The Shards of Heaven (44 page)

When Khenti didn't reply immediately, Vorenus looked over to him and saw that the Egyptian was looking to the rear of their ship. “Manu wonders if he may bring us into the docks on the south side of the island. The docks of the royal harbor might be too tight.”

Khenti had been efficient in conscripting a crew for their trireme at Lochias. Though they'd been forced to leave a bit shorthanded on the oars—Khenti could find only so many guards in the short time they had—they'd been fortunate to find Manu actually working down in the royal harbor when they'd arrived. There was no more experienced captain in the Egyptian ranks, though Vorenus had never heard him speak a word to anyone. He'd long suspected, in fact, that the captain was a mute. How Khenti and others managed to communicate so well with him despite his apparent silence was a wonder. “The south side is fine,” Vorenus said. “Whatever he thinks best.”

Khenti nodded back toward the keel, then returned his attention forward. The ship began to turn beneath them, the bow angling off to port. Vorenus closed his eyes to feel the steady beat of the oarsmen rocking them forward through the harbor. He'd never liked riding upon the sea—especially after Actium—but there was nevertheless something soothing about the rowing of a warship, something that reminded him of waves on the shore. Like a mother's heartbeat, he supposed. He'd seen many an angry, crying child comforted upon a parent's breast, lulled to quiet and sleep by that sound and that feeling of home, and perhaps it was the same with men and the sea. He'd never experienced holding a child himself—his duties had left him no time for children of his own, no doubt part of the reason he felt so close to Cleopatra's young family—but he'd seen it often enough to think it similar.

“Some Romans have beaten us to the island,” Khenti said.

Vorenus opened his eyes. Manu had steered them around the island, bringing them into line with the docks on its south side, and they could see now that another boat was already docked there: a bigger ship than their own, flying Roman colors. More than that, a golden eagle standard was set at its foredeck. “Not just any Romans,” Vorenus said, quickly thinking through their options before deciding that there was nothing to do but carry on with the hope of rescuing the children, the only family he'd ever known. “It's Octavian.”

*   *   *

A squad of legionnaires was waiting for them on the dock. There was no fight. Facing perhaps two dozen well-armed and coordinated Romans, Vorenus and Khenti knew they were outmatched. Yet Vorenus still believed he might manage to negotiate a peaceful outcome, some way of getting the children out under the pretense of the Roman flag their trireme flew. Besides, he was himself a Roman, was he not? Even after all that had happened, a part of him still clung to that land of his birth. They'd listen to reason, he was sure.

All such hope disappeared once he and Khenti stepped foot on the island. The Roman squad leader, a veteran man Vorenus didn't recognize at first, stepped forward to address him. “Lucius Vorenus,” he said.

“Do I know you?”

The Roman smiled. “Too long among the filth and you've forgotten your old comrades. We served together in Gaul.”

Vorenus squinted, finally saw behind the wrinkled face and whitened hair the man he'd known. “Galbus?”

The man smiled. “You took my rank, Vorenus. You and that big bastard Pullo, with your nonsense charge against the Nervii in Gaul.” His eyes sparkled as his voice took on a formal tone and he stepped back into even rank with his fellows. “You're under arrest by order of the Imperator of Rome, Octavian, son of the god Caesar. Surrender your arms.”

“Galbus,” Vorenus started to say, “We need—”

“Surrender your arms,” Galbus said again.

The rest of the legionnaires came to dangerous attention, and Vorenus felt the threat of the spear points and blades. He felt, too, the tension in Khenti; the Egyptian, he was sure, was going to attack. He was also sure that they'd both be dead in seconds if he did. Not knowing what else to do, he reached slowly for the belt holding his gladius and unbuckled it. “Do as they say,” he said to Khenti.

Khenti did so at once, unlimbering the swoop-bladed sword at his own side and slipping a short, hiltless dagger out from behind his back. At a nod from Galbus, two legionnaires came forward and collected the weapons.

“Good,” Galbus said, voice satisfied. “Come, Vorenus. You've an audience with the judge of Rome.”

“And the Egyptian, sir?” asked the legionnaire holding Khenti's weapons.

