Stealing Fire

by Jo Graham

  “That is not yours to decide, Lydias of Miletus,” She said. “That rests with Ptolemy. It is up to him whether or not this comes to pass.”

  “We didn't lose,” I said. “We won.”

  “The danger lies not in losing, but in winning,” She said.

  I stood beside her in the burning street, but the blowing cinders did not injure me. “Why do I dream this?”

  “It is one of the paths of the future,” She said. “Something that might be.”

  I lifted my head, and it seemed I had known forever how it might work. “But not necessarily be,” I said. “Visions of the future don't work that way. The gods do not see the future.”

  I thought that the lioness smiled at me, Her great teeth gleaming. “Only mortals see the future. And you, oracle, know that what you see are paths only, things that may be changed by the will of men.”

  “Then this may be changed,” I said.

  “If Ptolemy takes what is offered, this will be,” She said. “If he seizes that fatal fire. It is up to him.”

  “I do not know what choice you mean, Lady,” I said.

  “You will,” She said, and for a moment as the dream faded I thought the clouds of smoke gave way, clearing as if in a strong wind.

  Instead of burning, a white city circled a cerulean harbor, green parks glittering like gems, while on the island off the coast a bright beacon gleamed clad in marble, light flashing from its pinnacle.

  LYDIAS? LYDIAS?” BAGOAS was shaking me. “It's a dream. Wake up.”

  I opened my eyes. It was still dark, and I lay in Bagoas’ room in Memphis. He sat beside me, one hand on my shoulder, frowning with worry.

  “It's a dream, Lydias. Wake up now.”

  I blinked. The burning city had seemed so real. It had seemed so tangible. My heart pounded still. “War,” I said. “War that goes on and on and on. And in the end we will lose. In the end Alexandria will burn.”

  Bagoas looked nonplussed. “It's a dream, Lydias. When a man has been in battle, often he goes on fighting in his sleep long after the battle is ended.”

  “I do not know how to avoid it,” I said. “I do not know what choice.”

  Bagoas put his hand to my shoulder, gentling me as though I were a nervous horse. “Calmly, dear. You dreamed, still fighting though the battle is over. It's over. You won.”

  “Winning is more dangerous than losing,” I said. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “I need to go find Ptolemy.”

  “If it will make you feel better,” Bagoas said. “Though Ptolemy may be asleep too. It's an hour or more until dawn.”

  “He won't be,” I said. I dressed and, putting on harness and sword, went to the walls of Memphis.

  Across and upriver on the island I could see the faint glow of a few campfires. There would not have been much to burn on the island. At my feet, the city of Memphis slept, houses and temples and markets and all, silent in the night. Only a few lights burned here and there fitfully, at the temples and about the courtyard of the House of Life where the wounded lay.

  I do not know how long I stood upon the walls, half waiting and half dreaming. It cannot have been long before Ptolemy came.

  “Anything going on over there?” he asked, and my eyes popped open. No doubt he thought I was only tired.

  “Not that I can see,” I said. “Their fires are dying down.”

  “There was some fuss and commotion a few hours ago,” Ptolemy said. “The watch said something was happening, but who can tell what from this distance?”

  “Maybe some crocodiles came ashore on the island,” I guessed. “That ought to cause some trouble.”

  “Could be.” Ptolemy shrugged. “We'll find out in a few hours. After sunrise we're going over in boats under a truce and see what Perdiccas is willing to give up to get out of the trap he's put himself in.”

  “Do you think he'll treat with you?” I asked. Perdiccas was known as a stubborn man, and a ruthless one.

  Ptolemy nodded. “I think he'll treat. Or he can keep sitting on the island. Or he can try to wade to shore. Those are pretty much his choices right now. At least until the flood goes down. How long does that usually take, Lydias? Do you know for certain?”

  “Two to three weeks after the flood peaks before the water starts going down,” I said. “That's a long time for him to sit on the island. And it's hard to tell in the dark, but I'm pretty sure the river is still rising.”

