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But Olympias shook her head. “Far from it,” she said. “You will encourage him in every way possible.”

“What?”

But now it was I whom Olympias ignored. She nodded indulgently at the eldest of the coin smiths as he rose, white-haired and with hands more scarred than not. “You honor us with your presence,” the man said. “It isn’t often that the ruling house deigns to visit us.”

“An error I seek to rectify,” Olympias said, gifting him with a rare smile. “I wish to see how the coins I’ve ordered are progressing.”

The smith snapped his mottled fingers and an apprentice hurried forward bearing a small wooden chest. Copper coins gleamed when he opened the box, freshly minted and slightly irregular from their stamping. Olympias plucked one from the trove and turned it over in her palm, her smile widening with unadulterated pleasure as she handed it to me.

“A thunderbolt and a wreath,” I said, placating her as I inspected the other side. “And a thunderbolt on a shield.”

“The three symbols of the Molossians, Chaonians, and Thesprotians,” Olympias said. “This one coin shall unite all three Epirean city-states.”

“Making Epirus a power to rival even that of Macedon,” I said. “A threat at Antipater’s back door.”

Not for the first time I yearned for the simple life I’d built for myself back in Pella, sparring with Cynnane and fishing with Arrhidaeus. Against my will, Olympias had dragged me back into a royal’s world of backstabbing politics.

She nodded. “It’s a threat which shall either goad Antipater into action or terrorize him into inaction.”

“But I still don’t understand why you wish me to encourage Cassander,” I said. “He’s spying on us for his father.”

“Of course he is. He sees nothing I don’t wish him to see.” She replaced the coins and commended the smith before answering the rest of my query. “And his father will think twice about attacking Epirus if he believes Cassander has a chance of securing your hand in marriage,” Olympias said. “By then I’ll have the entire region eating from my hand.”

It shouldn’t have surprised me that we were all bit players in Olympias’ game, an amusement that might plunge us into a bloody civil war.

“Does Alexander know of all this?”

“He has given me free rein at home while he pursues his campaigns in the east,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she glanced up from her inspection of the remainder of the coins. “Everything I do is for Alexander, to protect his interests in Greece while he pacifies our enemies and earns eternal glory. Heroes in centuries to come shall beg on their knees for the opportunity to kiss my son’s feet in the Fields of Elysium.”

I shivered then despite the heat of the forges, wondering what sort of simpleton Olympias took me for that she expected me to believe all her plots and schemes were a sacrifice to be laid at the altar of Alexander’s greatness.

And I wondered what other sacrifices she was willing to make in the name of her son.

CHAPTER 15

Persepolis, Persia

Hephaestion

Persepolis burned like dry kindling in summer.

Whether Alexander planned for the fire to spread and consume the whole city, I knew not, but spread it did.

In later years bards would sing the tale of an Athenian courtesan named Thais, Ptolemy’s favorite in his gaggle of mistresses, and boast that she challenged Alexander to punish Persia for sacking her native city and putting its remaining men to the sword. The song claimed that a garlanded Alexander swayed on his feet and followed the trail of dancers and flautists in Thais’ wake, stopping to watch as she flung a sputtering torch onto the floor of Xerxes’ throne room and danced beneath the cedar rafters as the wood caught the blaze.

That was a lie, for Alexander commissioned a singer after the ashes of Persepolis had settled in order to save his image from being forged into that of the ravaging conqueror he’d so sought to avoid.

He had become a demon, a man I no longer knew.

In a great irony, the Tower of Silence and the tombs of Persia’s dead kings had survived unscathed, but the rest of the city may as well never have existed. The ashes in Xerxes’ throne room stood tall as my knees and I keened like a grieving man when a messenger informed us that the ancient archives had burned, including the famed copies of the Zoroastrian Avesta and Zend, written on cow skins with ink of molten gold. My first thought was of Darius’ women, how Sisygambis, Stateira, and even Drypetis would mourn the loss of their sacred texts, their words now ashes scattered by the very flames that their god held so dear.

But soon Darius’ women would have more to grieve than words on paper.

Alexander and I hadn’t spoken since the night of the fire and I’d spent many sleepless nights wondering if I should remain behind as he pushed into Bactria. I had hardly a memory without Alexander’s smiling face and golden hair; to leave him would have been akin to cutting off my sword hand. So instead, I swore that I’d make him atone for what he’d done to Persepolis by designing a greater palace, constructing a larger library, and rebuilding the city to rival even his Egyptian Alexandria.

To save him from himself.

We left the ruins of Persepolis as the wild red tulips blossomed, drawn east by the lure of Darius’ crown. Reinforcements had joined us and rumors of the King of Kings’ ever-changing course reached us daily, first that he had retreated to Balkh and then to the Caspian Gates. We followed at a pace so blistering that good men fainted in their armor on the side of the Royal Road and horses collapsed, left to rot beneath a blanket of their own lather.

Then came news of Darius’ arrest by Bessus, his own cousin and the
satrap
of Balkh. We abandoned the infantry and rode at a brutal gallop across the desert by nightfall, not bothering to stop for food or to refill our water flasks. Finally the sun rose in shades of vivid purple and orange, illuminating a line of abandoned baggage carts on the horizon.

Alexander and the other men prepared to ride ahead at the promise of riches and abandoned weapons, but all I craved was a flagon of water to wash away the grit that filled my mouth, reminding me of the ashes of Persepolis.