Galbus looked the guardchief up and down. Disgust twisted his face. “No better than beasts, these Egyptians.” His face brightened slightly. “Take him down to the end of the dock and gut him like one.”

Vorenus jumped forward, the instinct to save Khenti overriding the logic of the odds, but something hard struck the back of his skull and he instead crumpled forward to the flat blocks of stone paving the promenade along the dock.

The last thing he heard before he passed out was Galbus laughing.

*   *   *

He awoke to surges of pain that pounded his skull with every heartbeat. He groaned involuntarily, and someone's fist immediately impacted his ribs. “Quiet, you,” a voice growled.

Vorenus coughed air back into his lungs, but he managed not to groan again. And the new input of pain from his side somehow cleared his head enough for him to blink the scene before him into focus.

He was in the throne room of the small royal palace on Antirhodos. Dozens of braziers were lit in and around the pillars supporting the roof, and the air was thick with rich incense that tickled at his nose. Large rectangles of sunlight draped across the floors and walls, the angles of the light revealing that little time had passed: it was still early morning. He'd been here often at this time of day, making one report or another to the throne of Egypt.

Only this time it was not Cleopatra upon the orange-stone chair raised up at the head of the room. It was not the incarnation of the goddess Isis who looked down upon them all, enjoying the breeze from waving palm fronds in the hands of collared slaves on either side of the kingdom's seat. It was Octavian. Older than he was when Vorenus saw him last, and more confident, stronger in shoulder, but undoubtedly the adopted son of Julius Caesar. As Vorenus looked up, the younger man smiled.

“Welcome, Lucius Vorenus,” he said. “I'm sorry for your treatment. It seems unfitting for a hero known to my divine father. Then again, it seems too kind for a traitor both to Rome and to his memory.”

Vorenus worked to fight down the rising gorge in his throat while trying to formulate a reply, but the sound of a woman struggling in one of the side halls turned Octavian's attention elsewhere.

A moment later, Cleopatra appeared, half-dragged from the family's living chambers between two Roman soldiers. She was wearing what appeared to be her nightclothes, and they were bloodstained and partially rent, leaving the luscious olive skin of one shoulder bare and allowing peeking glimpses of her voluptuous body as she was thrown forward to her knees in front of the throne. Behind her came her two boys, Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus. There was blood on their nightclothes, too. More than on their mother's, Vorenus noted. Then, with horror, he saw that no one else was coming from the hallway. Where was Selene?

As if in response, a contingent of Roman soldiers on the other side of the throne room parted, and the young Selene appeared. Unlike the rest of her family, she wore a royal gown. Not the most elaborate dress he'd ever seen her wear, but clearly more formal than anything the others had on. And where their faces were freshly damp with tears and stained with the red of emotion and blood, Selene's was clean and she wore the countenance of a person who was finished with tears. She walked deliberately across the stone floor, her head high and her hips moving in careful rhythm, womanly despite her young age.

She reached her arms out to her brothers, thin bracelets of gold dangling from her wrists, and they came to her as they perhaps had once come to the mother who knelt unmoving, head down against her chest and shoulders rising and falling in slow breaths, in front of them.

“Selene,” the young Philadelphus croaked as he embraced his older sister. “Kemse. She's … they—” The little boy's voice broke and he sobbed into her breast.

“She tried to stop them,” Helios managed to say, and then he began to cough in violent, phlegmatic hacks.

Selene just held them, cooing softly. Her gaze, Vorenus saw at last, was fixed not on her brothers, nor on her mother, but past them all. She was staring at Octavian. And Octavian was staring back.

Vorenus stared, too, wondering what was happening. The fact that his head was ringing like an anvil was not helping him figure it out.

“Lord of Rome,” Cleopatra said.

Heads turned to the woman who had seduced two of Rome's greatest generals, the woman who had ruled Egypt and, for a moment, almost held the whole of the world in her hand. It was a testament to the striking appearance of her daughter that anyone's eyes had ever left her. She was still, after all, even at the age of forty, the most beautiful woman Vorenus, at least, had ever seen. And if anyone in the room were to say differently, Vorenus would know him a liar.

Octavian's head turned slower than the others, but at last he, too, looked at the queen on her knees before him. “Cleopatra,” he said. “I've dreamed of this moment.”