  “He's not going to be able to sit there for more than a few days,” Ptolemy said. “No food to speak of. So let's see if he's ready to make a deal. Tell Artashir I want him to come too. My Persian's not good, and somebody needs to be able to talk to the Persian officers.”

  “I'll let him know, sir,” I said. “And it doesn't hurt to have that someone be of the house of Darius the Great. They can't say he's a nobody who's on the lookout for the main chance, not when he's got a distant claim on the throne himself.”

  “I know,” Ptolemy said. “And a blood feud with Roxane. We'll just see how this all shakes out.”

  TWO HOURS AFTER the sun rose we set forth on an Egyptian ship, one of the lateen-sailed rivercraft that they have made from time immemorial, with a good, experienced captain from Memphis. Artashir and ten of his men came with us, as well as ten of our infantrymen, steady men who knew their business and would not start a fight.

  The river was running fast and deep. It took thirty oarsmen to beat dead upstream, as there was no wind to carry us. The water flowed swift and true. I did not see any crocodiles beneath its smooth surface, but I supposed they were still there.

  As soon as we got within bowshot we hailed them. “We come under truce! Ptolemy, Satrap of Egypt, would like to speak with the Regent!”

  There was a movement among the people on the bank, and I recognized Polemon, who had chased after me so well when I had stolen the hearse. Beside him was an older, slighter man, a Companion I recognized as Seleucus, one of the infantry officers. He had been one of the most Persian of the Macedonian officers, marrying a lady of the Persian nobility by whom he now had a number of children. From the things our prisoners had said, it seemed he was now Perdiccas’ second in command.

  Now he leaned out from the crowd and called across the water to us. “If Ptolemy would like to speak, he is welcome to come ashore and speak with me. I will grant him safe passage and truce.”

  Ptolemy mounted the bow himself as we came closer. “Ho, Seleucus! My men are coming ashore too.”

  Seleucus shook his head. “No.”

  “Twenty men among your five thousand?” Ptolemy called back. “Don't be ridiculous. The risk is mine, not yours.”

  Polemon bent his head and said something to Seleucus, who straightened. “All right, Ptolemy. Agreed. Your men can come ashore.”

  Artashir and I exchanged a look. We would be entirely surrounded and outnumbered. Then again, they couldn't get off the island without us, and taking us hostage was not much of a plan. Memphis would hardly throw its gates open in exchange for Ptolemy.

  Ptolemy turned, dropping his voice. He didn't sound worried at all. “Artashir, I want you to talk to the Persians. Anybody who might defect to us will be treated as honorable gentlemen, and serve with us under the same terms as my other men. I'll rely on you to say the right things.”

  Artashir nodded.

  “Lydias, keep your eyes open. If you get a chance, talk to the drivers of the other elephants. You used to speak some of the Indian languages, yes?”

  “I did,” I said. That had been five years ago, and I had not been entirely fluent. But I imagined it was more than most men knew.

  “Talk the drivers around. The elephants won't serve just any man. If we get the drivers, we get them. Promise them good pay and land in Alexandria. We need some elephants of our own. Let's see if we can hire some.”

  “I will,” I said.

  The boat came to shore slowly, the oarsmen careful. The river had risen a great deal, and the roots of the largest trees were now under
water. I didn't suppose it would hurt them. This must happen every year, and some of those trees were decades old. However, it would certainly damage the bottom of the boat to run into them, so the captain was very careful in bringing us close. Even so, we could not step directly ashore, but must step out in shallow water not quite to our knees.

  I flinched at its cold touch, though I knew full well that all the blood and bodies had by now been carried downstream. I was not stepping through our dead.

  The men on the shore looked battered, as though they had passed a mostly sleepless night. They were all in full harness and armed, and the camp had a makeshift look about it, as though it had been squeezed together by the rising river, and the smell of death hung about it. They had had no place to take their wounded.

  Artashir and I flanked Ptolemy, one on the left, the other on the right. “I'd like to speak with the Regent,” Ptolemy said to Seleucus pleasantly.

  Seleucus’ chin rose. “Perdiccas is dead,” he said shortly, jerking his head toward the camp. “His body's in the tent over there. You talk to us.”

