The Shards of Heaven (11 page)

Octavian's face fell soft with pity. “Taxing? If you are ill I have the finest doctors of the Republic at my whim, dear brother. If you're tense I can bring the most beautiful girls to your bath, to your chamber, perhaps?”

“No, no.” Juba felt the heat of his anxiety flush his cheeks, and he hoped it would seem that his primary concern was embarrassment before the guards. “It's hard for me to admit—you know how proud I am, my brother—but it's nothing so, well, physical.”

Juba's attempt to wrest some control of the situation from Octavian seemed to work, as his stepbrother didn't respond immediately. “Explain.”

Juba let his eyes pass over the praetorians with obvious concern.

“They can be trusted, Juba. Speak freely.”

“Well, it takes a kind of inner effort to work it.” Juba felt his heartbeat calming in his chest as he wove his way into honest truth. “I cannot sustain it yet for any length of time. It's like tapping into a cistern. There's only so much in there before you must wait for it to be replenished. I'm trying to learn how to make it last longer, Octavian, but I'm not there yet. My walks help me get ready.”

Something like genuine concern appeared on Octavian's face while Juba spoke. “You're better now, then?”

Juba thrust his chin forward slightly, head up and strong, as if trying to stand like a man before the older, bigger guards. “I am.”

“I'm heartened to hear it,” Octavian said. He walked up to the younger man and put his arm around him. The two of them started moving toward the front of the tent. “You've clearly thought things through.”

“I've tried.”

They were nearing the flap. Octavian stopped abruptly. “Then you ought to have thought, dear Juba, about what attention it would have brought that poor woodworker to have garnered such a windfall. You ought to have thought about the fact that I'd have no choice but to have him killed.”

Killed? Juba swallowed hard, felt certain he could hear his own heart beating in his ears. That old man was dead?

“And you ought to have thought especially about the consequences of lying to me.”

Juba knew what happened to those who betrayed Rome. If Octavian knew the truth of his plans, if he knew about the Ark and Alexandria, the best he could hope for was a quick death—though the cross, he knew, was far more likely, far more in keeping with Octavian's style. Or being thrown from the Tarpeian Rock, screaming the seconds to his death on the crushing stones below. As his mind wailed in terror, Juba concentrated on appearing shocked at the accusation. “Lying?”

“You told me that none knew of the Trident but you and me.”

“The staff was broken. And he didn't know what it was—”

“Not the woodworker. That was a small matter, brother. I'm speaking of this slave, who's not just known of the Trident but helped you practice with it.”

Juba turned instinctively to look at Quintus, who'd now managed to lift himself to his knees. He was staring at them tiredly, his chest heaving. The old man said nothing but shook his head from side to side.

“He's a slave,” Juba said. “I didn't think he mattered.”

Even as the words came out, Juba regretted them. The body of Quintus—his old friend, the closest thing to a real father that he'd ever had—sagged, and his face trembled.

Octavian stared down at the old man as if looking at a beast of burden. “I suppose you're right, of course,” he said. “Which is why I didn't feel bad asking him to try to use the Trident himself.”

“But why—?” Even as he started to ask the question, Juba knew the answer.

“To see if just anyone can use it,” Octavian said, voice objective with logic. “I wasn't about to try it myself, you understand. Or to subject one of the guards to it. Goodness, no. You saw what it did to him: if you hadn't walked in when you had, he would've died. I don't want to lose a good man like that.”

The full truth of Octavian's thinking struck Juba hard in the gut. “But a slave isn't a man,” he whispered.

“Precisely so,” Octavian said, pride puffing his voice as if he'd just led a prized student to a proper conclusion.

Quintus knelt, swaying slightly—in grief or exhaustion, Juba couldn't tell. He imagined the slave's heart breaking.

“And, since we can't have him talking, either,” Octavian continued as he turned to the praetorian to his right, “kill him.”

The guard didn't hesitate. His nod was almost imperceptible, but within a heartbeat he had pulled his gladius free with an effortless, smooth movement and was stepping forward. Quintus at last moved, coughing out assurances of his silence as survival instinct staggered him to his feet and he tried to retreat toward the back of the tent. He tripped, fell to a knee, and then the guard was there, his arm coming back along his side in perfect thrusting form. The old man knelt, tears running clean paths across his dirty skin as his eyes pleaded with the impassive killer. Juba felt paralyzed, knowing he could do nothing without bringing further suspicion upon himself but also knowing he couldn't just stand by and watch Quintus die. Caught between terrors, he shut his eyes.

“Wait.”

Octavian's voice was not loud, but when Juba opened his eyes again he saw that the praetorian was as motionless as a statue before his old friend, who'd raised his arms to shield his face.

“Return to your position, praetorian.”

The guardsman sheathed his blade as smoothly as he'd removed it and strode back to take his place by the others. The fact that he'd almost murdered a man in cold blood didn't seem to register on his face.

Juba felt himself breathe again. The old man's arms fell away from his face and something like hope appeared in his eyes.

“You said you agreed with the need for silence,” Octavian said to his younger stepbrother. “‘Absolutely,' you said. An interesting choice of words. But a good one. The need for silence
is
absolute.” Octavian's eyes narrowed. “
You
do it.”

Juba blinked, his mind racing. “Do—?”

Octavian smiled gently. “Be not so innocent with me, little brother. You know quite well what I mean. What is necessary here, what absolute silence demands.” His head tilted toward the slave. “Kill him.”

“I'm unarmed,” Juba said, holding out against hope.

