The Shards of Heaven (27 page)

The signalman's own gaze was skipping among the ships around them, looking for messages. “Nothing certain, sir,” he said. “Agrippa does report ranged engagement with a heavy ship forward of his position.”

Octavian's gaze was still out on the water. “He must be close. He'd be near the center if he's on this flank.”

“He is,” Delius said.

“I believe you,” Octavian said. The slightest hint of a frown creased the corners of his eyes as he stared out into the storm toward his admiral's big ship. “Signal Agrippa. Two triremes forward. See if it's Antony.”

Even as the signalman began the message, Octavian turned his back to the water to address the older general behind him. “Delius, I want proof this war is over. Proof that Rome is whole again. I want Antony on this ship today. Alive. Rome depends upon it.”

Delius, still wearing the polished finery in which he had appeared before them the night before, saluted. “It shall be done, Caesar.”

Caesar
. Juba chewed on the word. A family name, of course. But increasingly a title, a claim to power in its own right. Would Caesar himself have approved?

“Very good,” Octavian said. “Pass word down to the decks: all ready to row. We'll push soon.”

The ship swayed. Delius went down the ladder. The rain fell. The men below shouted their readiness to attack. After a time, Delius returned. Minutes passed.

“Message from Agrippa, sir,” the signalman finally said, breaking into a smile. “It's Antony's flagship, sir, right where you thought.”

“Good.” Octavian's own smile was almost imperceptible. “Forward to the position, Delius. You'll lead the boarding party. And send word to the fleet: all ships forward.” He took a deep breath, but for all the calmness in his voice he could have been talking about the weather. “This ends now.”

The praetorians grinned. Delius snapped to a salute then slid down the ladder once more. The signalman relayed the Imperator's commands with earnest excitement, and a great, growing cry went up into the storm.

The steady beat of the oars began.

“Come stand beside me, Juba,” Octavian said.

Juba came to the railing of the tower, trying not to think about the last time he stood thus next to Octavian on the sea. Around them, the fleet was moving forward. Their own path began to turn, angling toward Agrippa's ship in the distance. “Yes, brother?”

“Does it bother you that the men call me ‘Caesar'?”

“No,” Juba said with as much confidence as he could muster. “It's your name by right of inheritance.”

“Then it's your name, too, is it not?”

“No. Well, yes, but I'm undeserving of it.”

“Ah, but you've Caesar's mind for the strategy of war,” Octavian said. He swept out an arm across the closer ships moving into position, the more distant ones in flames, the rising and falling swarms of missiles, the storm and the waves dotted with the drowning and the drowned. “This whole campaign is a testament to it.”

Juba thought through different responses, abandoned them all. In the end, he tried to change the subject. “Why send Delius to take Antony?”

“I need to know his loyalties. If he turns to stand alongside Antony in the end, he'll be cut down.” A volley of arrows rained down on the ship, the men below them raising their shields in tortoise formations. Octavian didn't move. He was relaxed and unflinching as the bolts rattled down on the roof above their heads and fell, harmless, to the deck. “If he remains loyal to me, he may prevent Antony from taking full honor of victory from me.”

Their big ship was moving fast now, cutting a diagonal line across the engaging fleets, driving hard for the presumed location of Antony's flagship. Everywhere he looked, Juba saw men dying in the rain. From his campaign. “Full honor?” he asked distractedly.

“By preventing me from taking him back to Rome in chains, to face the Triumph I
will
be owed.” Octavian's face brightened momentarily, and he looked over to Juba as if he'd just thought of something interesting. “By killing himself, brother, like your blood father did to avoid Caesar's rightful triumph.”

Juba blinked, trying to keep down a surge of rage. “Of course,” he managed to say.

“Antony is just the sort to do it, I'm certain. Trapped, he'll fall on his sword before he'll face Rome's justice.” Octavian's jaw was hard as he returned his gaze out toward the approaching ships. “I'd rather lose him to the waves,” he said.

Out of the storm the shape of a massive quinquereme emerged, its deck a chaos of men in combat. Two triremes were already engaged with Antony's vessel. As their own vessel approached from the western side, Juba could see that the second of them had just followed the first in successfully ramming the flagship's flank: its bronze ram was buried in a splintered wound in the ship's side, and its marines were starting to climb grapple lines to heave themselves into the melee on Antony's deck. Through a momentary pause in the misty sprays Juba could see that Antony's rowers were thrusting spears through their oar ports, trying to stab the legionnaires as they climbed. There was still a strong defensive knot of men on the flagship's deck—presumably where Antony was—but even through the distance and distraction it was clear that the addition of the second trireme's men would quickly overpower the defenders. If Antony was still alive, Juba thought, he would be overwhelmed by either Agrippa's men or his own blade soon enough.

“No,” Octavian rasped, seeing it, too. Juba watched his knuckles whitening on the rail.

The signalman spoke up from behind them. “Agrippa's ordered a full assault—”

Octavian spun on the signalman, his face red with rage. “I can see that,” he said, biting off each word. “Go below. Tell Delius to brace for impact.”

“Sir, from here I can—”

“Go. Now.”

The signalman's gaze instinctively flashed to the ornate gladius at the Imperator's side, momentarily paralyzed by his confusion. Four of the praetorians, Juba could see, already had hands on their own weapons. Two of them were silently moving behind the young man. The signalman, wide-eyed and trembling, swallowed and bowed hastily before he turned and sped down the ladder as fast as his limbs could manage.

Octavian's torso was heaving, his head lowered like a cornered bull's. “Get it,” he snapped to one of the praetorians.