  “Did he die of his wounds?” Ptolemy asked.

  “You could say that,” Seleucus replied dryly. “He took quite a few before we were done.”

  Ptolemy nodded. “I see,” he said evenly. “That does change a few things.”

  “Perdiccas was a fool,” Seleucus said. “We're ready to come to terms.”

  “What are you offering?” Ptolemy asked.

  There was a stir at the back of the crowd, and soldiers pushed them through, a young woman beautiful still, her long hair falling from its combs, her elaborate Persian dress muddy about the hem. Shoved, she stumbled to her knees but did not drop the child. A little boy about three years old looked up at Ptolemy.

  “Them,” Seleucus said. “Roxane and her son. We give them to you to do what you like with in return for our pardon, our arms, and our freedom. We will acclaim you as Regent.”

  Roxane watched him, her eyes smoldering. On her shoulder, the boy seemed more curious than frightened.

  Artashir took a breath.

  It seemed for a moment that time stopped. Here all the strands of what had been and what might be met, and turning from this place departed never to converge again. The burning city, the white city by the sea, both were real in this moment, both equally likely. The gods themselves were listening.

  Seleucus spoke again. “We'll acclaim you as Regent, or if you want to get rid of them right away, we'll proclaim you Great King. With our backing too, you can have it all, the Persian Empire, Macedon, everything that was Alexander's. Antipatros is an old man. He can't stand against us all.”

  “It's mine anyway,” Ptolemy said quietly, though his voice carried far enough. “They're mine, whether you give them to me or not. You're all trapped on this island until my men let you go. If I want the Regency, I can have it. If I want to be Great King, I can have it with you or without you.”

  And he could, I thought. I could see him enthroned, the mitre on his head. I could see him thus, crowned in Babylon. That fire was within his grasp. That path was clear before him.

  Seleucus spread his hands. “Easier to have it with us, don't you think? My wife is Artashir's cousin,” he said, with a nod to Artashir. “You'd rather have the Persian nobility back you. It would cost you far less. If we acclaim you Regent, you'll have it without a fight. Or kill the boy and be Great King tomorrow.”

  I saw Roxane's eyes go from Seleucus to Ptolemy. She was more angry than anything else, not cowed in the least. Alexander had married courage.

  “But you can't be Regent without the boy,” Ptolemy said. “Without him you have war with Antipatros and with Roxane's kin in Bactria as well. Not to mention that you'll have Olympias as your enemy. There's only one thing she wants, and that's her grandson on the throne of Macedon. And you'll never be sure of me. Your best chance is to come to terms with the Lady Roxane.” His tone was still light and pleasant, as though he were discussing some ordinary piece of business, not the fate of kingdoms. Not a bit of tension showed in his face.

  “True enough,” Seleucus said. “But if we swear ourselves to you, you have it all. It's all yours, Ptolemy.”

  Ptolemy bent his head, and there was a small, rueful smile on his face.

  The very wind in the trees died. Far overhead, the desert falcon twisted in the air, gyring and diving.

  I saw its shadow cross his face, and then he looked up. His plain brown eyes were very bright. The world moved again.

  “Hail Alexander, son of Alexander, Great King of Persia.” He reached for Roxane and took her hand, drawing her to her feet. “Lady, you are free to go, you and your son, and such men and servants as wish to accompany you. I have no wish to be Regent, or Great King either. Your son is Great King, as was his father before him, and worthier men than I shall serve as Regent and guard his minority. Though I am sure none shall guard him so well as you do yourself.”

  Roxane stared at him, her dirty hand in his. “What?”

  “You may leave, Lady,” Ptolemy said. “My men will escort you and your son to the shore, with whatever soldiers and servants pledge themselves to you. You are free to return to Persia or wherever else you desire.”

  Seleucus gaped. “You are giving up Persia?”

  Ptolemy shrugged with a look around, a look that seemed to encompass draggled date trees and swollen river and sky, and perhaps our white city by the sea as well. “I don't need Persia,” he said. “Egypt is plenty for me.”

