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“What is it, girl?” Berenice teased. It took her mind from the pain. “You stare as if you want to bite me. You should mind your manners before your queen.”

“My deepest apologies, my queen, daughter of the Sun.” The girl looked to the floor. “Your bath is ready.”

Berenice nodded. With soft fingers, the maid helped her to the basin, and soothed her as she slid her body into the scorching silver. The girl washed her thighs and did not pale as the water ran red. Next she rubbed Berenice’s wounded breast, and though Berenice winced, the maid kept scrubbing until the dirt had bled away.

“You aren’t squeamish, at least, even if you are impudent,” Berenice told her.

The girl smiled. “I’ve seen men do much worse than this. Husbands can be cruel.”

An idea sprouted in Berenice’s mind. “And what should become of these men who do worse to their wives?” she asked.

The maid studied her for a moment, eyeing her face and her wounds. “There are ways…of dealing with that too. Widows, for instance, don’t have to suffer men’s brutalities.”

Berenice sighed, disappointed. “Your solution seems to place a great deal of faith on the gods.”

“The gods aren’t the only ones who make widows,” the maid whispered with a flustered intensity. Was it true, Berenice wondered, that women enjoyed great powers in the Upper Lands? Had the Egyptian laws of old provided for such problems—allowed wives even to dole out death? She’d heard such rumors, but she’d never put much stock in them.

“Tell me, child: do you speak from experience?” Berenice pressed. “Do you know so very much of men?”

The girl’s face flushed. Berenice felt foolish; she’d misread this nervousness. The girl, she supposed, was merely at the age—fourteen, perhaps—when men in the abstract and those in the flesh proved different beasts. “No, my queen.”

As the water restored vitality to her limbs and liver, Berenice grew anxious to dress and return to the audience hall. The longer she lingered with her wounds, the greater his victory would appear. She must retake the public rooms at once. She would emerge from these chambers reborn, not an eager bride but a formidable queen.

She stood, sending sprinkles of water across the floor. The girl pinned the cloth beneath her arms and let it fall to her sides. Berenice had settled on a deep purple chiton embroidered with a simple emerald stitch, covered by a gold shawl. Far humbler garb than she’d worn the day before. She nearly felt herself in it.

“My queen.” The girl boldly met her eye; whatever fire Berenice had seen burned all the brighter now. “Forgive my impudence, but should there ever come a time…Should there ever come a time…”

She stared at the girl in disbelief, and the maid’s voice slipped away.

“You speak dangerously out of turn,” Berenice told her firmly. The new fury ate away at the holes that had blossomed inside her. The thought of what it would be like to kill—she couldn’t think of that. Not now. Not when her father would soon march a Roman army to her gates.

Younger

A
rsinoe watched her sister’s hands. They trembled, full of rings, ruby-eyed snakes and sardonyx cameos jangling against one another. It was a symptom of matrimony, this quaking. Before Berenice wed Seleucus, Arsinoe had never seen her sister shake. And now Berenice couldn’t stop shivering. It should be she, Arsinoe, who was shivering—she was the one who had been summoned to the royal atrium. She didn’t see what Berenice had to be frightened of. Slyly, Arsinoe stole a glance at her sister’s husband. Eirene and Layla, the maids who cleaned her chambers and poured her baths, spun tales about him. They called him “handsome,” “heroic,” “strong.” But Arsinoe saw nothing so remarkable in the man. Then and there, she decided that she would never marry. Not now that she’d seen what weaknesses matrimony begot.

Old Nereus, her father’s changed adviser, spoke. “My queen, news of the Piper grows ever more disturbing. He allies himself with Pompey. He murders Alexandrians in the streets of Rome. He parcels off our kingdoms to the highest bidder. It’s past time for us to question the serpent lurking in our reeds.”

Berenice laughed behind shaking hands. “And what secrets might this child, this so-called serpent, possess? Does the Piper send fleets of pigeons to carry her messages each night? I hoped my mother’s death might bring an end to these daft accusations—”

“My love, my queen,” Seleucus broke in. His wide-set eyes feasted on Arsinoe. “Who can say what messengers your father employs? This girl is no ordinary child. How could she be? The same blood courses through her veins as yours—and mine. The same blood of the House of Ptolemy. Your adviser has a point.”

Her sister sucked air through her teeth. It made a hissing sound, like a snake. “Since it pleases you, my dear husband, I’ll let him proceed. Go on, Nereus. Ask the girl your questions.”

Arsinoe braced herself. Now it had come to it, and she would have to answer for something, though she still couldn’t say for what.

“Thank you, my queen,” the old man murmured. “I assure you, I intended no offense—”

“Enough.” The queen sighed and looked at Arsinoe. “My ever wise and
constant
councilor wants to know what knowledge you have of our father’s plans. You haven’t had any letters or messengers—that much we know. But perhaps you’re blessed with sight, or you’ve flown as a vulture to Delphi, or maybe Athena has appeared to you to whisper the Piper’s plots?”

As a vulture.
Did Berenice suspect her dreams? Had Arsinoe betrayed herself, cawing out her secrets in the night? Or perhaps there was some tacit understanding between the two? Berenice was her sister, after all. Just as Cleopatra was. Well, not as Cleopatra was, but still: there was a closeness in that bond. Did the queen share her night terrors? Arsinoe struggled to wrench a clever answer from the ether. None came.

“See? The child is as puzzled as I am by this nonsense.” Berenice turned back to Nereus. “But perhaps, dear friend, I’ve forgotten some other likely scenarios. Might you list them for us?”

“My love, my queen.” Berenice bristled at the sound of her husband’s voice. “Nereus doesn’t merit your mockery. The child said nothing; that hardly proves her innocence. She must know things she’s not letting on.”

