander’s tent.

A surge of energy coursed through my veins and my mouth filled with the metallic taste of fear as I shoved my arms through my discarded wedding robe and burst into the thin spring sunshine. I stopped short at the crowd of veteran Macedonians gathered outside Alexander’s massive red and white striped tent, the majority of whom had taken new wives yesterday.

These were no happy bridegrooms, but the start of an angry mob. Their heads were freshly shaved in a gesture of mourning, so freshly shorn that I could see where a few had nicked themselves with the blade. Alexander was nowhere to be seen, yet a contingent of bearded and unblinking Persians stood guard outside the entrance to his tent.

Guards wouldn’t protect a dead man, unless perhaps that dead man was Alexander of Macedon.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I demanded. “Where’s Alexander?”

One of the soldiers ceased his warbling. “Alexander has replaced us,” the grizzled old warrior said, his voice seething with anger. He and his men were stubborn Macedonians, dressed in the Greek style and with the weather-beaten skin of their jaws shaved clean. “Instead, he plans to conquer the world with thirty thousand oriental dancing boys. We’re soldiers, not old nags ready to be put out to pasture.”

It took a moment for me to realize what he meant, that the thousands of Persian boys left behind in Susa six years ago were now old enough to join our ranks and replace the veterans who’d marched from Macedon more than ten years ago. Veterans like me.

“Alexander is inside?” I asked.

The soldier nodded. “He refused to speak to us after we demanded that he keep us on.”

My panicked surge of energy dissipated, leaving me light-headed. These men were mourning their lost honor, not Alexander.

“Therein lies your first problem,” I said, rubbing a tired hand over my face. “Beseech, beg, or bargain, but never
demand
anything from Alexander.”

The soldier colored at that. “You’re Alexander’s closest companion,” he said, his flush deepening, for we both knew I was more than that. “Can’t you speak to him on our behalf?”

I stared hard at the striped canvas walls of Alexander’s kingly pavilion. “I won’t disturb any man after he’s taken not one but two brides to his bed.” That was an empty boast, for I knew full well that Alexander would never take Parysatis and her harelip to his bed. “I’ll seek out Alexander before the twelfth hour,
if
—and only if—your men cease their caterwauling.”

“But we require an answer—”

I held up my hands. “I have a comely and surprisingly flexible young wife waiting in my bed who requires my immediate attention. Go back to your new wives—or a different woman, or a boy, if you prefer—and keep yourselves occupied until I can speak to Alexander.”

To their credit, these men were not so old that the suggestion of a tumble no longer held any allure. Their wails ceased and a few offered crude jokes before most wandered off.

“You swear you’ll see to this?” the leader asked.

“I swear it on Ares’ sword,” I said. “So long as you give me peace and quiet in which to enjoy my wife.”

The man nodded. “You shall have your peace, until the twelfth hour.”

I watched him leave, then turned toward Susa’s main gate, where several dozen vendors had set up bustling businesses to take full advantage of the army’s arrival, realizing that I should probably bring back something for Drypetis and me to eat. I laughed aloud when I spotted an old merchant with a tangle of beard like rotten seaweed hawking paper bags of roasted nuts.

“I hope your almonds are as good as the last time I was in Susa,” I called to him, my stomach growling at the salty aroma. I fished for a coin—I had several of the freshly minted gold staters that bore Bucephalus’ horned head, an honor to old Ox-Head that had made Roxana rant and rave—but the hawker’s eyes sparked with recognition and he handed me a bag.