Keeper of the Flame (33 page)

Sophia took care of the rags and water, then washed and dressed in her bedchamber. When she emerged, Ares still slept. She slipped from the room and descended to the Base.

One of the servants charged with fueling the fire approached her in the South Wing, head down. She stopped him with a
word. He cringed at her address, as though she would strike him. Sophia let the reaction only lightly brush her emotions.

“What has happened to the centuria quartered here?”

He raised his head, as though relieved that her interaction did not involve his service. “They have gone.”

“All of them?”

“Nearly all, mistress. He—the centurion—left a handful behind to hold the lighthouse.”

“But why?”

The servant shrugged. “There is a war coming, mistress. I suppose the Roman general needs all of his men.”

Sophia inhaled and looked toward the lighthouse’s entrance. “Indeed.” She turned back to the servant. “Listen carefully, I have several tasks for you.”

He straightened, as though the king himself had summoned.

“I need you to fetch a physician. Bring him to my private chambers. I also want you to arrange for news from the city to be brought to me each hour. I want to know if fighting breaks out, if armies are moving—anything at all of interest. You understand?”

“Yes, mistress.” He bowed once.

“And then bring me papyrus. I have nothing to write on.”

Back up the ramp, she found Ares standing at her window overlooking the western harbor. He did not turn when she entered. “The sun is past its summit.”

“You needed to sleep.” She closed the door softly.

He lifted his bandaged arm and held it with the other. “Thank you, for caring for my arm. For letting me sleep. For not throwing me into the street.”

She crossed the room to stand beside him and looked out
over the water, choppy today, as though it also feared what was coming to it.

“You have done nothing wrong, Ares. It is my fault that you were hurt.”

His laugh was derisive, angry. “Because of me you have lost the thing you valued most.”

Sophia pressed her forehead to the glass and watched a group of fishermen haul nets far below, so small they appeared like insects crawling over the coastline.
Have I truly valued a
thing
above all else?
“There is no one to blame but the man who took him.”

“Pothinus?”

She turned away from the window, back to the room that had once been her haven and now felt like her prison. “It could be no one else. The Romans would not have sent an Egyptian soldier. And no one else would know enough to care about the Proginosko.”

She wandered across the room, which seemed strangely silent when she considered the brutal activity that was beginning to churn in the city below.

“What will you do?”

She went to her desk, to the box that held the device her husband had crafted so many years ago. “Pothinus will have no use for Sosigenes once he learns how to operate the Proginosko.”

“He will kill him.” Ares’s voice held the same sorrow she felt in her own chest, and she glanced to him, seeing something new.

“All those books in your room, and the paintings. They are all yours?”

He looked down, tugged on the bandage that covered his arm. “I will not be able to paint for some time, I fear.”

“Nor pound on my door hard enough to break it down.”

He lifted his head and smiled, the shy smile of one beginning to let himself be known.

Sophia felt a strange tightness in her throat and rubbed the back of her neck. “I did not know you enjoyed such studies. Nor that you had such talent for art.”

He shrugged. “I have lived here all my life. It seemed only natural to pursue learning.”

How could I have allowed harm to come to him? And to Sosigenes?

She dropped to the chair beside her desk and rested her forehead in her hands.

“You could ask the Roman for help,” Ares said, his voice tentative and soft.

“They are gone. All but a few left to keep us in line.”

“Perhaps you could find him—”

“He is gone!”

“The queen, then. Perhaps she knows where Pothinus is keeping himself.”

Sophia lifted her head and nodded, and a timid knock sounded at the door. “You see,” she said, unable to resist, “that is how it should sound.” She opened the door to the servant she had engaged downstairs, who gave her a stack of flattened papyrus sheets.

“Stay. I will have a message for the palace. You can deliver it to the queen.”

The servant cleared his throat and seemed to have something to say.

“Yes? What is it? Speak up!”

“It is the queen, mistress.”

Sophia’s heart lurched into her throat. “What has happened?”

He rocked from one foot to the other. “She is not in the city.”