She did know things—a great many things—but not the sorts these men imagined. Whispers she’d caught while racing along the colonnades and sneaking through kitchens and soaking in her bath. Just as men paid no mind to their attendants, servants didn’t seal their lips before her, a royal child stripped of favor. From the fat baker, Arsinoe had learned that her father had “throngs of supporters, chomping to rally to his side.” And that the city wearied of the “brash and ugly queen.” Eirene, loose-lipped now, had said that borrowed coin might pay for sixty thousand Roman legions, drawn from the world’s most fearsome gladiators. But Layla had shot back her rebuke as she mended Arsinoe’s tunic: “Their soothsaying Sybil does not favor giving aid to Egypt’s kings.”

“Go on,” Berenice urged. “Tell us, Arsinoe: what secrets do you know from Rome?”

Arsinoe brought her eyes to meet Berenice’s. This question was an easy one. She knew the right answer. “My queen.” She kept her voice calm and steady. “I’ve had no word from our coward father. Nor from Athena either. My loyalties are with you.”

“The child lies too easily,” Nereus murmured.

She hated the old man with a deep and violent loathing. It was his fault, she realized; he’d stirred these suspicions against her. Her fists clenched at her side. In her mind, she drew one across a bow and sent a poison-dipped arrow into his sunken chest.

“What loyalty does she owe you? She enjoys no royal favors.” His accusations railed on. “Once she reaped the benefits of your father’s indulgence, and now she is permitted merely to live. How can such a diminution please her? Her loyalty is to her father—her father who adored her—and not to you. You are too generous with her, my queen.”

That’s not true,
Arsinoe wanted to shout. She shouldn’t have to die for favors she’d never enjoyed. If her father had loved her, surely he would have brought her with him. But he’d never cared for her, not as he did for Cleopatra, whom he wanted always at his side. Arsinoe had been abandoned here by him and by the woman she’d called mother. Even Cleopatra had left her, and with each passing day, she lost more faith in her sister’s fading promise of return.

“She is a Ptolemy,” Seleucus added, dry and cold. “She can’t be the meek lamb she appears.”

Somewhere, a heart flailed against her ribs. It belonged to another. She felt no fear. Some greater spirit seized her, like the one that had taken hold in the Sema, the one that bade her tear her hair and claw her face in the memory of her fire-bearded friend.

“We hear on good authority, my queen, that there was a plot to steal the girl from the palace,” Nereus rambled on, tugging at his sagging gullet. “A plot that would have succeeded, if Lykos hadn’t intervened.”

Lykos.
Arsinoe’s fingernails pierced her palms. How she loathed that man, loathed that very name. The name of a murderer.

But who, she wondered, was the greater murderer: the one who killed or the one who sent the killer? As she drank in Nereus’s words, it became clear to her: Nereus had orchestrated that murder too. He’d killed the fire-bearded guard as surely as Lykos had. And her anger at the old man thickened. She didn’t dare look up. Her fury threatened to outpace her sense.

“Lykos takes a generous view of his own importance,” Berenice answered. “Whatever plot there might have been, the girl’s eunuch would know, perhaps her nurse. But what idiot would involve a child in such matters?”

“I did—I knew about the plan,” Arsinoe whispered. Her voice brought the others to heel. Regret nudged her for a moment, but she buried the feeling deep in her belly. It was better, by far, to betray the dead than to turn on those who lived and breathed and prayed. “They didn’t tell me of it. But I overheard them in the gardens.”

“The girl, as you see, my queen, changes her story yet again,” the old man muttered. “Perhaps she’d find it easier to keep her lies straight if she didn’t tell so many of them.”

Again, her anger flared, menaced.

“I didn’t lie!” she yelled, louder than she had meant to. “Begging your pardon, my queen, but I did not. I’ve heard nothing from my father, not since the coward fled Alexandria. I’m not certain that the guards who meant to kidnap me had word from him either.” That wasn’t true: the fire-bearded guard had said he’d received some letter. But Arsinoe doubted that it mentioned her. “In fact, they were mostly worried that no one would want me once they’d stolen me away.”

“My queen, my love.” Seleucus spoke again, savoring the room’s attention. Arsinoe wondered if his repetition of that phrase wore on Berenice’s ears as it wore on her own. “Despite all your kindness, the girl still betrayed you. She tells of her treachery without a hint of remorse.”

Arsinoe’s stomach clenched. “My queen,” she pleaded, “you are my adored sister, though I do not call you ‘my love.’”

A few snickers erupted at her words. Berenice made no attempt to silence them. Even here in the royal atrium, the provenance of advisers and friends, some did not hew to this Seleucid’s telling of the world.

Flush with their approval, Arsinoe carried on. “And what loyalty could I possibly owe my father, the very father who left me here to die? When I was abandoned, it was you, my dear sister, you alone who took pity on me, who protected me, who treated me only with kindness. Why would I lie to you?”

Berenice studied her carefully. At last, her hands were still. “Very well, Arsinoe. Did you know about this plot?”

“Not until I learned of it in the garden,” she answered. The truth again stood at her side. “I’d never even seen those men before. I’ve told you everything I know. I promise I would never do anything to betray your trust.”

“No,” Berenice replied thoughtfully. “No, I don’t believe you would. You may run along, little one.”

Seleucus’s voice strained against the air. “You can’t mean to show this traitor more benevolence?”

“She’s done nothing.” Berenice’s voice was sharp. “I wonder at your interest in her, my love. How does the Piper’s youngest daughter concern you?”

“She has all but confessed that she’s heard from the Bastard—”

“Mind what epithets you fling at my father. He might be a coward—he is certainly a traitor—but don’t call him ‘bastard’ in my presence.”