Queen of Kings (22 page)

The old woman looked at the boy and said a few rough words in an unknown tongue.

The legionary spoke, blank-faced.

“She says that my fate was dark. She has changed it. Now I do not remember the man I was, and my path has shifted to one of less trouble.”

“He did not speak her language before she touched him,” Agrippa informed Augustus. “Now he functions as her translator.”

The woman spoke again.

“She says she is a seiðkona, a fate spinner,” the boy said. “She does not serve Rome but the Fates. There is trouble here and she seeks to understand it.”

Augustus was distracted. Her skills had sparked his hopes.

His
own
fate was dark, he knew. When he shut his eyes, the visions were there again, red waves rising over red waves, the roaring and tearing of beasts, serpents, that river of blood. His death at Cleopatra's hands.

This woman, this seiðkona, might change his destiny.

“Rome welcomes you to her defense,” he said. “Take her to her bedchamber down the corridor, and bring me the rest.”

“You would have creatures such as these staying in your house?” Agrippa asked, his brow furrowing. “They would be better kept under guard in my quarters.”

“I need access to them at all hours. And I need their protection.”

“I ask you again, from what?”

Augustus had no answer. He tried to ignore Agrippa's expression. His friend's temper had always been slow to ignite but long to burn, and Augustus was slightly surprised to find it directed at him. He drank deeply until Agrippa returned with the second witch.

“The chieftain of the Psylli, Usem,” Agrippa said. “My men brought him from Libya.”

Augustus recognized the very man who'd incorrectly declared Cleopatra dead. He'd answer for that, in any case. Black as a burnt field, black as a crow's plumage, his skin glinting with that same dark, bluish iridescence. His chest was decked in strands of stones the color of fresh blood, and over his shoulders, the spotted skin of a leopard was draped, fixed with golden clasps.

He placed a woven basket on the floor of the chamber, and Augustus instinctively raised his feet from off the stones.

“I bring my serpents to battle,” Usem said, removing the cover from the basket. Several snakes slithered from the basket as the Psylli moved his arm into the air. The snakes arced their bodies in mimicry of it, coiling themselves into a rippling design.

“These are my warriors,” the Psylli informed Augustus. “They can travel anywhere you desire. They can seek out the traitors who hide your enemy from you. They can find those who serve your enemy.”

Augustus let himself relax, slightly. “And what else do you have for me?”

“Is this not enough for you, emperor of Rome? I see you are an intelligent man. My tribe controls the Western Wind.”

“Like a slave? Does it always obey you, then?” Augustus asked.

“Just as we obey Rome,” Usem said, and smiled. “When Rome fattens our purses. Still, it pleases the wind to serve our friends and plague our enemies.”

“And which are we to you?” Augustus asked him.

A sudden breeze appeared in the room, guttering the candles. In the flickering light, Augustus saw Agrippa's hand tighten on his sword. The shuttered window flew open, rattling in a quick and drenching storm.

“We are friends,” said the Psylli. “Or have I misunderstood?”

“Certainly,” replied Augustus, shaken. “We are friends.”

“There is a price for my service,” Usem continued.

Of course. The emperor had been prepared for exactly this eventuality. He signaled to a slave, who wheeled in a barrow of treasure taken from Alexandria, but the Psylli laughed.

“I do not desire gold,” Usem said.

“Your people have always taken our gold.”

“Not for this task. It is too large,” the Psylli said. “If I deliver what you ask for, you will close the Gates of Janus. My people will no longer cower in their tents when they hear hoofbeats. We will no longer travel our desert fearing war, fearing poisoned waters, fearing kidnapping and slavery. My people do not fear the wind, and we should not fear Rome.”

Augustus was shocked. He looked at Marcus Agrippa. What had the man been thinking? This should have been negotiated and refused already. Since the founding of Rome, the nation had always been at war, fighting off invaders, yes, but also invading and gaining territories through bloodshed. The closing of the Gates of Janus by the emperor of Rome would announce that the empire was at war no longer. The Psylli demanded peace from end to end of the Roman world.

