Palace of Darkness (29 page)

He had her pinned somehow so she could not move. Not bring up a knee nor twist away. She thought to bite his hand, but the fury in his eyes and the weapon she could feel pressed against her midsection gave her pause. She heard her own blood, a
whoosh
in her ears.

“Who are you?” His voice was harsh and guttural.

She could say nothing with his hand in place but opened her eyes wider and tried to look innocent.

He leaned in closer. “Do not scream.” He edged his hand away from her mouth. “Who are you?”

“Cassia. I am also hiding. You are a Roman?”

His hand clamped over her mouth again. “Who told you this?”

She shook her head and he lifted his hand. “Only your appearance.” Before he could stop her voice again, she asked, “Are the Romans attacking Petra?”

He pushed her harder against the wall, and she had the strange thought she would soon be one of Petra’s sculpted figures in a wall niche.

His dark brows came together in a point over basalt-black eyes. “Why are you hiding?” Before she could answer, he shifted to reach between their bodies—for some unseen weapon?

Fear washed over her like heat, then receded, leaving her cold and shaking. “They have taken my son. I am trying to get him back.”

She tried to read his reaction, but he seemed not even to hear. He was all nerves, as though he was attuned to every sound and every movement outside their hiding place.

Like a trained soldier.

He smelled of sweat and leather and cook fires, as she imagined a soldier would, and she suddenly feared her escape with Alexander might be complicated by forces she had not considered.
I have to know.
“Will Petra be taken today?”

His gaze roamed hers, as though he would read
her
and determine friend or enemy. “I do not wish to kill a woman.” He acted as if that were an answer. Perhaps it was.

“I am no threat to you,” Cassia whispered. “And I have no loyalty to the royal house.”

He seemed to consider her words, then in a rush released her as he shoved himself back from the wall, retreated a few steps, and scowled at her. “Tell no one.” He darted to the doorway, leaned out to scan the hall, and disappeared.

Cassia exhaled, leaned back against the wall, and tried to slow her heart.

But thoughts of Alexander soon overtook the aftereffects of the encounter. She left her water pot and pouch, slipped to the chamber doorway, checked the hall, then slid along the wall until she could
bend her upper body around the corner and watch the hall that led into the center of the palace.

She did not have long to wait. At the far end of the corridor where she imagined it branched into the central courtyard, a pair of figures, one small and one larger, hurried toward her.

Cassia froze, willing the two shapes to become Marta and Alexander. Her heart seemed to beat in rhythm with their hurried steps, and then she dared to hope it was really him, and then she was certain.

Marta’s head scarf had come loose and fluttered behind her. She held Alexander’s hand in her own and her mouth worked silently as though she spoke to him, but her gaze was focused ahead. Alexander ran to keep pace, tripped over his own feet, and nearly fell. She slowed and righted him, then pulled him on.

Cassia felt a movement to her right and gripped the corner in fear. But it was Tabatha, speeding toward her and dragging a large woven basket. Her gaze connected with Cassia’s and her mouth dropped open but she kept moving.

Cassia looked back to Alexander, tried to feel if he was afraid, tried to send him the messages of her heart. He looked so big. Had he dared to grow in spite of their separation? And yet he seemed vulnerable, too, and she longed to have him back in her arms.

As though he felt her love streaming toward him, Alexander lifted his eyes to the end of the hall and saw her. Her heart lifted and joined his, and his smile, she knew, matched her own.

And then there came more movement, behind the two, and Cassia’s glance went beyond Alexander and Marta to the figures behind them.

It seemed to Cassia then that time had frozen like the ice she had seen one winter at the edge of a river in the mountains of Syria. It moved forward, one tiny drip at a time, with each moment suspended in a bead of clear water, magnified and distorted.

She saw the palace guards lurch into the corridor. Saw Alexander’s hands reach toward her, unaware of the danger. Marta, too, with a joyous smile.

Then heard the pounding feet.

Marta turned, her eyes huge. The two guards lunged for them. Marta pushed Alexander behind her and raised her arms. The silence of the halls shattered with her shriek, and one of the muscled men swept her aside like an empty wheat sack. His forearm connected with her temple and she went down. The sound of her head as it smacked the marble floor was like a melon falling from a market table.

Cassia started forward, but Tabatha was beside her somehow and gripped her arm with claw-like hands.

Alexander screamed. The guard seized him, then turned and grunted something to the other guard, who picked up Marta’s limp body, flung it over his shoulder, and followed the first.

Cassia strained at Tabatha’s hold on her. The girl was stronger than she looked.

Two more guards rounded the corner ahead and took in the scene.

In that moment, Alexander twisted enough in the arms of his captor to connect with Cassia one final time, to reach his arms toward her and scream her name.

“Mama!”

The word echoed and bounced down the corridor and she slipped from Tabatha’s grasp, tears streaming, and opened her arms as though she could capture the sound and have Alexander with it.

The two new guards focused on her, but she barely took note. Her attention was on Alexander as he turned the corner and was lost to her.

Arms extended and empty, she stared at the hollow place where her son had been.

A thousand kisses, shekel. A thousand kisses.

