“Orders of Octavian, sir.”
Juba at last stood beside them. He looked down at her with a warm smile, and she remembered the feel of him when he’d held her back at the tomb of Alexander the Great. “She doesn’t look like a threat to me,” he said.
Selene did her best to appear even more innocent. The guard frowned. “The fruit, sir. It could be … poisoned.”
“Ah,” Juba said. “I suppose so. May I?”
“Of course,” Selene said, realizing that these were the first words she’d spoken to him since he and Didymus had left her at the Great Library, since she’d stood defiant before Octavian and been promised to the Numidian in marriage in exchange for the life of Vorenus. She’d heard that he’d been surprised by the news when he’d been told, but that he hadn’t objected to it. She was pretty sure she hated him for that, too.
Juba reached down, his darker-skinned hand brushing hers on its way to grabbing an apple off the top of the basket. He held it up, and their eyes met. He paused, as if waiting for something, then raised the apple to his mouth and bit off a chunk and began to chew. He closed his eyes, savoring it for a moment, but a second later his eyes shot open and he seemed to gag and convulse.
The guards gasped, and even Selene was taken aback in shock, but then the Numidian began to laugh. “Just let her in,” he said, tossing the apple to one of them. “And don’t bother her again.”
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards said as they parted and unbolted the door to her mother’s chamber.
Selene bowed her head to them, then turned to Juba. He was smiling still, but there was something other than amusement in his eyes. She thought it might be hope. “Selene,” he said. “I … I would hope we might speak before the voyage to Rome. I … well, I would like it if we could know one another better. We have much in common, I know.”
His voice had grown more assured as he spoke, and she recognized in his final words the same deadly seriousness she’d heard from him as he sat in the Great Library on the day of the fall of Alexandria and told Didymus that he wanted Octavian dead. Yes, she thought. They did have that in common. “I think I would like that,” she said, not yet certain if she meant it, but certain it was the right thing to say, the sort of thing her mother had taught her to say.
Juba’s face, which had seemed so tired, brightened. “I’ll look forward to it,” he said, and he bowed to her, a hitch in his side revealing a pain his happy face denied.
She returned his bow with a nod of her own, and he turned and walked away down the hallway, humming quietly to himself.
When he was gone, the guards opened the door and Selene entered the chambers that had become Cleopatra’s prison. The door shut behind her and she passed through the drapes of the antechamber in the bedroom.
Her mother, she saw, sat on a gilded chair that had been placed at the foot of her bed, the very spot where Selene had seen her holding Antony’s body. Since that fateful morning, the whole of the room had been rearranged, the linens drawn up and cleaned, the furnishings pushed away from the bed to the corners in order to keep the focus on that single, solitary chair at its foot. Everything was covered with the most wondrous decorations at the imprisoned queen of Egypt’s disposal, all fine metals and polished acacia wood. The most glorious chests from her royal treasury sat around the room, opened to reveal their glittering holdings. Cleopatra had, her daughter saw, spared no effort to make her bedroom into a throne room.
Nor had the queen failed to adorn herself with all the wonder and riches befitting a woman who had ruled, for almost the entirety of her life, as the goddess Isis incarnate. She wore a resplendent dress, her most expensive gems and pearls wrapped around the oiled skin of her graceful neck. The bracelets on her wrists, draped languidly over the arms of her chair, were thick gold, and the woven hairs of her finest wig framed a face painted in accordance with formal Egyptian rite. Her mother was, Selene thought, as beautiful as she’d ever seen her. Even the two chambermaids standing by her side were incredible to behold.
Cleopatra’s face was impassive, and her eyes did not move to acknowledge her daughter. “Selene,” she said, voice smooth and formal.
Selene knelt and bowed low, as was custom before the queen. “Mother,” she said, pushing the basket before her. “I have what you requested.”
“I am pleased,” Cleopatra said.
The chambermaids came forward slowly, their linen skirts making swooshing sounds in the tomb-like silence of the room. Selene saw the feet of the two girls move into view before her face. She saw them shift as they bowed to her offering, before picking it up between them and slowly retreating the way they’d come.
Selene at last lifted herself from the floor to stand in front of her mother. The chambermaids had brought the basket to Cleopatra and set it in her lap. The queen’s eyes remained fixed forward on the same distant, unknown point far beyond the walls of the room. Selene knew the look well. She’d practiced it herself.
Cleopatra’s hands remained unmoving on the arms of her gleaming chair as the chambermaids carefully, deliberately, removed each piece of fruit and set it aside. It only took them a minute or so of work to uncover the venomous little black snake that had curled up so peacefully beneath it all. Selene couldn’t see it, but she heard it hiss at being disturbed, and she saw the eyes of the chambermaids widen with fright despite their best efforts to appear calm and otherworldly. The two bowed once to the basket, once to the queen, and then backed away to stand once more beside her. Selene could see the glimmer of sweat on their foreheads.
After another minute of silence, Cleopatra’s head tilted ever so slightly downward, her gaze finally falling to the asp in the basket upon her lap. They widened only slightly, but Selene could see that her chest rose and fell in deeper breaths.
“You don’t have to do this,” Selene said.
Her mother’s eyes at last looked up at her. “You should know enough not to say that.”
“You know I won’t follow you,” Selene said.
“Then you will be led in the Triumph of Rome, while I join your father in reigning eternal among the stars.”
Cleopatra’s voice was disapproving, but there was something recognizably maternal in it, too. Selene held on to that. “I won’t rest until we are avenged,” she said. “I swear it.”
The queen of Egypt smiled. “I’m glad to hear of it, my daughter. You’ve much to learn of love and life, but hatred and vengeance is a lesson best learned early. I hope it will serve you well.”
“I remember all your lessons, Mother. I … I love you.”
“And I you.” Cleopatra smiled once more, gently, lovingly, and then her eyes moved again to the contents of the basket. The asp, as if it knew it was being watched, hissed loudly, and Selene heard it moving around the woven reeds. “You should go, Selene. My time grows short.”
Selene took one last look at her mother, whose countenance was returning to the stoic dispassion with which she hoped to face eternity. Already Cleopatra was raising her arm, the bracelets falling away from her wrist and the thick veins beneath it.
Ten years old and only minutes away from being an orphan, Cleopatra Selene bowed once more to the queen of Egypt and then left the room, closing the door quietly behind her. The past was done, and she had a future to plan.
* * *
The story of the Shards of Heaven continues in
BOOK 2: THE TEMPLES OF THE ARK.