Agrippa shrugged.

“It was not for me to refuse. You requested sorcerers, and you knew that it would not be inexpensive.”

The emperor could not imagine it. The gates had been open his entire life. It was a ridiculous request.

“You require my assistance,” the Psylli said, standing before Augustus, his jaw tight. The wind whipped about Augustus, shifting his garments. “The wind has told me of your trouble with the queen Cleopatra.”

Augustus jolted. How did the man know?

Agrippa stared at Augustus for a moment and then collapsed back into the chair, where he rubbed his temples.

“I might have guessed this wasn't finished,” Agrippa muttered. He raised his head to look at Augustus. “Her people may wish her alive, but we all saw her dead and buried. Her body did not walk from that mausoleum. Her people took her corpse, and I am sure it was for some rite common to Egypt. The dead are enemy to no one.”

Augustus ignored him.

“She walks,” Usem continued, and smiled, showing his keen, pointed white teeth. “And she is more than she was. You will not conquer her with soldiers.”

Augustus wavered for a moment, and then hurriedly thrust out his hand to the Psylli.

“Yes,” he said. “I swear it. I will close the Gates of Janus, if you deliver me the queen.”

Usem took Augustus's hand.

“It will be done. Now I require accommodations and a meal. My snakes hunger, and so do I.”

“Take him to his room,” Augustus ordered. “And let him give his directions to the kitchen on the way.” A legionary led the Psylli from the chamber. Out of the corner of his eye, Augustus could see Agrippa seething.

“You make promises to such a man?” Agrippa asked when he was gone. “You swear to give him something you will not deliver? You ask him to hunt something that does not exist? Cleopatra is dead. What has gotten into your mind? This man will pretend he has conjured and beaten her, and then he will demand that you keep your promise. It is all a sham.”

“Are you a fool? I have no intention of closing the gates,” Augustus snapped.

Agrippa looked at him, his gaze steely. “We do not want the Psylli as enemies,” he warned. “They have warred against the strong many times before, and won.”

“They will not win against Rome. I have not yet met the last of our warriors,” said Augustus.

“This discussion is not finished,” Agrippa warned.

“Nicolaus the Damascene, then,” Augustus said. “What of him? Where is he? You say I have no enemies, but you have not brought me the man I asked for.”

“He is nowhere to be found. My men have sorted through every grain of sand in Egypt. He's likely cowering in a cave somewhere. The man you seek is a tutor, Octav—Augustus. He is no assassin.”

“The night is filled with enemies. You know that as well as I,” Augustus said. “Where is the last witch?”

Agrippa surrendered for the moment.

“You will not enjoy her company,” he said. “She offered herself into our service. This one comes from Thessaly, and my men say that the village near where they found her was filled with tales of her deeds. The men thought she was a whore, but she is not. She is certainly not. I met her tonight, and I do not think Rome should trust her.” The general's face rippled with distaste.

“Who are you to say whom I should and should not employ?” Augustus asked.

The third of Rome's defenders was led into the room. There was a moment of silence before Augustus could find his voice.

“Your emperor welcomes you to Rome,” he stammered at last.

The third witch was an Aphrodite, her body curving and generous, her limbs perfectly formed and draped in indigo-embroidered linen. Her hair fell to her knees, braided in thousands of complicated plaits, each knotted with beads and shells. Her eyes were wide and emerald green, and her lips, unpainted, were the color of the roses in Caesar's gardens.

The girl—for she could not be older than seventeen—had the grace of a dancer. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned, catlike.

“It has been a long journey,” she replied in Greek. Her voice was deep and rough-edged for such a fragile creature.

“What is your name?” Augustus asked.

“What is yours?” she replied.

The emperor leaned forward. “Do you not know?”

“Rome is nothing to me,” the girl said. “I live by my own laws.”