The soldiers pulled away dusty blankets on the line of carts, revealing baskets of grain and chests of iron shields, but nothing of substantial value, nor any
kraters
of water. A lone cart remained untouched and abandoned off to the side. With any luck, it would be a water cart or, even better, one filled with
amphorae
of sweet date wine.

Another soldier beat me there, a Macedonian named Polystratus who had been cursed with the most terrible jutting chin the gods had ever sculpted. The wagon was high off the ground, but not covered by any blanket. Polystratus tested a wheel spoke with his weight and hauled himself up.

“You should see this,” he said, burying his nose into his shoulder even as the morning breeze carried to me the inexplicable stench of death and decay.

I clambered up the other wheel, my metal breastplate clanking as I peered into the rude cart and promptly swallowed the sour bile that rose in my throat.

Two corpses, one an attendant dressed in a plain yellow robe.

But the other . . .

Flies crawled upon its eyes and inside its gaping maw, bloody tears in its exposed flesh proof that the vultures had already been here. A dark stain of old blood on its robe, striped white and purple as only the King of Kings could wear. Gold manacles on its wrists as befitted a Persian king and yoked to the other corpse.

“Alexander,” I called, my voice rasping with the first words I’d spoken to him since Persepolis. “I believe we’ve found what you’re looking for.”

Darius, the King of Kings, had been stabbed by his own people and left to rot in the sun. The man had been a coward on the battlefield, but even so, this was an ignominious death for a king who had ruled half the world. Further proof that even the greatest men sometimes died inane deaths of blood fevers and old age and petty vengeance.

Such was the humor of the gods.

I should have been joyous that the long-sought prize had been won, but instead, I removed my helmet and bowed my head to the decomposing man in the mud-daubed wagon. I gritted my teeth as Alexander strode past Polystratus, and waited for his whoop of triumph.

“It is Darius,” he said quietly, and I nodded, for we both recognized the man who had fled the battlefield twice before.

Then Alexander—
my
Alexander, my Achilles, and not the demon who had burned Persepolis—removed his cloak and spread it over the dead Persian king, sighing as he relieved Darius of a ruby signet ring and slipped the treasure onto his own finger. “May his gods keep him,” he said. There was a moment of quiet, surrounded only by the meager desert breeze in our ears and the overwhelming stench of death. “He shall be returned to Persepolis, his body to be interred in the royal tombs with all honors.”

In that moment I was glad that the underground mausoleum of Persia’s kings had survived the fire, protected by the earth.

“And Darius’ family?” I asked. “Shall they be allowed to leave Susa to attend the funeral?”

“Yes, yes,” Alexander said. “I shall send them my condolences.”

Somehow I doubted that would be enough.

But then the yellow-clad corpse alongside Darius stirred.

I almost fell from the cart in shock as Alexander cried out in alarm, but I managed to recover enough to grab Alexander’s waterskin from his belt. The half-dead attendant sputtered as I dribbled the lukewarm liquid into his mouth, but then he clutched at the skin and sucked at it more greedily than a dying carp.

“Easy,” I cautioned in Aramaic, pulling it away from him before he threw it all back up. “It would be a shame to drown yourself so soon after escaping from Hades’ clutches.”

The boy’s face was so badly burned that skin peeled away on his nose, and his hands were scratched as if he’d fought off a flock of vultures. It was suddenly clear why the carrion hadn’t stripped Darius down to bones by now.

“What is your name?” Alexander demanded when I’d allowed the boy enough sips to drain half the skin. He tried to sit, a shock of dark and dusty curls obscuring his eyes.

“Parizad,” the youth said, his voice trembling as he dared look up. Despite the damage the sun had done to his face, he was delicate about the shoulders, with a face that might have graced the finest courtesan, the promise of supple lips, and almond eyes fringed with camel’s lashes. The manacle at his wrist clanged as he reached up to brush his dark hair from his forehead, even that simple movement languorous like a cat’s despite the days of filth that streaked his skin and the golden shackle that bound him to a dead man.

“Our last reports claimed that Bessus had taken Darius hostage,” I said, gesturing to Darius’ cart. “Was this done by his hand?”

The boy nodded. “I saw it with my own eyes. Bessus stabbed Darius, then lifted the golden diadem from the king’s head and placed it on his own. He proclaimed himself the new King of Kings.”

Alexander’s eyes narrowed, and I had no doubt that he would not be so magnanimous toward Bessus as he had been to Darius’ corpse. More self-proclaimed kings would crop up like weeds if Bessus wasn’t quickly rooted out.

“And you remained behind?” I asked the young man, sniffing out any possible subterfuge before I ordered his shackles broken. “What sort of soldier refuses to follow the newly proclaimed king?”

A loyal one, or a stupid one.

“I’m no soldier, although I wished to be,” he said. “Bessus didn’t take kindly to my questioning whether the remaining
satraps
would follow Bessus after his murder of a chained king.”

“And he left you here to rot in the sun,” I said.

Alexander clasped my forearm, his thumb brushing my wrist in a way I’d missed, as Polystratus used his sword to break the manacles’ chain. “We’ll take this boy with us and hunt down Bessus,” he murmured, his lips warm against my ear. “Together, we shall kill the traitor in such a way that no other Persian shall dare challenge me.”

So Bessus would be the next Persepolis, a warning to the world of all that Alexander was capable of. But Bessus was a vile turncoat, one man, not a city already ancient when the Olympians were still being born.