Stealing Fire (19 page)

“When my husband died I had a choice. To die or not. I choose not.” Her eyes were steady. I had thought she was like my mother, but I was wrong. She was far stronger.

“Can't you remarry?”

She put her head to the side, smiling, her dusky lips curved like a bow. “You do not know India. Who would marry me, a bad-luck bride who brought death to a strong young man two months from her wedding day? My husband was handsome and had never been ill, but he died before the moon was full twice.”

“I would marry you,” I said. “I mean as a matter of rhetoric.”

She didn't know the last word, but her smile grew a little, though her voice was brittle. “And you would die young, soldier. Your next battle would take you, and She would carry you down among the armless ones to wait in the shadows. I am poison.”

“You are not,” I said, though a chill ran down my spine. “I do not fear your Lady of Shadows, though I give Her libation in blood often enough. She will have me when She wants me, and not a moment before.”

I saw her eyes flicker, and I knew in that moment what she loved most in any human being. Courage. She would never want a man who was less than she, no more than I would.

“Most men fear Her.”

“I am not most men,” I said.

“Perhaps you have been Her beloved in ages past,” Sati said contemplatively. “To have no fear of Death.”

I came around and sat down on the end of the bed. “I do not fear Death's Queen, though I revere Her. Do you know the story?”

“I know one story,” she said, “for I am named for her, Sati who was first wife to Lord Shiva. But I do not know if your story is the same.”

“Once there was a maiden,” I said, “and her name was Kore. She was the daughter of earth and sky, and there was no more beautiful woman in the world.”

And I told her the story, while the monsoon beat down against the windows, how the Lord of the Underworld in his pride and loneliness had seen her walking in the fields and had seized her in his black chariot, taking her underground to be his queen. Sati drew near and sat down too, her feet crossed beneath her knees, while I told her of Death's kingdom and the land of the shades, and of how her mother had sought her in vain while all the earth died.

“She found her then, in the endless caverns beneath the earth, where starlight shines on fields of grain that neither grow nor wither, for there is no time there. And there, her mother made a bargain with Death. Half the year Kore would live beneath the earth as Death's Queen, and the other half of the year she would dwell above and walk under the sun, maiden once more. And that is how it came to pass.”

There were no more sounds of revelry from the room below. It was late.

“Now I will tell you,” Sati said, and her eyes sparkled. “I will tell you my story, how the Princess Parvati was born and how she sought and won Lord Shiva through many penances and through many travails on this earth, for she had been his bride before, and love is the thing that is without end. I will tell you my story, if you wish to know.”

“I do,” I said. “I want to hear all the stories.”

She told me stories while night turned toward morning, and I told her stories too. There were gods who took the shape of monkeys, and I told her of the Titans, and Prometheus who stole fire and gave it to men. She told me of Prince Rama and how he rescued his kidnapped wife though a hundred kings stood against him, and how she came with him in his exile to live with him in hardship in the wilderness. We fell asleep just before dawn on the faded cotton bedcover, her head against my shoulder and my hair across her face.

We woke to morning and rain, and the sounds of the Ile about their business, the day's scouts turning out for their patrol below. I watched her wake and stiffen suddenly as she remembered where she was, saw the fear fade from her eyes when she saw me.

“I was thinking,” I said as I sat up. My little room smelled like damp leather from the tack, and there was no breakfast.

“Thinking what?” she asked, and a shadow crossed her eyes. In the night it had seemed simple to tell each other stories in the dark, her soft voice counterpoint to the rain.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Fortune favors the bold. “I was thinking that today is a good day for a wedding.”

Sati blinked. “Whose wedding?”

“Ours,” I said. “Will you marry me this morning?”

BAGOAS

I
returned with Ptolemy to Memphis barely a month after his marriage to Eurydice. During my month in Alexandria I finally had the splints and bandages off my arm, and I was not pleased with what I found.

My left hand was withered and shrunken, bulges of bone standing out at odd angles in my wrist, my first two fingers skeletal. I could move it, some. My wrist moved down a tiny bit, flexing forward a few degrees. I could close my fingers slightly. I could hold a piece of fruit cupped between fingers and thumb, but when I turned my hand over it dropped to the ground. My fingers didn't have the strength to even hold a lemon.

I felt a rush of rage at the doctor, who was beaming. “There! See how nicely that's coming along?”

“I can't use it,” I said, and my voice sounded strangled.

“Not yet, of course,” he said. He took my hand in his and worked it gently, frowning only when he tried to rotate my wrist back and it would not move at all. “You've got to exercise it and let the muscles heal.”

“How long?” I asked, staring at the twisted thing. “How much?”

“Another half a year, if you take care of it and work at it. How much?” He stretched my last two fingers out where they had crabbed over. “I don't know yet. You'll have some use of it, certainly.”

“Enough to ride? I have to be able to ride with this hand.” The reins had to lie across my palm, and I needed the full strength of fingers and wrist to manage a horse in battle. “I have to be able to use it. Will I?”

He shook his head, though his eyes were direct. “I don't know,” he said.

