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“Then I will die. And I will die a queen. I’m no eunuch—my womanhood was not cut away. I will not be remembered as the Ptolemy who
fled,
who abandoned her subjects to the sword.”

“Berenice.” Pieton stared back at her with his sad, sad eyes. “I am so sorry. I am so sorry to leave you here alone.”

This was too much to take. She would not accept his pity.

“Be gone!” A harpy, she shrieked at his retreat. The sound of her voice rebounded off the walls long after the eunuch had deserted her.

His words haunted her deep into the night.
Flee, flee.
That advice was foolish too: where could she go? She wasn’t her father; she would receive no warm reception in Rome. Did Pieton imagine that she’d sail up the river to Nubia? Or perhaps she’d drag her ships across the desert sands and chart a course to India? No, even if she wanted to run, there was no point in it. Rome’s talons stretched too far.

When Leda came to put out the candles, Berenice turned her away. She’d given up all hope of sleep. The wax stained the saucers, and even dripped onto the onyx floors. As she’d done when she was young, she let the wax coat her hands, allowing her fingers to linger on the stalks as the hot droplets scorched her skin. Later, she’d pick away the residue. If she wasn’t dead by then.

Desperate, Berenice clasped the vulture at her chest. What nonsense had driven her to put on that necklace? Mut, the beleaguered mother goddess, would not protect her, just as her own mother could not. She moved to tear the amulet from her throat, but something stopped her hand.

Why hadn’t she seen it before? Her thoughts sizzled in fits and bursts. The woman raped and weeping in Thebes. Her husband still and strangled on his bed.
Perhaps someday you might linger in the southern kingdom…
Berenice could send for Merytmut. Her servant would know the twisting ways to escape the palace undetected. Here lay the solution to the eunuch’s words:
Flee, flee.
There was a place that would shelter her, that still lay beyond Rome’s reach.

Her finger ducked across the flame, lingering just long enough to feel the fire’s scream. Berenice could picture herself in Thebes, among the alabaster of that dying city.
And what would you do there?
that other voice sneered, the voice that haunted her darkest moments, that recalled her mother’s hacking breath.
What sort of peace could you find, you who have been queen?

A drop of wax melted onto her skin.
Never show them you are soft.
It burned hotter than the flame, this last taste of scalding fire. Her hands were red and blotchy. The sight turned her stomach to bile.

Would you be content to pray and kneel and bend among the priestesses? Are you your father’s daughter after all?
The voice transformed. It did not belong to Tryphaena, long dead and destroyed. It was Berenice’s own.
What comfort would you find in flight?

That was what they expected—Pieton, Nereus, Dryton, even Archelaus. They imagined her a spineless woman still. She wouldn’t slink away in the darkness; she wouldn’t beg to cling to some shadow of life. What torture could death bring? She was a queen, a goddess, a Ptolemy.

When Rome’s soldiers tore into her chambers, she did not scream. She did not thrash at their harsh hands or beg for foolish mercies. Head high, she went to meet her fate as had the pharaohs of old. To embrace death with dignity.

Younger

L
ittle Ajax licked the pomegranate juice from his fingers, savoring its sticky sweetness. At first, it had disgusted her, how he’d milk the last remnants of his food from his filthy hands, but now she almost admired his tenacity. Arsinoe had never seen anyone enjoy meals the way this street boy did, though she’d attended feasts where she had tasted the most opulent of dishes, rich heifer meat and figs dipped in the sweetest honey that lingered in her throat for days. But now that she thought back, it seemed that all the courtiers had merely picked at their plates, toying with the entrails and sipping at the sauces. This child had the way of it, embracing the sheer relish all those pompous nobles eschewed, smacking his lips with each bite and grinning from ear to ear.

“Where should we go now?” he asked, his feet swinging back and forth over the canal. “Where should we sleep tonight?”

He trailed Arsinoe everywhere, this little boy whose cousin she had killed. At first, she’d tried to rid herself of him, waking in the middle of the night and creeping out on her own. She didn’t know how to care for herself; how could she be expected to look after him? Besides, he’d lived his whole life on the streets—surely he should know more of their workings than she? But Ajax always found her in the end, rushing to her side, all slights forgotten, as though she’d never meant to abandon him at all and had merely misplaced him as she might a shawl on a warm day. Arsinoe wondered if Big Ajax had tried similar tricks on his cousin before finally giving up and accepting him as a hanger-on.

The sun had slipped lower in the sky—so low that its rays barely crept over the Temple of Serapis to the east. Beyond that, Arsinoe knew, the orb would soon be plunging into the sea. It had been days since she’d seen the waves, though she could still taste the salt on her tongue, even here beyond the south wall, in the underbelly of the city. Squatting with her back flush against the stone fortification, she felt almost safe: a quick hop over the canal would bring her back to the cover of the catacombs. Besides, she’d learned quickly enough that the northern parts belonged to the wealthy, and it was better to stay here, near the canal and the fresh water that it carried. Salt water was the province of the rich, the luxury of those who had access to the pure variety at the twist of a knob. It was better to hide here, far from that other life, far from the Roman soldiers—her father’s soldiers—who pounded at the palace gates.

But there remained one place that she couldn’t make herself avoid: the agora. Each afternoon, she’d lead Ajax there. Early on, when her money pouch had still been heavy from the coin she’d earned selling her palace clothes, it had been easy to come up with a pretense. Once they arrived at the market, Ajax would vanish into the crowd. Raised on the streets, he knew more people—buyers, sellers, street urchins—than she could count. And she’d wander through the stalls, past the old woman hawking scarabs, who hardly paid her any mind now, and on to the fishmonger, whose prices, Arsinoe noticed, had soared when the Romans came, just as he’d predicted. After all, food had started to run scarce—there were another ten thousand mouths to feed.

