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“Why’s that?” her tutor scoffed. “What secrets do you share with your slave?”

A thought sprang to her, an idea half born. Arsinoe squirmed from one foot to the other and cast her eyes to the ground. “It has to do with women’s troubles.”

“Women’s troubles.” The eunuch laughed outright. “Surely you’re too young—”

“Ganymedes, leave her be. Can’t you see when you’re not wanted?” Myrrine had come to her rescue, and Arsinoe was grateful for it, even though she knew she was too old, by far, to rely on her nurse.

“The child is lying,” Ganymedes grumbled. “I don’t want to encourage such behavior.”

“Look at her. She’s quaking. She wants her nurse, not her eunuch. Leave us.”

Ganymedes glared at Myrrine for a long, hard moment. And then he shrugged. “So be it,” he drawled. “If you’ve lost all interest in the outside world, Arsinoe, far be it from me to bore you with it.”

His words stung, but Arsinoe held back her venom as he lumbered from the antechamber. The moments stretched thin as Arsinoe listened to his footsteps trudge on, and she prayed that Alexander had thought to slink behind some corner. Not that the eunuch was in a state of mind to notice much of anything.

“All right, my dear.” Myrrine gave Arsinoe a kindly smile. A pinch of pity rose in her chest, a tinge of guilt for the trick she was about to play. “What is it? It can’t be your moon blood yet.”

Through the side of her mouth, she gasped until her lungs were full of air and opened her lips as if to speak. Myrrine drew near, and Arsinoe let out a terrible scream. The sound pierced the walls; her nurse clasped her hands over her ears. In her haste, Myrrine knocked over a vase of roses, and the shatter of terra-cotta added to the cacophony.

“What’s the matter, child?” Myrrine grabbed Arsinoe by the shoulder and shook her violently. “What’s wrong?”

It didn’t take long for the guards to charge in, one furious man followed by his twin. Arsinoe wondered whether they were indeed twins, they looked so much alike—the same tight black eyes and bulbous noses. They looked less fearsome now, with their fingers plugging their ears. Between their stomping and Arsinoe’s shrieking, no one noticed when Alexander crept through the door. She was sure of it.

“Can no one shut this child up?” the angrier of the two men shouted above the din.

Arsinoe strained her voice until she saw that her friend had stolen into her bedchamber and slipped under her bed. Then, just as suddenly as she’d begun, she fell silent.

“What madness came over you, child?” Myrrine shook Arsinoe again as if to make sure that whatever spirit had possessed her was truly gone.

All three stared at her in wonder: the two guards and her nurse. In time, the one who’d yelled about shutting her up shrugged at his companion.

“I—I—” Arsinoe stammered, as though startled by her own outburst. “I thought—I thought there was a snake. Over there, behind the divan.”

“A snake?” Myrrine gave her a narrow look. “Heavens, child. I thought you’d seen Zeus himself climbing through the window, for all the racket you made.” Her nurse shook her head over the rose petals strewn about the pottery shards.

“I was frightened. I
am
sorry.” Arsinoe did her best to look distraught.

“Go to your room,” Myrrine chided, “and think about what a mess you made and how many people you’ve disturbed.”

Arsinoe bit the smile from her lips as she obeyed her nurse’s order. Once she’d shut the door behind her, she grinned. She could feel her heart pounding at her ribs. She was alive, free. Creeping from beneath her bed frame, Alexander met her smile. For a long moment, they stared at each other dumbly, each sizing up the other. Then they collapsed on the mat and laughed together as they had not done in ages.

After the giggling subsided, Alexander sat up and scooted toward the far end of the bed, as though he still wasn’t sure where they stood with one another. Hastily, Arsinoe moved away as well, watching as her friend’s face tightened and his lips grew small. He looked as serious as Arsinoe had ever seen him. And what she wanted was to jump on top of him and make him laugh, to tickle him until he begged her to stop. But she owed him more than that, and better too.

“So you saw me dead,” he said flatly.

She nodded. No more lies, no more denials.

“How—how did I die?” He spoke in a thin voice, quiet and brave. “Was it—will it happen soon?”

“I don’t know, Alexander. I saw only your corpse.” She did not add,
It had already been picked over by scavengers, and then by me.
Even the truth had its decencies. She hoped.

“And the gods—they sent this vision to you?” His eyes were wide and earnest.

“I—” She bit her lip. “I’ve had others come true.”

“The one you had about the guard—the one who gave you food when you were hiding…”

Alexander remembered—and he believed her. It almost made her want to weep. He was the one friend—maybe the one person—who listened to her and trusted her. Arsinoe shook her head. There was no point in wandering down that path.

“There’s more.” She forced herself to continue. She couldn’t leave the worst unspoken—not when she’d already told him so much. “I didn’t only
see
your body.” Her eyes fixed on the ground, on one patch of shimmering onyx. She could almost make out their reflections in its sheen. She took a deep breath that filled her to her toes. “I feasted on it.”

“You—you what?”

She ignored the horror in his voice, the sinking in her stomach. “I was a bird—a vulture—and that’s when I saw it. That’s when I always see it. I see a carcass from above, and I circle down to find that it’s you. And—and—” Her tongue stumbled, but she pressed on. “And that’s when I dig my beak into your flesh.”

Alexander said nothing. Arsinoe looked at him because she couldn’t force herself to look away any longer. He sat frozen, unblinking. He reminded her of a river snake she’d once seen in the menagerie. The creature hadn’t belonged there, and when the gardener cornered him, he didn’t hiss. He merely drew up his body and stared until the servant struck him with a club—and he fell dead. The silence wore against Arsinoe’s eyes, threatening to consume her. She shattered it.