I closed my eyes. Which meant not. I knew that. With one good hand I could either use a sword or ride. Not both. What use is a cavalryman who cannot ride and fight at the same time?

“We will have to see how it heals,” the doctor said. “A few more months of light duty while you exercise it and get the muscles back. We'll have to see.”

A
ND SO I
returned to Memphis with Ptolemy by barge in the growing season, when the Black Land was greening with the gifts of the river. My room was waiting for me, though when I first entered for a moment I thought I was in the wrong place. Green curtains stamped with leaf patterns in white hung at the windows, and the bed was piled high with green and white pillows. A pair of hanging lamps swung from a stand, and there was a thick carpet underfoot. It took a moment to remember that these were the things I had ordered to have made up just before I left. During the month I had been in Alexandria they must have been finished and delivered. It looked much, much more comfortable.

I looked about with satisfaction and spread out my papers on the table. Reading was still laborious for me, though I was learning. I was told by all that it was much easier to master if it were begun in childhood, but while Ptolemy and Artashir had been at their respective lessons, I had served Tehwaz and learned other things.

There was a quiet knock on the open door, and I turned around.

Bagoas stood in the doorway, his dark hair in a long braid down his back, wearing a new tunic of white Egyptian linen over his Persian trousers, a compromise of dress, but one that suited him. Persians do not wear white often, except for religious services. I did not think it was forbidden, just not done. “I heard you were back.”

“Hello, Bagoas,” I said, straightening up and smiling. “I just arrived. How have you been?”

“Well,” he said, and smiled back. Perhaps it was the white tunic giving a glow to his face, but he did look well. “I wondered if you'd join me for dinner. I heard that Ptolemy is dining privately tonight and there is no banquet.”

“Yes, no banquet until tomorrow,” I said. “Ptolemy and I arrived too late in the day to invite all the local notables. So I am free tonight. I can come with you.”

“Good,” he said, carefully not glancing at the scroll unrolled on the table.

“It's not secret,” I said. “You can see if you like. Ptolemy wanted me to look at some of the draft language for the process of electing magistrates for the city of Alexandria.”

“Electing magistrates?”

I nodded. “As I'm sure you know, when Alexander founded cities he left them with constitutions for their governance. Alexandria's wasn't finished when he took the road east, and he never got back to it. So we are working on it now, filling in the holes and making it work now that we have a better idea of what the city will be.”

Bagoas looked bemused. “Doesn't Ptolemy intend to rule his own city himself ?”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but under the constitution. How can we have a city with men from a dozen lands living there and not have a constitution that lays out one law for everyone? If we didn't, and let each group do things according to their own laws, we should have a situation where the same crime was treated entirely differently depending on who did it! That wouldn't make sense, and it would breed unrest and resentment between peoples.”

“But surely Ptolemy can appoint the magistrates, as Alexander always did. He would appoint just men, I think.”

I shrugged. “Yes, he would. But will his grandson?”

Bagoas spread his hands. “How can anyone know that?”

“No one can,” I said. “That's the point.” I opened the scroll and laid it out. “We are building something here that must be stronger than any one man. We are building something that will endure for hundreds of years withstanding good kings and bad. It's always the same problem, isn't it? A good king comes to the throne and for a lifetime his kingdom prospers. But inevitably the crown passes to someone who isn't a good ruler, who is drunk and spoiled or simply not up to the job. And then the kingdom and all its people suffer. We are trying to build something that works regardless of who is king. If Ptolemy's grandson were an idiot, still the magistrates of Alexandria would fairly prosecute crime.” I pointed out the map I had spread beside the scroll. “See how the city is divided into twelve districts? Each district elects a magistrate, and the magistrates hear the prosecution of crimes in rotation, with three courts in session at once, one for civil matters like wills or property disputes, one for petty crimes, and one for grand crimes. When you come before a magistrate, it may be the magistrate from your district, or from any of the others, but each district is equally represented in the rotation of cases.”

Bagoas’ brows knit together. “And any man could be a magistrate?”

“Any free man resident in the city, yes,” I said. “He must run in the district in which he lives.”

“Artashir could be a magistrate?”

I shrugged. “He could be. I can't imagine why Artashir would want to run for magistrate, but if he did there wouldn't be any reason he couldn't be.”

“He's Persian.”

“Yes.” I met his eyes. “The law of the city is for everyone.”

“What if a Jew ran from the Jewish district?”

I blinked. I had not truthfully thought that far. “I don't see why he couldn't be,” I said slowly. “There would be nothing in the law to prevent it if he were duly elected.”

“And then he would enforce Jewish law?”

I shook my head. “He would enforce the laws of the city. Jews may certainly keep to Jewish law above and beyond the laws of the city, but the laws of the city do not recognize Jewish law. For example, we have it in the laws of the city that if a butcher uses false weights to defraud customers, it is a crime. If he willfully disguises one kind of meat for another more expensive to defraud customers, it is a crime. But the laws of the city do not say that cattle must be butchered in accordance to Jewish law. Should a Jewish butcher wish to work in accordance with Jewish law and to advertise that, he may as long as he also observes the laws of the city in respect to weights and measures. The magistrates will not enforce that his meat must be butchered in accordance to Jewish law, but will consider use of false weights a petty crime for which he would pay a fine and return to the customers their money.”

