“Didymus said that the Ark drew power from sacred spaces,” Vorenus said, remembering what the librarian had told him in Alexandria during the mission that had cost Khenti his life—but which had brought Pullo back to them. “Alexandria was one of them.”
“Right. But this is a sacred place, too, is it not?” Caesarion swept his arm across the space inside the shrine. “A temple, built by Jews to honor their God, constructed according to the instructions given in their scriptures by the prophet Moses, the same man who had built the Ark itself. A place where centuries ago the very Ark had been kept, surely just there, where it sits now. What could be more sacred than this? And yet its power was lessened. Still extraordinary, but still less.”
“So this place is not as sacred as Alexandria,” Pullo said. “Maybe it isn’t the making of a building that makes it sacred.”
“It seems not,” Caesarion agreed.
Vorenus thought back to their walk in the fog. “It’s like the incense,” he said.
“Incense?”
“Something Pullo and I were talking about on the way here: what they burn in the Temple of Khnum, the frankincense that Gallus and his army are wandering Arabia trying to find. I grew up thinking of it being holy. But it isn’t. Not at all. It’s just an aroma. It has nothing to do with the gods. But I still like it, it still makes me happy to smell it, to be in those places. All because of what they are in my memory. Maybe that’s what makes a place sacred. Not where it is or what it looks like or what spices they have. It’s the people who have been there, the memories of that place. Maybe we leave a part of ourselves where we have believed. Maybe this place … well, maybe not enough people believed here.”
Caesarion indeed looked like a proud teacher. He turned to Hannah and smiled at her. “You’ve just explained it far more beautifully than we ever could, Vorenus,” she said.
“Your father never taught you any of this?” Pullo asked.
Hannah sighed. “He taught me much, as did my mother. But so many generations have passed since the Ark was used. We were only tasked with protecting it, remember, we were never meant to use it. No one is.”
“And no one will,” Caesarion said to her, “unless the safety of the Ark is at stake and there simply is no other way.”
Vorenus looked over to the Ark. At Actium he’d seen something of what one of the Shards could do, and this was said to be the greatest of them. He truly hoped he would never need to see it used. “So what now?”
Caesarion at last turned back to the two old friends. “Well, that’s why we brought you here. We want to move it. We want to take it to Petra.”
Vorenus was tempted to shake his head, so strange a suggestion it seemed to be. “Why Petra?”
“Well,” Caesarion said, gesturing toward the books around them, “unless I’m wrong, that’s where it is from.”
23
THE RISING OF THE MOON
CAESAREA, 25 BCE
It seemed like the sun had hardly risen in the sky, and already Selene wanted to go back to sleep. She didn’t understand it.
Not that the daily rule of a kingdom was generally exciting. She’d seen enough of her mother’s duties to know what to expect, but it didn’t make living the truth of it any easier: ruling a country could be an awful bore.
But the tasks were never unimportant. Her mother had taught her that, too, and it had served her well. This morning, for instance, it had been meetings about repairs to the city’s main aqueduct. The growing city needed more water, and the old structure was showing signs of being inadequate. If the aqueduct failed, great swaths of the city would be without fresh water. People would die. Chaos would ensue.
Nothing could be more important, she knew that. Yet she still found herself needing to concentrate not to yawn or get distracted as the engineers and artisans explained in detail what was wrong and how best to fix it.
Many rulers, she knew, didn’t sit through such interminably detailed accounts of the works they conducted, but that wasn’t Juba’s way. He wanted to understand the matter—not just in vague waves of the hand, but at the level of chisel and stone. More than once he had surprised those delivering reports by asking for the opinions of the actual laborers themselves. It was unheard of for a king to ask a commoner for his advice, but to Juba it was a simple matter of who had the best information.
It was exactly how her half-brother Caesarion would have ruled if he had lived to take his rightful place upon the thrones of both Egypt and Rome. She could think of no higher praise than that.
And it made her love him all the more.
So she stilled her yawns and generally tried to match her husband’s hard focus as he received final clarification on the additional work to be done on the vital structure.
“I see,” he said, leaning forward from his seat beside her on the dais. The light from the open balcony behind them stretched their shadows forward onto the polished tile floor of the chamber, and for a moment her attention was caught by the way those darker forms of their enthroned selves looked like statues of the kings and queens of old. Her own shadow needed only a headdress to be her mother’s.
We become our parents, she thought. Whether we welcome it or not.
Juba’s shadowed form turned to face hers, and she could see the hazy outline of his thickening beard. It gave him a look of wisdom, he thought, and an authority that came with the age he still thought he lacked—as if he had forgotten that all kings were once young. A few weeks earlier she’d pointed out to him that at twenty-three he was a year older than Alexander the Great had been when he’d invaded Asia and begun the destruction of the Persian Empire. He’d laughed at that and told her that Mauretania would be good enough for him.
“What do you think, Selene?”
It took Selene a moment to realize that the shadow was speaking to her, and she looked up from the floor and smiled at her husband, noting that the beard also made him handsomer than ever. “I think your words on this matter are wise,” she said.
It was rare for her to lose focus like this, and it didn’t surprise her that her observant husband had sensed it. His eyes were twinkling at her with both a kind of amusement for having caught her and a shared pity for their duties. For all that he seemed born to rule, she knew he’d rather be in bed, too. Though perhaps not sleeping.
“It appears we are agreed, then.” He turned back to the man who had been placed in charge of the project. “I’ll trust you to see to the matter efficiently. Regular reports will be thorough and unflinching. Remember that problems in executing the plan will not be treated as harshly as attempts to cover up those problems will be.”
The man bowed and retreated along with several other individuals involved in the project. Selene saw that as he turned, he was smiling. He had been thorough in his preparations, he had answered truthfully, and he had been rewarded with oversight of the project, which was a key promotion. And like so many of the men they hired, he seemed relieved that the king and queen had no tolerance for half-measures or empty gestures. They were going to build Caesarea—and the kingdom of Mauretania around it—based on a foundation that was as devoid of rotting corruption as possible. They expected the best work out of the best people, and they would pay what it took to get that, because it was the only way to sustain the dream that they were building.
As the chamber emptied of one group and the herald waited at the door for the command to bring in the next, Juba leaned over toward Selene, whispering quietly so that neither the guards nearby nor the servants in the corners of the room might hear. “You can go back to bed, my love. I’ll delay anything of great importance.”
Though many queens were mere child-bearers for their kings, present as figureheads at the most formal functions but otherwise uninvolved in the daily workings of the realm, Juba and Selene had agreed—without ever needing to discuss it—that Mauretania would have a true king and queen, who ruled side by side and hand in hand. “I should be well,” Selene replied, shifting in her seat to move tiring muscles. “I don’t know why I’m so tired this morning.”