“It is.”
He swallowed hard. “Then it’s not all you really want. I know you, Selene.”
It was true, and it was pointless to deny it. He knew her as well as she knew him. Almost. “He says that according to Didymus, the power of the Shards is greater in some places than others. We saw part of what they were capable of in Cantabria. But what more can we unlock?”
Juba looked down at the stones beneath their feet, and he spoke in the faintest whisper. “I’m scared to find out.”
“And I’m scared not to try and find out. When I had on the Aegis, when I flew with the Palladium, I felt something. My mother.” Selene reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. “I felt her as if she was so close that I could reach and touch her as easily as I’m touching you. I think it was because I was using two of the Shards at once. They amplified each other somehow. Do you remember how Didymus explained what they were?”
He finally looked up and met her eye. “Fragments of the Throne of God, broken when the angels tried to use it to bring God back.”
“Don’t you see? Bringing the pieces together, we can recover the power of the Throne. If it could be used to find God, couldn’t some smaller part of that power enable us to reach things that are still closer?”
He sighed, long and low. “Your mother is dead, Selene. There’s no bringing her back.”
“And your father, too. But what if we could speak to them, even for a moment? A chance to tell them how much we missed them, how much we loved them. And even if we cannot achieve that, my love, imagine what else we might do with what we have in our hands. We’ve been given an extraordinary gift, a chance even Alexander did not have. Four Shards are within our control. Brought together in the right place, in the right moment, what limits could there be?”
“I’ve told you before, Selene: I’m no conqueror. This land is all that I need. I’ve made my peace with Rome. I thought we both had.”
Since Thrasyllus had been speaking with them she’d felt a crack had been forming in the wall that she had built up inside of her. Now, at last, she let it break and give way. She saw again the face of Tiberius, felt once more his hands upon her. The memories, held so long at bay, began to surge forward one after another, and she had to turn away to look at the city, to not let Juba see the despair on her face. “I have,” she managed to croak out. “With Augustus Caesar.” Her breath caught in her lungs, and once again she placed her hands on the railing—this time to keep from falling.
Juba’s arms came around her, starting to pull her into an embrace. “Selene, what are you not telling me?”
“He raped me.”
His arms froze. “What?”
“Tiberius,” she whispered. Now that the words were unbottled, they started to flow. “While you and Caesar were prisoners. Tiberius came to our tent. He took me.” Her tears broke free completely and she spun around, sobbing out of control. “Oh please, my love. Forgive me for not telling you. I wanted to tell you so many times, but I wanted to try to leave it behind, just like you said. You wanted to come here and make a fresh start. Please, Juba, I—”
He held her close. “You should have told me. But I understand. You need no pardon from me. But Tiberius … Tiberius…”
She stopped sobbing long enough to catch her breath. “There is more.”
He looked incredulous. “What more could there possibly be?”
It took her a moment to find the words. “He left me with child.”
“He what?”
“It was his. I am almost certain of—”
She felt a tremor of rage go through him. They’d tried for so long to have a child themselves. “Almost certain?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Could we have borne it if it were otherwise? Could I have carried it in my womb, nurtured it, given it life, only to look down and see the eyes of the man who’d taken me, who’d ripped me apart upon our bed? Oh gods, Juba. And now we’ve not been able to have our own. All because of him. What I’ve done—”
There was silence for a moment. She could feel the struggle within him: his rage at Tiberius, his love of her, his need for his own vengeance, his awareness that her decision to abort the child might be the reason that they’d had none themselves. She buried her face into his chest, gripping him hard.
For a long minute they stood. His arms tensed, released, and tensed again. “It’s not your doing,” he finally said. His voice was calm, but it was the calm of the eye of a storm. “It’s his.”
She nodded against him.
“What would you have us do?”
Selene swallowed hard. Vengeance. Power. Maybe even a chance to see her mother again. “Carthage isn’t far. We go there.” She took a deep breath. “We bring the Shards together. We see what power we have.”
“Tiberius isn’t in Carthage.”
“No, but there are many sacred spaces in Rome. We can use those when the time comes.”
“Take the Shards to Carthage. See what we have.” She felt him nodding above her, working it out in his mind. “What of our parents? Your mother? My father? Do you think they can really be reached? Can the Shards break through death itself? Can we reach the other side?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. My mother felt so close in Vellica. With just a little more power…” She squeezed him again. “But we can find out together. In Carthage. And if not, we’ll find what we need to put their souls at peace. To put our souls at peace. We have to make him pay.”
“And he will pay,” Juba said. “We can make him pay.”
“I just want to be at peace.”
“We will be. There’s a peace on the other side of war.”
Selene looked up at him, saw that he was gazing out to the bay. He looked back down at her and smiled, his love undiminished, but with something steely and hard in his eyes. They kissed, and she wanted it to last forever.
When he finally pulled away, it was to turn back down the walk. “Isidora!”
Selene’s handmaiden was never far away, and she appeared within moments, hobbling out into the light from one of the doorways. “Yes, Your Majesty?”
“The young man who just left the palace. Send the order to have him brought back. We would speak with him more.”
Isidora bowed as best she could on her crutch and began to turn.
“Wait,” Juba called out. He squeezed Selene in his arms. “Then tell the steward I want preparations made for our most able ship to head to sea with us aboard.”
“Shall I tell him where?”
Juba looked back to his wife. “To Carthage. We sail for Carthage.”
24
FIRE ON THE WATER
ELEPHANTINE, 25 BCE
The plans to move the Ark to Petra finally done, Pullo and Vorenus stepped outside to stand watch in the courtyard while Caesarion helped Hannah lie down in their bed. She’d put up a good show during the planning, but he could tell how very exhausted she was. Neither of them had slept much while they considered what to do to keep the Ark safe, but of course she was needing to sleep for two now. Thinking of the unborn child, Caesarion ran his hand across the fabric over her belly. Resting it there, he felt the baby kick. Boy or girl, he thought with a proud smile, it was going to be a fighter.
Hannah lifted her hand to touch his face, and he looked up to meet her eyes. “Must you really go now?”
He nodded. “You know I don’t want to, but the sun will be up in an hour. I would like to be in Syene as soon as the port is waking up. The sooner I can start making the arrangements, the better.”
She nodded and yawned as she settled back into the cushions. “I know. But surely Vorenus could do it.”
“Vorenus can’t speak Coptic, and it may well be that the captain least likely to ask questions will be a native.” He didn’t point out that Vorenus might be recognized as the man who had hired the last captain they’d needed—who had died in their service on the canal east of Alexandria.