Bagoas met my eyes. “And you truly think men will accept this?”

“I hope so,” I said simply. “I do not see how else we can proceed. And it has worked before in the cities of Greece. It is not as though we have invented democracy.”

“Democracy hasn't worked,” Bagoas said. “In Athens it turned into Demosthenes’ demagoguery, and elsewhere it has failed, wrecked on the rocks of wealth or its inability to defend itself against stronger nations with kings. Persia burned Athens, if you remember, and that was Xerxes, not a great king.”

“Which is why we will have both,” I said. “A pharaoh to rule as Lord of the Two Lands, to wield the army and deal with other nations, and a constitution for the city that does not depend on Pharaoh. Add to that a third leg, the ancient bureaucracy of Egypt that has existed for a thousand years through its temples and priests, and there is a three-legged stool that will stand. It will endure even if there is a bad king for a few years. It would take twenty-five years of bad rule to set it adrift, we hope. And bad kings rarely reign so long.”

“I had not thought you a dreamer, Lydias,” Bagoas said, but there was something in his eyes that wanted to believe.

“Come to Alexandria,” I said, “and you will see the dream made real. Alexander dreamed the Successors, an army of the sons of every nation. That will never now be real. But come to Alexandria and you will see his dreams enfleshed. You will see it in the sons of the city and in her stones, in this thing we are building. There is nothing like it in the world, and men will gape at it as they did at the first man who kindled fire and brought it into his cave. A dangerous thing, a strange thing.”

Bagoas’ mouth twisted, and I could not tell if he meant it for mockery, or if he remembered some other conversation with someone else, not without pain. “The face of things to come.”

“Yes,” I said.

W
E ATE IN
his room, sitting together on the large couch. It was piled up with pillows and a magnificent leopard skin, which I did not think he had gotten in Egypt. In fact, much of this must have come from Persia, and I said so.

Bagoas’ eyes smiled over the rim of his wine cup. “As heavy as the hearse already was, I didn't think it would be much heavier with a few things of mine.”

“You are the only man in the world who would be kidnapped with your luggage,” I said, shaking my head.

“There were things I did not like to lose,” he said, stroking the leopard skin. “This was a gift from Alexander, and I will not see its like again.” He spread his hands. “Besides, what should I do, arriving in Egypt with nothing?”

“I'm not complaining,” I said. I looked down at the sweet cakes still remaining on my plate and said what I had known I must. “I'm sorry I didn't ask you to come to Alexandria with me. I should have. I didn't think of it until I was halfway there. We could certainly have used you.”

Bagoas shrugged. “It wasn't your place to. If Ptolemy wants me he can send for me.”

I put my cup down. “He would not want you to take it as that sort of sending for. Ptolemy is a little strange, you know. He has no interest in boys at all, and for that matter I have never seen him with any woman besides Thais. And besides, I don't think Ptolemy thinks you're his to send for.”

“If not his, then whose?” His smile was pretty, but it did not touch his eyes.

“I don't think you're anyone's,” I said carefully. “You were the King's, but I cannot imagine who could say you are theirs now. You are a free man.”

“I am not a man at all,” Bagoas said gently. “There is no such thing as a eunuch who does not belong to someone, any more than there is such a thing as a woman who belongs to no one. If I do not belong to Ptolemy, who then do I belong to?”

“I don't know,” I said. “But you could come to Alexandria if you wanted.”

Bagoas leaned back on the cushions, one tapered foot on the edge of the couch. “We are all bound by our duty, Lydias. You act as though one can just choose who one will be.”

“We can choose our duties,” I said. “When I was married, I had a duty to my wife. But it was a duty I had chosen when I married her. I have a duty now to Ptolemy, but it is a duty I chose when I swore myself to his service. I will uphold my duty to the best of my abilities,” I said, lifting my crippled hand into the light, “but it is not unwelcome. I decided to follow Ptolemy because I thought he was the best Companion remaining.”

“That is the privilege of a man,” he said, and his eyes were shadowed. “Women and eunuchs do not choose, but belong to those who own them. Do you think if I were Artashir I would not choose the same? But I am not Artashir.”

“You know full well there are more ways to serve a king than in arms,” I said, and an inspiration struck me. “You see how we are struggling to get a government working, much less a court! You are what we need in Alexandria. You know how courts work, how to plan things and get things done, and how to do all without offending people. Ptolemy has never had a chief of staff except in a military sense, and I am as ill suited to the job as anyone else, having never even lived in a great household, much less run one! We are about to face diplomats from all the kingdoms of the world, and I do not know what needs to be done! Nor does that young bride, eighteen years old and not speaking a word of anything besides Greek. If you were in Alexandria, Bagoas, you could take charge of Ptolemy's Household. I assume you could work with Amina in the women's quarters without offense?”