“Where, then?”

“She sailed out under Roman colors this morning with the legion’s general. They are saying that they went to meet another of Rome’s legions, caught by the winds off the coast.”

Sophia exhaled heavily. She tossed the papyrus on her desk. “You have taken care of the other tasks I gave you?”

“Yes, mistress. The physician has been sent for, and word from the city will be brought as well.”

“Good.” She waved him away, but he did not move.

“Yes?”

He held out another papyrus. “A message.”

She sighed and took it from him. “You are as forthcoming as a river stone!” The message was brief but deadly. Somehow Caesar had learned that she likely held the Proginosko. And he wanted it immediately, or he would have his soldiers remove her from the lighthouse.

“Get out,” she said to the servant. “Get out!”

He bowed from the room, no doubt grateful to get back to hauling dung.

“You sent for the physician?” Ares said, recalling her thoughts.

She shrugged and pointed to the door, where the servant had disappeared. “You see what I would have to make use of, should an infection steal you from me. I am only protecting myself.” But her voice faltered, and the casual words fell flat. She dared not look at the boy, lest he see the tears that pooled in spite of her best effort.

She fell to her chair again, into a brooding silence. Ares
returned to the couches, and she regretted not telling the servant, whose name she could not remember, to bring food. Ordinarily, she would simply yell down the ramp and somehow, always, Ares would appear.

She should send him away, back to the Base where he belonged.

But she did not.

The sun began its slant through her western windows, and still she stared, blank-eyed, at nothing.

What was happening to her? She had worked hard to keep to herself here in the lighthouse. Over the years her fearsome reputation had spread, and those who had a choice avoided her. Those who did not have a choice bowed and scraped to please her.

Yes, she had been successful in building walls around herself. And now, when she needed help, she had no one.

And yet . . . in spite of the walls she had built, in spite of the tower she kept, some had broken through.

Ares. Sosigenes.

Bellus.

She swallowed the hot regret at the thought of him, and the memory of his touch, his kiss. It had been the first time she had felt like a woman in many years.

She wanted to sink into the memory, to let it wash over her with softness and warmth. Instead, something within rose up to fight it, to raise an angry sword and slash away.

This is what comes of getting attached. They cannot love you. You do not deserve their love.

The physician came and with him, a servant. Ares called him by name, sparing her from having to ask.

“News?” she said to Talal, directing the physician to Ares.

“The city is readying for battle,” Talal said. “Pothinus directs them.”

“Pothinus! Where?”

“He has set up headquarters in the Library, it would seem.”

Sophia put her hands to her hips, anger at the man’s audacity roiling in her stomach.

“And ships,” Talal continued, “are sailing into the harbor.”

Sophia hurried to the window, and indeed, the horizon was littered with the masts and hulls of a fleet of ships.

“They cannot be Egyptian. Not that many.”

“Roman,” Talal said behind her. “Cleopatra and Caesar return, with the strength of a second legion behind them.”

So it begins.

Talal disappeared, the physician tended to Ares, mumbling that he had never seen accidental cuts so parallel, and Sophia watched the ships outlined against the setting sun.

They trembled on the brink of war, all of them. But for Sophia, only one truth held sway. Pothinus had Sosigenes and would surely kill him. And Pothinus was in the Library.

“I am going,” she said, when the physician had left.

“You cannot go alone, Sophia.”

She could hear Ares cross the room behind her. “I have no choice. There is no one else.”

“Even with one arm, I am better than nothing.”

“No. I will not endanger you further.”

“Find the Roman, Sophia. He—he cares for you. He will help—”

She spun on him. “You forget yourself, Ares. Do not take advantage of my kindness. You are my servant, and I do not require or desire advice from a servant!”

Ares tilted his head, looked at her with pitying eyes, then dropped his gaze. His pity only angered her further.

“See about your duties, Ares. I expect you to do all you can, even with your injury, and to find others to finish what work you cannot. You have wasted an entire day here. Do not give me reason to regret it.”