“And so—so now you see why we can’t…why we mustn’t spend time together. Why you should leave my rooms at once, and never return. I should have told you all that before.”

“Yes,” he answered finally. “You should have told me before.”

So he agreed with her. That was worse, almost, even though it would make their separation easier. Arsinoe’s heart beat in her throat so fiercely that she didn’t dare open her mouth for fear it might escape. But she swallowed and forced herself to speak. “I’m glad you understand, then, why we can’t be friends.”

Alexander laughed, wildly and suddenly. “No, that I don’t understand at all. What does your dream have to do with our friendship?”

Why was he playing dumb? She wanted to shove him, to make him realize what was at stake. This was serious.

“But don’t you see? The dream means I’ll bring your death. I’ll feast upon your flesh. You have to stay away from me. For your own protection.”

He laughed again. Her fist clenched at her side.

“How dare you.” She forgot herself and almost shouted. “Alexander, how dare you laugh at the gods and the Fates? There’s nothing funny about this!”

“What else would you have me do but laugh?” He shook his head slowly. “If you’re destined to bring about my death, then you’ll bring it. ‘You’ll never find a man on earth, if a god leads him on, who can escape his fate.’”
^*

Arsinoe opened her mouth to object, but she couldn’t argue against that point. The gods wouldn’t change their minds about which strings to twist—not even at Berenice’s will. And she—she was no queen. Not yet. Not ever.

“And besides,” he went on, bold, brazen, this new Alexander, “there’s nothing here for me but you. Let the gods rain down their horrors. It won’t frighten me away.”

His gray-green eyes dug into her dark ones. She thought he might keep his gaze fixed on her forever. And then, ashamed, she looked away. Even now, even after she’d confessed and told him all, she couldn’t face him.

A stone was sticking into her side. No, it was no stone; it was a sheath. She looked up.

“Tell me, Alexander.” She caught his burning eyes. “What do you know about knives?”

Elder

B
erenice gazed over the practice fields. On this scarred patch of dirt, straw sacks rose on straw steeds from the dust. Opposite, live ones faced off against them, two dozen men seated unsteadily on horses. “Recruits,” Archelaus called them, but that term sounded overly generous. Soon they’d be worth no more than the arrow-pierced sacks that served as their adversaries.

One man, his arm sagging under his javelin’s weight, kicked his mare toward a particularly pathetic-looking straw soldier, his stuffing already hanging out in clumps. Berenice bit her lip. She hoped he’d hold on long enough to strike the target. His compatriots, too, watched with trepidation as they struggled to rein in their own mounts. At least half of the horses seemed to be nags dragged from their riders’ farms; a stiff sea breeze might send them off their spindly legs. Not one among them, man or beast, would stand a chance against a Roman sword. They were arrow fodder, nothing more.

“What do you make of our new men?” Berenice asked, glancing over at her companion. She started to find Dryton’s stubbly face rather than the eunuch’s smooth one. Though long weeks had passed since she’d dismissed Pieton, she still expected him to appear at her side, as though her plight, her desperation, would call him back in spite of her threats and his better sense. She recognized that another of her advisers had betrayed her. What else could explain these paltry excuses for soldiers that had arrived instead of her husband’s battle-tested men?

“Your eyes are as sharp as mine. I’ve not seen one throw his javelin to hit the mark.” Dryton kept his tone light—but it didn’t fool her.

“They’ll be better at getting struck by them,” she answered coolly.

A golden band jangled at her wrist. Her body had sharpened, as though her bones might break from her flesh. It worried her, the way the fat had melted off her frame. A married woman should grow round, ready for a child. Even in this, her body had betrayed her. Had she been struck by some illness or, worse, fear?

“My queen, these boys are lucky we bought their swords,” Dryton went on. “Otherwise, they’d be slaving over some Roman’s farm in Cappadocia. Here they get to fight and drink and fuck—and get paid for it in cold coin.”

“I see they have the better end of the bargain,” Berenice replied. She should turn her mind from those other worries—the deeper concerns that gnawed at her, the same fears that kept her tossing at Archelaus’s side each night.
Where were they?
she wondered.
Where were those promised men?
Her father already neared Pelusium, the Nile’s easternmost port. The Piper was no great warrior himself, but with this Roman terror, this Aulus Gabinius, leading his army…This governor of Syria had already shown his mettle in Judea. But she couldn’t admit these concerns. A queen must be hardened and fearless in the face of death. And so instead she quipped, “I see what little my coins buy me: a few hundred men who can’t unhorse a bag of straw. Perhaps I should take the straw to battle in their place.”

“What they need, my queen, is time.” Dryton offered his phrases patiently whenever he wanted to propose something she wouldn’t like. She’d begun to fear that he thought her unhinged. “We don’t have the strength to fight first for Pelusium, and then again for Alexandria.”

That was lunacy.

“A victory in Pelusium would mean no battle for Alexandria,” Berenice replied. She’d spoken too soon, she realized: her words outstripped her reasoning. And then slowly, surely, she reached the same dull insight. “There is, then—you believe we won’t have a victory in Pelusium.”

Against all sense, she hoped that Dryton would smirk and toss aside some careless remark about queens and battles, and the one never being able to predict the other. But her minister of coin said nothing, and that was worse, far worse than teasing. It meant he’d given up, accepted defeat and failure.