Selene didn’t know where to go, but she didn’t dare stop moving. Without knowing why, she turned and began walking in the direction of the command tent.
The praetorians let her pass. Whether the man who had been assigned to be her guard still followed her, she did not know. But she assumed that he was there.
Tiberius had frightened her. In short minutes he’d pushed her to the point that she wanted to crumble down into the dust. She was scared, and she was angry that she was scared. Fear made her feel weak. It made her feel like that little girl locked away in a Roman prison, waiting to be paraded in golden chains with her now-dead brother.
Coming around a bend in the well-worn path—trying to hold back both her terror and her self-loathing rage—she saw Juba walking toward her. He wasn’t looking up. He was staring at the ground in front of him as he walked, his shoulders hunched with fresh worry. But when he looked up and saw her, whatever brooding thoughts he’d had disappeared into a moment of happiness that was suddenly struck away by a new concern.
Selene tried to smile, tried to erase whatever her husband had seen upon her face, but she knew she couldn’t hide the roiling emotions that played there. She wanted to both weep and scream.
Then he was there, reaching out to swallow her into his loving embrace. She buried herself against his chest for a moment, squeezing him so tightly she could feel the air coming out of his lungs.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s happened?”
Selene wanted to say so much. But whatever had happened to Juba while he’d been away, it had brought new weight for him to bear. She didn’t want to burden him even more with what had happened to her.
Besides, she thought, her mother would never have allowed herself to feel such weakness, much less show it. She would have steeled herself against the fear and anger. She would have been strong.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “I just … I need you to hold me. That’s all.”
8
SIGNS OF DEATH
ALEXANDRIA, 26 BCE
The trap was set along the north side of the canal, where generations of footfalls from a nearby farm had cut a deeply sunken track through the grassy tufts of the higher embankment. The worn track led to a small wooden dock on the water, framed by thick reeds. Knee-deep in the water there, hidden in the concealing brush, the three hired bowmen had their recurved bows at the ready.
Thrasyllus was crouched above them on the sunken dirt path, hidden by the deeper shadow of the embankment on either side. Between the scholar and the bowmen, close enough to whisper between them, crouched the rat-faced man and his brute.
All of them were staring out at the water as the sun glowed a fierce red upon the horizon. A sign, Thrasyllus was certain, of the blood to come.
Finding the men who’d left him bruised and battered that morning had not been difficult. He’d only needed to find the beautiful, black-haired girl who called herself Lapis—wherever she would be, her pimp and his brute would not be far away.
He’d known just where to look for her, of course. For months he had lurked in the shadows, watching the busy street corner where she stood every evening. For months he’d watched as she took the hands of other men and even some women, watched as she was led away from the corner to private rooms and the delights of the flesh. He’d gone to the same corner last night, when he thought this day would see him leaving Alexandria for good.
Some things changed, he’d thought with a smile.
But, thanks be to the gods, some things never did: Lapis was there, just as she ever was, waiting for the next man, as if the events of the night and the morning had never happened.
She had recognized him, at least. That was some comfort. She’d even appeared concerned, calling him “little stargazer” and begging him to leave before Seker—that was the rat-faced man’s name, he’d now learned—showed up.
But of course Seker was just the man Thrasyllus had come to see.
When the pimp arrived, Thrasyllus had been surprised to see that he was alone. Perhaps, he’d thought, the morning had proved that the brute wasn’t needed to deal with such a weak coward.
Thrasyllus blurted out the simple proposition: Capture one man; kill anyone else with him. They would evenly split the bounty on the man’s head, but anything else taken from the dead men was Seker’s to keep.
That had been enough to catch the pimp’s attention. It was enough to stave off a beating and find a quiet place to talk. Thrasyllus had heard Vorenus tell the librarian that he was traveling with only a single companion, so he explained that there was no need for many men. Thrasyllus thought that the massive brute alone could handle it, but Seker had laughed at that. The brute, he said, was an old and broken man who could hardly walk. He would be fine in a fight at close quarters—“He could break you in two if I gave him the word, if you’re lying to me about this”—but he would be close to useless getting from shore to ship. So Seker had agreed to pay for three close-lipped men he knew who were good with bows. Their wages, he said, would be paid out of the scholar’s share of the bounty on the man they were meant to capture.
Thrasyllus hadn’t told him who the Roman was. He’d only told him the amount of the award Caesar had once offered for his head. That was enough, it seemed, for the greedy little man.
Things had happened fast at that point. Seker had sent for the scar-faced brute, who lumbered awkwardly into the carriage that was summoned. In short order they had picked up the three men with their wickedly curved bows—how the pimp knew such men, Thrasyllus didn’t ask—and they were headed through the Sun Gate, riding toward the canal east of the city.
After that it was a simple matter of finding the spot for the ambush and waiting for the right barge to pass by.
There weren’t many on the water. Traffic on the canal grew more sporadic the farther one journeyed from the great city, and the sun drifting toward the horizon had made it quieter still.
Between passing ships, Thrasyllus tried to think through what lay ahead. The men he was with were clearly practiced, efficient killers. They had the element of surprise. They would kill most of the men on the barge very quickly. And they would capture Vorenus. With luck, the Roman was as good a fighter as the high bounty on his head would indicate. He would kill a few of these men before he was taken. What happened after that would depend on how many were left behind. Too many, and he’d have no choice but to take Vorenus back to Alexandria to claim the bounty. That was what he’d told Seker they were going to do.
What he hoped to do, however, was something very different. If only a couple of men were left, Thrasyllus could try to convince them to follow his plan to take the prisoner to Elephantine Island and the promise of greater rewards. Gods willing, they would agree.
The astrologer’s fingers ran across the little satchel at his side. Before he’d left to come find Seker, he’d taken a knife from one of the scriptoria of the Great Library. It wasn’t a large weapon by any means, but he supposed it would do. Embedded in the right place in a man’s back, even the smallest blade would surely kill. A man’s life always hung by the thinnest of threads. Books had taught him that. They’d even given him some idea of where and how to strike.
Whether he would actually have the courage to do it was another question entirely.
He closed his eyes and prayed silently that it wouldn’t come to that. When he opened them, he saw that Seker had turned to look back and was staring at him, his eyes glinting in the red light of the setting sun. “A devout man, are you?”