Fires of Alexandria

by Thomas Carpenter

  Chapter Sixteen

  Heron closed the book she'd stolen from Hortio, having read it for the fifth time. Each time, she gleaned nothing new, save hints and shadings that lent nothing to her investigation about the fires.

  The other books hadn't done much either, except convince her that the facts about the fires were incomplete and the truth buried in the ashes of that day.

  Her benefactor, the one supplying coin for the investigation, had come the day before, leaving another pouch of coin. She'd told the old man to bring lotus powder next time and where to find it in the out-skirts of the city.

  These days it was too dangerous for her to leave the workshop, nor did her hobbled legs provide the ease to make the journey.

  Heron glanced at her scribbled notes as a lone hammer rang softly from the foundry.

  — Caesar

  — Rome

  — Ptolemies

  — Temples (too many to list)

  — Old Egypt

  — Accident

  — Carthaginians

  — Parthians

  Caesar still ranked among her suspects, though only by the nature of his presence during the fires. Still, the facts did not support him burning the Library.

  He was busy fighting a battle for his life and had lit the ships in the harbor to protect himself. And having Cleopatra as a lover only reinforced his desires not to burn the Library. Why anger your bed companion by burning the jewel of her family's legacy?

  The Roman Senate had cause, jealousy of Alexandria's stature in the world, but the opportunity to strike at that exact moment seemed ludicrous in its probability. Heron dismissed it out of hand.

  A cheer from the foundry silenced her thoughts for a moment. Through the archway, Agog's broad back could be seen leaning over a cart. The northerner had volunteered his help when she'd sent away her workers. Now the workshop consisted of Plutarch, Punt, herself, and Agog.

  They seemed to be making progress on her latest project. Heron turned back to her desk to focus on the list of suspects.

  While she placed the Ptolemies on the list, she did so only to make it complete. Like Cleopatra, another Ptolemy, she did not believe they would harm their greatest asset even as brother and sister fought over control of the city.

  Granted, it'd been widely known that her brother, much younger than his sister, was under the thrall of his three ministers. But they had little to gain from the fires and much to lose.

  In fact, their side had been bolstered during the fires by the efforts that they took to put them out. She left the name on her list should new facts arise, but mentally crossed them out.

  The temples had a strange bond with the city. Some openly disparaged the "truths" of the Library, citing conflicts with their particular god. Yet they relied on the gifts of the Library to supply the miracles that placated their followers and loosened their purse strings.

  The other point that bothered her was the last word of the dying man. "Heretic," he had said. It implied that she'd been attacked for reasons of religion, though she knew of no way they would have known about her investigation.

  She hadn't mentioned that to Agog, who still believed the thugs were hired by Lysimachus. And they still could have been. The man may have harbored individual prejudices against her. She wasn't much loved by the temples regardless of her work for them. The disaster at Nekhbet had only solidified their thinking that the gods had cursed her and that she should be shunned.

  No temple would give her business now, not that she minded. Except for the crushing debt, and the threat of Lysimachus hanging over her head, the parting with the temples had been liberating.

  So while the temples as a collective still remained on her list, she attributed recent events to her local influence rather than anything to do with the fires.

  Old Egypt, the next suspect on her list, was a nebulous one at best. The Ptolemies had been in the region long enough to insinuate themselves into the local consciousness, but some ill-thoughts were harbored long.

  The only reason the Egyptians had welcomed a Macedonian king named Alexander the Great into their realm, was because of his visit to Siwa—the Oracle of Ammon.

  There, Alexander had learned he was the son of the god Ammon. An unlikely story, as much as the gods performed their miracles in the temples, but it had served Alexander well. The oft bending knees of the Egyptians prostrated themselves once more before a god-king from another country.

  There was much for Old Egypt to hate about that story. The country had been a theocracy for millennia: a stretch of time that Heron found staggering.

  The next item on the list seemed the most likely at first glance. The ship fires could have sent fiery ashes into the air to slip into an open window in the storage warehouses and set them alight.

  Old papyrus was dry and flammable. The Library had strict rules for flame in its halls. That it was an accident seemed plausible.

  Except that the Library had another enemy: water.