Octavian's smile only grew. “Oh, but you do have a weapon.” His arm still around his stepbrother's shoulder, he turned him around so that he was squared up to the old man. Then the Imperator of Rome looked down at the Trident in his hands. “No need to blunt the points. Move his blood.”

Move his blood?
Juba stared for a moment, uncomprehending. Then, with horror, the realization of what he was being asked to do washed over him. He knew with full certainty, just as he'd known he could knock over the cup of wine in Octavian's office, that he could reach out, feel the flow of blood in his old friend's body, and stop it: with the power of the Trident he could seize up the stream of life in the man's veins and kill him. Juba could even see Quintus' dead eyes, wide and frozen, in his mind. But he couldn't really do it, could he? “But, brother, I—”

“Don't tell me you're tired. You're rested. You said so yourself. Now. You can move wine and barrels of water. Move blood.”

Quintus suddenly looked like a caged beast, his eyes a mix of terror and confusion. His gaze at last met and locked on Juba's, and the awareness that they each had a choice to make passed between them. Juba had to choose whether he would kill his old friend. Quintus had to choose whether he would reveal Juba's secrets to Octavian.

The slave smiled and began to pull air into his lungs. He opened his mouth as if to speak.

Before he could change his mind, Juba closed his eyes and tried to push the face of his old friend out of his thoughts. Then—forcing himself to keep down the heaving of his stomach, to keep in the tears of his eyes—he raised the gleaming Trident, held tight to the two snakes, and felt the metal beneath his flesh grow warm.

Speed, he thought. Do it quickly. For his friendship. For his silence.

 

6

C
LEOPATRA
'
S
D
AUGHTER

ALEXANDRIA, 32 BCE

Cleopatra Selene couldn't sleep. It wasn't just that they were staying in the noisier old palace on Lochias while workers installed new statues at their home on the harbor island of Antirhodos that kept her awake. They'd moved back and forth between the royal palaces enough to make each feel as much like home as the other. No, it was the feeling that she was being left out that she didn't like. She knew there was a big meeting in the council chambers, not far away. She'd heard her mother talking about it in the square that afternoon: a messenger, news from Rome.

Rome
. Lying in bed, the eight-year-old mouthed the word into the darkness, holding the sound of it out, like a long, slow exhalation.
Rome.

In her dreams it was a golden place, more opulent than even fair Alexandria. Its streets shone in the light of a kinder sun. Its people laughed in their many-colored clothes: happy, peaceful, content. For what else could the peoples of the world aspire to be than citizens of Rome? Did not her own father want more than anything to return to Rome, his home? Was that not what his fight was about? He often told her and her brothers that most Romans were loyal to his cause. Most Romans would love them. It was only a scant few—wicked men, like Octavian—who denied the true spirit of Rome, the spirit of the great Julius Caesar, which survived in her stepbrother, Caesarion.

What news had the messenger brought? Her mother had said her father feared the worst. Probably something to do with Octavian, then. Most bad news seemed to be tied to him.

War, perhaps. Selene knew all the servants expected it would come to that eventually. She overheard them talking about it when they didn't know she was listening or didn't care—how, they thought, could a girl understand? It was a lot like the attitudes of those the servants served, who gave little thought to the submissive men and women pouring their drinks as they discussed the fates of nations. Selene had seen it often enough to feel certain that she'd be more careful when she was queen.

The messenger must have brought news that Octavian had declared war, she decided. They were probably debating what to do about it even now. Maps were being drawn up. Plans were being made. Tempers were flaring, and faces were getting red.

Selene rolled over in her sheets. It wasn't fair that she couldn't be there. Just because she was a girl didn't mean she couldn't understand things. Couldn't they look at her mother and see that?

Not that her twin brother, Helios, would be there, either. But at least
he
was getting extra lessons with their teacher, Didymus, meeting for tutoring sessions after she'd gone to bed. That wasn't fair, either.

Selene looked toward the darkness outside the window, wondering what time it was. Not too late, certainly. Perhaps Helios and Didymus were still in session.

She swung her legs out of the bed and pushed on her sandals. There was a thin haze of sand dust on the stone floor, and her feet made little
shush-shush
noises when she stood.

Selene cringed, listening hard to hear whether or not her movements had awoken one of the chamber servants. When she heard nothing but snoring, she stepped back out of the sandals and set her bare feet on the floor. It was cold, but it was quiet. Then, pulling a shift over her head, she started to tiptoe across the room, toward the hall and the greater palace beyond.

There were normally at least two guards that she could see from the door to her chambers, but peeking out into the lamp-lit hallway, Selene saw none. Apparently, most had been pulled away to the council chambers. The fact that even the guards—the guards!—knew more about what was happening did not do much to improve her mood, but she was glad, at least, that it would make moving through the complex easier.

Her brother's chambers were just down the hall, so Selene didn't have far to go. She padded between the pools of flickering light, checked for guards around the one corner she had to turn, and quickly reached her brother's door. Leaning against the wood, she listened and heard the steady voice of Didymus.

She'd hoped she could just listen to the lesson from outside. Over the years she'd listened in on many conversations through closed palace doors, after all. But their voices were more muted than most. And there was the chance, too, that a guard would actually show up, and he'd undoubtedly send her back to bed with stern warnings and exasperated looks, and then she'd hear about it in the morning.

Selene's little fingers pulled open the door as quietly as she could manage. It was dark inside, and she realized why it was she couldn't hear them from out in the hall: they'd pulled thick curtains across the corner of her brother's chambers that served as a study. Even this close, their voices were muted.