At the end of each visit, she’d grow desperate and climb the steps of Poseidon’s temple to look out over the square, scanning for that hulking, familiar form.
I will come back for you.
Ganymedes’s parting words echoed in her head, but each time she heard them they shed a bit more of their meaning. Now that the coins had dwindled to the last few, Arsinoe could no longer sustain the same tired excuses of things they might buy. They couldn’t afford to run through the rest of the money—not for things that they could beg or trade for or steal. And she knew, deep in her heart, that the eunuch wouldn’t return for her.

“We should go back to the catacombs,” she told the boy. Every night she’d spent outside the palace she’d spent there, shielded from the wind and the dangers of prying eyes. Not in the one where she’d struck Big Ajax, but in a nearby cavern where the two cousins had set up a haphazard sort of home.

Ajax, who’d grown tired of squatting and was now sitting cross-legged on the filthy ground, glanced up at her, his dark eyes squinting with confusion. But if he objected to the plan—or wondered why she’d decided not to pass through the market as they had each afternoon before—he knew better than to say anything. He merely nodded, and scrambled to his feet. “There are those who were born to lead,” Arsinoe remembered Ganymedes telling her once, “and those who are meant to follow.” Ajax clearly belonged to the second category.

When she reached to retrieve her bone from beneath her legs, the boy frowned, as he always did.

“It’s not too late to put that back, ya know,” he told her sternly. “Like I told ya, it’s no good, stealin’ from the dead. An’ it makes you stick out, besides.”

Arsinoe’s fingers tightened on the femur. It must have belonged to some mighty soldier, she imagined, or perhaps some seer practiced in the mystic arts. A great power resided in the relic, and besides, she felt more comfortable wielding it than the knife that Ganymedes had given her. Though she’d practiced with that blade for ages at the palace, none of what she learned seemed to carry over to this new world. What difference did it make if she could throw a knife hard enough to stick in a tree? She was more worried about what might come in handy in a close-range fight. And from the moment she’d closed her fist around this new weapon, her body seemed to know what to do—when to strike Big Ajax, and how hard. She wouldn’t part with her bone. Never mind Little Ajax’s silly superstitions.

“It’s brought me good luck so far,” she snapped, though she knew that wasn’t fair. And from Little Ajax’s face, she could tell that he, too, was thinking of his cousin, of the fate he’d met at the end of her lucky bone. The boy was smart in that regard: he never spoke of Big Ajax. But Arsinoe knew that he must think of him. Just as she thought of Alexander and Ganymedes, of Myrrine and Cleopatra. And even, though she fought hard not to, of doomed Berenice.

She turned and walked on. Let him follow or not. It didn’t make a wick of difference to her. But he did, as he always did, skipping behind her on the stones. Perhaps she’d been unfair to him, to taunt him that way. But he looked to her for protection, and she gave it, however begrudgingly. Arsinoe couldn’t provide even that without her bone. This, she imagined, was what having a little brother must be like. A real one, not like the two blood brothers her mother had stolen, the ones she’d hardly ever seen except on ceremony.

“I din’ mean to make you mad,” Ajax said as they neared the catacombs. “I jus’ don’ want rottin’ luck, is all.”

“I know,” she reassured him so he’d keep his mouth shut. Something felt wrong, out of joint. The city of the dead tended to be quiet, save for the sounds of a few other street children like herself, like Big and Little Ajax, who’d taken up residence in the winding catacombs. But this silence was of a different quality. She could hear her breath, slow and steady, outmatched by Ajax’s faster pants. Arsinoe’s heart thudded dully in her ears. And then a shout pierced the air.

That voice—she knew that voice. She would have known it anywhere. Even here, where it made no sense at all. The voice—the yell—belonged to Alexander. He’d come for her, when everyone else had forgotten, and he’d sought her here. She broke into a run.

“Wait!” Ajax cried out. “Stay back.”

And he was right—Arsinoe saw that—because what could she do, she with her bone and her knife, against whatever it was that attacked her friend? But that didn’t matter. She had to reach him—he’d come so far for her.
The Fates don’t often send friends such as that.

Defying her wiser nature, she followed the scream’s course, darting between the great mausoleums, their facades brushed in mimicry of colonnaded houses, complete with cobalt pediments. As she slipped by her favorite frieze, where a horse-high Ptolemy the Brother-Loving slung his sword into a fallen Persian’s throat, she eked out a whispered prayer to Serapis between her rapid pants. And on she ran past the smaller tombstones, the early ones carved with images of their occupants giving way to those marked only by crude drawings: a man reclining on a red divan, a woman clutching a babe to her chest. Arsinoe ran as though she had no choice, as though she were reeled in against her better will.

As she twisted beyond the last of the stone markers, to the spot where the ground sprouted only wooden stakes, she saw them: a man, or very nearly one, stood over Alexander. In his hand the man clutched a knife.

“You don’t steal from me, boy,” he hissed.

Arsinoe couldn’t make out what Alexander said in return, but it didn’t matter. She darted toward his assailant, and struck him across the knees with the femur as hard as she could. His legs crumpled, and his knife went spinning from his hand. A string of curses escaped his lips, half of which Arsinoe hardly recognized as Greek. With surprising speed, Alexander darted for the fallen blade, and plunged it into his attacker’s throat. Blood spurted from the wound in rapid bursts as the man gasped and twitched against the grass. And then his body stilled, and the liquid ran dry.