THIRTY-ONE

I
N THE THRONE ROOM
, J
ULIAN TRIED TO WRENCH HIMSELF
from the guards who held him, but he did not know what he would do if they let him go. By now the others were racing through the palace in search of Alexander. Had the women gotten him out? Did Hozai have him even now, under the tarp in the back of his wagon, rumbling over the rutted limestone street to where Cassia waited?

Hagiru did not leave him to his thoughts. She stood on the throne platform above him, her eyes like two black bits of night spilling down on him.

“You thought to overpower me? To take what is mine?”

Julian expanded his chest. “He is not yours!”

“Ah, but he is.” She smiled and rubbed her toe into the platform as though crushing an insect. “I do not know how you and your fellow Jew-lovers escaped from the amphitheatre. But the next time, I will not be so generous as to let you die gloriously as entertainment for the people.”

Julian kept silent. His attention should be fixed elsewhere, not on the queen.
Father, I need Your power now. Not for my sake, Lord. Protect Your people.

He felt the oppression lift a bit and leaned into his prayer.

But Hagiru must have felt the change, too, for a wave of darkness washed toward him from the throne. When he looked at the queen, her arms were raised toward him and her head thrown back. Her lips moved silently, and watching her pray to her god from the pit caused Julian to break into sweat and then grow chilled.

Movement at the edge of the room drew his attention. Two guards pushed in. One had a bulky arm around the waist of a small, wriggling boy. The other had a woman flung over his shoulder, as though he were a trader from the East carrying a bolt of silk. Julian could only see the lower half of her body, as her head and shoulders were draped down the guard’s back. Even so, the muscles in his jaw bulged and his teeth clenched.

Hagiru laughed, low in her throat. “So, Dushara favors us after all.” She turned on Julian. “Perhaps you should speak to
your
god, and tell him the god of Petra does not appreciate his presence.”

Julian barely heard her. His eyes were focused on the second guard and what he carried. The man flung the limp body of the woman from his shoulder and dropped her to the floor.

Marta
.

God, what have I done?
Julian started toward Marta, though her bloodless lips and closed eyes gave him little hope. The guards who held him jerked him backward.

“We found her secreting him toward the back of the palace,” the guard said to Hagiru.

The other set Alexander on his feet. Julian drank in the sight of the boy, trying to memorize every detail he could pass to Cassia if he managed to escape the palace. He looked healthy and was dressed as a prince, in the fine white robes of royalty. But his face was tear streaked and his lower lip trembled. He looked to the queen, not noticing Julian.

“I want to see my mother!” His voice was high and sweet, and it broke Julian’s heart.

Cassia, I am so sorry.

How had it come to this? He had been so certain of his plan, so sure they followed the will of God in saving Alexander from the terror the queen planned for him. Julian felt the heavy crush of his failure, and it pressed on him in sharp contrast with the confidence he had felt when he entered. Some lessons were learned too late.

Hagiru turned on him once more, her eyes and her words cold. “I sent for the old man this morning. But I imagine you already know this. And it is just as well that you are here in his stead, for I am given to know the old man fancies you as his replacement.” She licked thin lips, then sat on the throne and leaned back as though dealing with Julian was as trifling as giving direction on the morning meal.

“So I have a message for the old man, and you shall hear it as well.” She paused, running her gaze over him as if to take his measure. “Dushara is the god-prince of Petra. And he will not be dethroned. I do not know why you and your band of rebels have aligned yourselves with the boy’s mother, but I can promise you this”—she leaned forward on the throne and her eyes burned—“not one of you will survive your defiance of me!”

A wave of self-loathing washed over Julian, disgust at his failure and his foolishness, despair over the future. He swayed on his feet, believing the queen’s words and half hoping she would immediately make good on her promise. At least if she did, he would not have to face Cassia.

“Julian?”

Alexander’s small voice dragged his attention away from the queen. He tried to smile at the boy, to reassure him that all would be well, but the smile did not reach his lips.

Alexander cupped hands to his mouth and whispered, “Don’t listen to her, Julian. She is very mean!”

The guard grabbed Alexander by the neck. Bethea started forward as though she would intervene, then stopped.

But Alexander’s simple words took hold, and Julian faced the queen once more. A calmness swept into his soul, and he spoke words he knew were not of himself. “A time is coming, Queen Hagiru, when the One True God will make Himself known to you. And on that day”—Julian’s voice rose to fill the throne room—“on that day, you will bow your knee to Him.”

Her face contorted into a death mask of rage and she shot to her feet.
“Out!”
She pointed to the chamber entrance. “You will leave at once, and tell your people if they wish to wage a war, we shall see whose god is the stronger!”

Julian took one last look at Alexander, then nodded to Nahor and Niv and backed out of the throne room, through the front hall and onto the palace portico.

Malik still waited in the street, his face upturned to the palace steps, and as Julian studied the old man below, he knew it was only the prayers of Malik that had kept them safe. Certainly it was nothing Julian had done.

And now that they were out and all their plans had come to naught, he must seek out one small woman and tell her that her son was not yet coming home.

THIRTY-TWO

C
ASSI A SNAPPED
,
AS THOUGH SHE HAD AWAKENED FROM
a frightful dream, and ran toward the end of the hall where Alexander had disappeared.