Cleopatra rose from her knees slowly, her head still bowed. Vorenus didn't doubt that the top of her gown was hanging open to Octavian's view as she did so. “Antony is dead,” she said, as if his death explained everything that needed explaining.

“By his own hand, I know. And from what I've been told you were planning to do the same to yourself and your beautiful, innocent children.”

Cleopatra at last straightened her back to look up at him. “You are Rome, and I would do only what Rome wishes.”

“Is that so? You were barricaded in that room to do your hair, then?”

Many of the Romans in the room snickered. Cleopatra ignored them. “I was mourning, my lord.”

“Ah, yes. For that pig, Antony. A traitor to Rome. I should think you'd be glad to be rid of him.”

“Egypt has ever been a friend to Rome,” Cleopatra said. Her voice, Vorenus noted, betrayed nothing of the cold hatred that he knew must be in her heart. She increasingly sounded, quite to the contrary, playful and flirtatious.

“And so it will remain,” Octavian replied. “Indeed, I think Egypt will be under the direct rule of Rome from now on. The time of the Ptolemies is done. You'll be the last of your family to see the throne.”

Cleopatra gasped despite her attempts to keep her calm. She knew, as did they all, the import behind Octavian's words: Caesarion would never rule Egypt. He was a man marked for death, if death hadn't reached him already.

Please let it not have, Vorenus thought.

“I think you should return with me to Rome,” Octavian continued. “As a sign of … the friendship between us.”

Something like a shiver made Cleopatra's shoulders tremble, but her voice betrayed nothing as she bowed—longer and lower than necessary—to the throne. “I serve your will, of course,” she said.

“Very good,” said the Imperator of Rome. Then his gaze turned to Vorenus again. “And so to you, my once-Roman friend. What are we to do with such as you?”

It wasn't really a question, and Vorenus did not treat it as one. He tried only to stand as straight and proud as his throbbing head and aching ribs would allow.

“You were a good man, Vorenus. I even remember you from my youth, if you can believe that. I thought you were a loyal man, then. I'm sad to see I was wrong.”

Vorenus thought about replying, about declaring his undying, unceasing devotion to the true spirit of Rome, the Rome that he and Pullo had fought and bled for, the Rome that Julius Caesar had promised them once. But it would serve nothing. He'd fought against Octavian's armies, and Octavian wasn't his adopted father. He was a man of more ambition, of more calculation. And for Octavian, Vorenus knew, he was only a man to be used for an example. He looked over to Selene and her brothers, and he saw the many Roman soldiers around them, how easily Octavian could kill them all. He imagined Caesarion waiting for a ship that would never come, running through the streets of his home like a hunted rabbit.

I'm sorry, he thought. I failed you all.

“Those who beg mercy of Rome shall have it,” Octavian announced in a loud voice to the room. “Let it be known to all those who have served under Antony. Turn over arms, submit to the authority of the Imperator, and live. If not, go the way of Lucius Vorenus.” His gaze fell on Vorenus, piercing and angry. “His head. Now,” he said, dismissing his life with a wave of his hand.

Metal rang from behind Vorenus, and he closed his eyes. This will do for the headache, he thought to himself. It was the sort of thing Pullo would say, and the thought of his old friend made Vorenus both sad and happy at the same time. At least Pullo lived.

“No!” shouted Selene.

Once more the room turned to the girl who for the moment seemed a woman. Her brothers were startled away from their embrace of her, leaving wet marks upon her dress. With Octavian's attention upon her she approached the throne that might one day have been hers, arms loose at her sides as she swayed up next to her mother, who only looked down at her daughter with an unreadable expression upon her face. Selene's jaw was stiffly set, and her gaze did not fall to the ground. She did not bow.

“No?” Octavian sounded amused. “You disagree with the judgment of Rome?”

Cleopatra's hand twitched at her side, as if she thought to reach out to her daughter to protect her from the dangerous game she was playing, but Selene was already speaking, her voice steady and smooth. “Vorenus was more a father to me and my brothers than Antony ever was,” she said. “He has been, as you said yourself, a loyal man. Yes, he was loyal to Antony, but it was only because it was his place to be. Antony chose for both of them.”