  He knelt down before the child, who stood beside his mother's skirts. Three years old, I thought, born just after I left Babylon. He had his mother's dark eyes and hair, but in the shape of his face there was Alexander. I knew the look. I had seen it in Chloe and her little brothers.

  “And you, Alexander,” Ptolemy said, his eyes searching the boy's face. “I hope that we will meet again, as man to man. I know your father would be very proud of you.”

  Seleucus shook his head. “You are giving up the Regency?”

  “I am,” Ptolemy said. “I'm sure you and Antipatros and the others will come to some terms. That is, if you're there to do so.” Ptolemy grinned. “If you'd like a way off the island, I suggest you start making deals with the Lady Roxane. I've offered her free passage, not you. And she's probably more amenable to deals than the crocodiles are.”

  Roxane's eyes did not leave him. “Why?”

  For a moment I thought he would give an easy answer, but he did not. “Because we must be better than our worst selves.”

  She shook her head. “I don't understand.”

  Gently, he placed her hand at her side and let go. “Because it's what Alexander would have done.”

  SOTHIS RISING

  Of course it was not so simple. There were wounded to be tended and the dead to be burned. I led a party downriver the next day, looking for bodies carried up on shore by the flood, asking farmers along the river if they had found any cast up in their fields. We found them nearly as far as Bubastis, and there were many we did not find, whether eaten by crocodiles or carried out to sea, or lost somewhere in the quagmires of the Delta to rot. Some we found whole, and some not. The crocodiles of Sobek had eaten their fill.

  More than two thousand of Perdiccas’ men were dead. We had lost less than four hundred.

  We burned them on pyres before Memphis, and the black smoke went up to the sky. The Egyptians thought it horrible of course, for there is no greater blasphemy to them than to destroy the bodies of the dead, but they knew it was our way. I think they thought Ptolemy very rough indeed, like one old pharaoh on the walls of their temples who had counted his victory in the cut-off foreskins of his enemies.

  The Greeks and Persians did not find it so at all. Ptolemy had each man's ashes put in an urn with his name on it to be brought to his family and friends in Persia. Those who we could not name, or those bodies that were incomplete, we burned together and buried at Saqqara with a stone above them that said they had been soldiers of Alexan
der. I did not think he would mind sharing his resting place with them, or that they could seek greater than to lie with him.

  While we would not permit the living to enter the city, we had food brought out to the fields across the river and fodder for their animals. We feasted them as though this were the meeting of dear kinsmen. They ate and drank with gusto, as provisions had been scarce for them. And while they did our men went among them, talking in their own languages and praising the benefits of serving Ptolemy. Yes, soldiering is an uncertain life, but how much less so under such a general? How much less so, when there is ample pay and ample food, friendly territory beneath one's feet, and no long marches to the ends of the earth? How much better, when the pay is good and regular, and there are house lots to be had for free in Alexandria, where one can be a citizen and own something real?

  I was proud that in the end all of the Indians stayed. There were twenty-eight elephants surviving, and four more with no drivers. All twenty-eight crews consulted together and decided to stay as a single unit. Home was a thousand miles away, over deserts and mountains, through the heart of an empire at war. Better to stay, they said, and risk their chances here. And so was born Ptolemy's elephant corps.

  Nearly six hundred of the horse archers stayed as well. “Do you think,” Artashir asked them, “that the empire will not dissolve into civil war? That we will not see kin pitted against kin?” He stood before them, handsome and well turned out in his archer's silks, and he spoke to them of honor. “I am of the house of Darius the Great. You know that Cyrus found us tribesmen, no more than rude men who warred with one another over every little piece of land. He made us into a great empire, and Darius made us the greatest in the world. What will happen when once again we break along tribal lines? Will you kill your mother's kin, or your father's? Will you go to war against your wives’ brothers, or against your sisters’ husbands? That is the question that awaits us in Persia, for make no mistake the empire is crumbling. You know as I do that to slay your kin is not only dishonorable, but is also a violation of the Truth. What can an honorable man do in these times except step away from it, and in doing so serve the Light?”