With that, she pushed past him, past the hurt in his eyes, out of the chamber.

The ramp blurred before her as she stomped down it, uncertain of where her feet took her, but with one thought uppermost in her mind:
It is time to come out of the tower and take to the streets.

Pothinus would soon feel what a tyrant like Sophia could do.

Thirty-Eight

B
ellus waited on the docks along the waterfront that housed the dozens of warehouses, loaded with goods both coming and going from Alexandria, center of the trading world. One of them, Sophia had told him, housed perhaps thousands of scrolls being copied for the Library. But he would not think of Sophia or of books today.

In the harbor ahead, framed against the glorious sunset that splashed the sky with billows of smoky orange and royal purple, Caesar’s ship navigated the reefs and sailed toward the dock, with a legion of reinforcements behind him.

Bellus did not stand alone. Hundreds of soldiers stood with him, lining the dock like a passel of fidgety children, waiting for the father’s return.

Along the dock, he knew, stood at least twenty other centurions of his rank, also anxious for Caesar to hear their reports, to nod his approval, to pat their heads.

Though it had been the way of his life for many years, tonight something inside him rebelled at the familiar scene.

Caesar’s ship bore down upon them all until Bellus could see the great general at its stern, his lean form, his patrician nose, his hair combed forward to cover his balding pate. He wore the glow of battle on his face. At his side stood the queen of Egypt, her chin lifted to the air, one arm entwined around Caesar’s.

Bellus stood straighter, as though the general would be watching him alone. As though they all did not jostle and
maneuver to catch his eye. Bellus kept his gaze fixed on Caesar, despite the push of soldiers from behind and the press from either side.

But Caesar’s attention had shifted to Cleopatra, who leaned over to speak into his ear. He covered her hand on his arm with his own and smiled.

A stab of unreasonable jealousy caused Bellus to blink rapidly, though he could not name its origin, whether from a desire for Caesar’s attention, or a desire for the attention of a woman who loved him.

He kept his eyes from the lighthouse.

The boat bumped against the dock, and the soldiers gave a shout of victory. Through the day word had spread of Caesar’s victory at sea. The single quinquereme taken from the Egyptians sailed amidst the Thirty-Seventh, a beleaguered testimony to the military prowess of the Romans. Every soldier along the dock pounded his pilum onto the stone quay.

The ship was tied, a plank lowered, and Caesar and Cleopatra hurried from the deck, as though anxious for the sanctuary of the palace.

Bellus elbowed his way through the rank and file
milites
soldiers to reach the path cleared for the general, but Caesar ignored the well-wishers along the quay, his long-legged pace leaving Cleopatra to hurry behind.

As he passed Bellus, Caesar slowed and nodded. “I hear you saved us all from a thirsty death.”

Bellus saluted.

“Come to me at the palace. I will have new orders for you. Something better fitted to an officer of your standing.”

Bellus gave a quick nod. “Yes, General.”

The mob swelled behind Caesar as he moved on, filling in the gap.

Bellus let the air escape from his chest and relaxed his fisted hands.

At last.

It had been two long months, since they had first arrived and found the Alexandrian mob to be more quarrelsome—and the machinations of the Ptolemies more brutal—than they imagined. He had been exiled to that lonesome lighthouse, to wait out his general’s displeasure, to be given another chance to prove himself.

And now, at last, his punishment had ended, and he had gained what he most wanted. The approval of the Master of the Mediterranean.

Behind him, the sun faded away into the sea. He glanced back, still guided by his usual habit of checking the lighthouse flame.

Yes, there it was, as always. He slowed to watch the flame brighten and swell. No doubt servants worked to angle the mirror to send its messages over the sea.

His gaze slid down the darkened tower, past the circular top section, the octagonal middle, halfway down the tallest, bottom tier. Sophia’s private chamber did not have windows on this side of the building.

She faced away from him even now.

The palace called to him, but he let the crowd flow around him, past the warehouses and into the royal quarter. He sat on a wall along the harbor until he was alone, and studied the lighthouse.