Though no one had spoken about the long chest—no one had even seen it opened in weeks—the praetorians atop the siege tower did not have to ask what it was that Octavian wanted. Two praetorians moved with efficiency, unlocking the chest and pulling free the cloth-wrapped Trident of the god of the sea.

Juba, watching them, felt as if he'd stepped out of his own body, as if he were watching all this unfold from somewhere else, as if he was not about to unleash the power of the gods upon the men—Antony's and Octavian's—on the ships in front of them.

“Agrippa's not getting my glory,” Octavian said, his voice disturbingly quiet. “Nor is Antony. Better that the hand of a god take them all.”

One of the praetorians pressed the Trident into Juba's hands. The metal-enwrapped staff gleamed against the background gray of storm and sea: the three sharp arrow points, the wide central casing, the twisting, sinuous snakes—everything but the chillingly black stone. Juba held it distantly, his hands wrapped around the polished wood of its staff.

Octavian stepped behind him, wrapped his own hands over his adopted brother's shoulders. He gripped the bones there tightly, making Juba wince as he was turned toward the sea, toward the water and the ships beyond. “Do it,” the newest Caesar whispered. “We'll storm what remains. We'll have our victory.
Rome
will have its victory. No one can blame us for this war when they know that the gods themselves support us, when they see that the gods have turned against Antony and destroyed him. Feel it, brother. Now. For Rome. Destroy them all.”

Octavian's hands squeezed so hard into his skin that Juba had to close his eyes against the pain, close his eyes against the horror that was about to unfold.

Down into the stillness he sank: deep down within himself, away from the nightmare and the helplessness. Down, out of the storm and into the black quiet, where he felt, behind the shadowed silence, the pulsing beat of his heart and the desire to one day be free.

Juba's hands moved to the metal. The metal grew warm.

Then he opened his eyes, and the screaming began.

 

18

A M
EETING
OF
M
INDS

ALEXANDRIA, 31 BCE

Caesarion, sitting with his back to the door, was in the middle of explaining to Didymus how little time they might have before Rome's armies arrived at the gates of Alexandria when he heard Khenti's voice outside, speaking his half-sister's name.

Holding up his hand to keep Didymus from saying anything more himself, Caesarion stood and moved quietly to the door, listening in as the guardchief scolded Selene as best a man of such relative status could.

Caesarion sighed, shaking his head a little to himself. Selene had always been headstrong. Far more than her brothers. Philadelphus was probably too young for much mischief at this point, but there was certainly a difference between Selene and her twin brother, Helios. Perhaps it was due to the boy's seemingly constant bouts with illness, but he'd never been the kind of child to fight authority. Selene, though … Selene felt it was her right, if not her duty, to push back against anything that threatened to hold her down. She was like their mother, Caesarion supposed. For good and ill.

It was impressive that she'd made her way to the Library. He had to give her credit for that. If it were not for Khenti's well-trained palace guards—far better trained than they'd been a year ago under Khenti's executed predecessor—she truly would have made it here alone.

Caesarion winced as he heard Khenti telling the girl how the world meant her harm, and how it was time she understood the fact. It was true, even if he wished it were not. He'd tried too hard to keep his half-siblings in the dark about the realities they were facing. Of course they didn't understand his urgency about keeping them on Antirhodos. They didn't know how desperate the war was, how unpopular they might be with the people. They knew nothing about the forces that were arrayed against them.

Khenti knocked on the door three times, then paused before adding two more. A signal of no danger at the door.

Caesarion took a deep breath, collecting his thoughts, before he moved the bolt on the door and opened it to the hallway. He didn't pretend to be surprised to see Selene standing there, Kemse's shawl around her head and shoulders doing surprisingly little to cover her royally groomed skin and hair, her sea-green dress of rich linen, her expensive sandals, her scents of perfume and oils—and her face reddened with shame.

“Thank you, Khenti,” he said, not addressing Selene and allowing her to squirm for a bit longer. “You've seen to contacting Kemse?”

“Yes, Lord Horus.”

Caesarion winced again, but he didn't bother to correct Khenti for once more attributing the god-name to him. Such habits were hard to break, he knew. And what was worship of the gods if not a habit? “Very good,” he said, finally looking down to his half-sister. “Been wandering the city this morning, Selene?”

Selene pulled off the shawl with a small huff before she walked into the room, her still-narrow hips managing a sway not unlike her mother's as she entered Didymus' office. Though still a girl, she was beginning to blossom. Sibling or not, he could recognize that. She would be an extraordinarily beautiful woman in the years to come. And then she'd be ready for some royal marriage—if any of them actually lived long enough for it.

The Greek teacher rose and bowed from behind his cluttered desk. “My lady Selene,” he said as Caesarion shut the door and rebolted it.

“Didymus,” Selene said, smiling and dropping all pretenses to walk quickly around the obstacles of the room to wrap her arms around his down-leaning neck.

“It's been too long,” he said. The scholar hugged her back, but Caesarion could see the pain in his eyes, the look of uncertainty: Didymus still hadn't forgiven himself for his long-ago betrayal of the family.

Selene, too, seemed uncertain despite her enthusiasm, Caesarion noticed. Her embrace of the scholar was more stilted than it had once been. His own fault, he thought. He'd not involved her in things as he should have. He'd coddled her like the little girl she was fast outgrowing, and even she was becoming aware of it now. Khenti was right. It was wake-up time, like it or not. Caesarion cleared a stool for her near his own chair after they pulled apart. “You should sit down and rest for a minute, Selene,” he said. “You've been walking a lot today.”