  That the Library would leave seaward windows open, letting in moisture that would lead to mildew and rot was a poorly conceived cause. In all Heron's time in the papyrus storage rooms, not once had she seen an open window. She wasn't sure if any even had a window.

  The eye witness accounts were clear in the books she'd stolen from Hortio that the flames had been inside of the warehouses, not burning from without.

  The last two, Carthaginians and the Parthians, like the temples, could be a bigger entry as Rome had developed many enemies over the centuries of its rule. In their haste for revenge, they might have set the fires to rob Rome of the new jewel in its crown.

  But like the Roman hypothesis, they might have had reason, but not opportunity. Heron didn't cross them out either, but they seemed unlikely.

  The three men were rolling a cart from the foundry, laughing and clapping each other on the back, so Heron rolled up the parchment with the list and shoved it in a cubby on her desk.

  She didn't want them to know about her other project. Besides its secrecy, it felt ludicrous to be investigating a crime one hundred years old.

  The cart stopped before her desk. Upon the small platform was an aeolipile suspended over an unlit container of lamp oil. On the other side was a miniature bellows and between the two were connecting rods like her leg harness. The whole contraption was about the size of a dog.

  Plutarch bowed with a giddy, lunatic grin on his face, born of days without sleep, and swept his arm overtop the cart. "We had to make a few modifications to make the connections fit, but your design worked perfectly."

  Her blacksmith nodded in his normal stoic manner, but he'd worked long enough for her to see the pride in his pulled back shoulders, despite his exhaustion from working through the night.

  Agog stood to the side, watching. His hands were blackened from helping in the foundry, but he didn't share the elation of the other two. Heron guessed he was trying to figure out how the contraption would help his yet unmade war machines.

  "Let me see it work," she said.

  Plutarch lit the oil with a small flame he'd brought from the foundry and stared greedily at the suspended aeolipile like a hungry child.

  Heron let the grin rise to her lips. "I haven't seen you having this much fun since I left you in Hortio's arms the other night."

  "What I do in service for the Good Master," said Plutarch, grinning.

  Agog's head bobbed up, as if a wind had goosed him. "You were with Hortio upon command?"

  Heron let her grin deepen to taunt the North man. "Just now figuring that one out?"

  Plutarch answered, "A command I was more than willing to carry out. Hortio has been trying to get into my toga for quite some time. That it served the needs of the workshop made it more enjoyable."

  "You Alexandrians are a duplicitous lot," said Agog dryly.

  "A skill of survival, nothing more," said Heron. "We do not play the game for the
sport alone, unlike the Romans."

  "It was a compliment," said Agog with an eyebrow raised.

  The conversation halted when the aeolipile began to spit steam. Everyone stared at it, waiting for the arms to move. When they did, slowly at first, Heron felt her heart thrum.

  She knew it would work, but seeing it in action was almost more than she could bear.

  The aeolipile began to speed up, overcoming the resistance of the pistons. As they moved back and forth, the motion was converted into a lever, pressing on the bellows. As the first piston stroke hit, the bellows heaved a breath, knocking the dust off a nearby table.

  Once the aeolipile had gathered enough speed, the bellows were chugging away like a hyperventilating mother giving birth.

  "I can harness the heat from the furnace to stoke the bellows," said Punt.

  "Yes," said Plutarch. "We could begin hooking it up today."

  Heron stared at the spinning aeolipile. "No." She shook her head. "We're not doing that."

  The three men exchanged glances. Plutarch opened his mouth, but Heron cut him off.

  "We need a bigger one."

  She pulled the designs from her desk and handed them to Plutarch, who stared opened mouthed at the new paper in his hands.

  "By tomorrow morning."

  The three of them had worked for two days making the small contraption and now she'd asked them to repeat the feat on a larger scale in a fourth of the time.

  Punt and Plutarch returned to the workshop to begin work, while Agog hung back.

  "You're pushing them very hard," he said.

  Heron nodded.

  "The next payment to Lysimachus comes in five days," she said.

  Agog sighed. "No need to be dramatic about it. I can fund your debts another month."

  Heron shook her head.

  "I don't think he's coming for coin this time."

  Agog stared back at Heron for a long moment and nodded as though he saw something he liked.

  He walked away and she slumped in her chair, wondering if her feeble plans would work, but content to know that either way, she would be free of Lysimachus, through victory or death.