“You may call me Octavian,” said Augustus, though he did not know why. It was no longer his name. He felt Agrippa staring at him.

“You may call me Chrysate,” said the girl.

“She is a priestess of Hecate,” Agrippa interjected. “And a
psuchagoĝoi.
You should not get too near her.”

A summoner of souls. Augustus did not believe in such things.

“I will not harm you,” the girl said, and Augustus believed her. Such beauty could only hold goodness.

“Leave us,” Augustus said, and when Agrippa did not immediately move away, he repeated the order in a voice that left no possibility of resistance. “
You will leave us, Agrippa
.”

Marcus Agrippa looked defiant, but he sheathed his weapon, nodded his head in a somewhat brusque display of surrender, turned on his heel, and left the room. He slammed the door behind him.

“Have her if you will,” Augustus heard his old friend call, his angry voice fading as he marched down the corridor. “She is nothing good.”

Chrysate came closer. Augustus could see a ring on her finger, a huge, shining opal flashing shades of rose and blue, green and purple. It was carved with an intaglio of some kind, an image of a woman's face, perhaps.

Augustus reached out and laced his hands around the girl's tiny waist. He could smell her scent: salt, wood smoke, rosemary, and sex. He put out his tongue to taste her skin.

She threw back her head and laughed, reaching over him to lay her hands on an object on his shelf.

“Is that all you think I am?” Chrysate asked. “A woman?”

“I know you are more or you would not be here,” Augustus replied, though in truth, he did not think she was much more. He smiled into the girl's throat, and then took her breast in his teeth. This was exactly what was needed to make him forget about the misery to come. What was war without a woman? He pulled the girl onto his lap.

She leaned back, away from him. He noticed that her eyes were greener than they'd been a moment before, her cheeks brighter.

“What is this?” she asked, showing him the object she'd taken from his shelf. “It's a pretty thing. I might use it for my jewelry.”

It was the engraved silver box containing Antony's ashes.

“Not that one,” Augustus said. “Let me give you something better. Something made of ivory and rubies, to suit your complexion.”

She smiled. Augustus noted a fleck of gold in one of her eyes. Her skin was the color of milk. Her lips were like warmed wine now.

“What shall I do with this, then?” she asked.

“You'll put it back where you found it,” he said, smiling.

She was a tease, this girl. Augustus thought about the things he would do to her. He had some ropes here, and a whip braided of soft leather, which would leave lovely marks on that pale flesh. His body hummed pleasantly.

“I think I will not,” Chrysate said.

Something changed in her. Her thighs clasped his, and Augustus felt, all at once, as though she were made of iron. The softness of her waist became something live and brutal beneath his palm. Augustus caught a glimpse of her face as she arched her spine, her throat toward the ceiling.

The green of her eyes had been eclipsed by black.

Augustus gasped beneath her, pain coursing through him. His hands scrabbled at her skin.

She opened the box, curled backward and drew her fingernails, almost lazily, along the stone of the floor. With a wrenching sound, a fissure appeared, a trench in the very earth. The priestess poured a measure of ash into the soil.

Augustus watched, horrified and paralyzed.

Chrysate pulled a pin from her braids and stabbed it into her fingertip. She held the finger above the ash for a century-long moment, before a glob of blood formed and fell into the trench.

With her terrifying, dilated pupils, she looked into Augustus's eyes.

“Watch,” she ordered. “Listen.”

A wailing moan came from deep beneath the house. The floor tilted. The books spilled from the shelves, and Augustus himself fell to the floor, his face inches from the trench. He could not see to the bottom of it.

There were more sounds, shrieks and wails, indistinct calls in unknown languages, sounds of hunger and lust, sounds of despair.

A chill filled the room, and something began to move in the frozen dark down there. A dusky thing, twisting and rising like vapor over a river, a scrap of mist.

“Come,” the witch said to the mist. “Come to me.”

The thing rose, a creature taken from some deep ocean, and reeled into the air.