Ave, Caesarion

by Deborah Davitt

  A shy, hesitant glance. And then a vehement shake of her head. “No. No one.”

  “Not even someone like Antyllus? Or Jullus?” Eurydice offered, suspecting a lie. Antyllus was pleasantly-spoken, and Caesarion and he, being the same age, had made some strides towards friendship. And while Antyllus remained a little wary of Eurydice’s gifts, he also politely flirted with her every now and again across the dinner table, which disconcerted her to no end. His younger brother, Jullus, she couldn’t remember ever speaking to over the course of dinner, let alone what his opinions might be on whether Heraclitus or Parmenides was correct about the nature of time, or whether he thought that bringing additional auxiliary archers to Hispania was a better idea than additional cavalry.

  Selene had looked at her, clearly bewildered. “No,” she replied.

  Eurydice had rallied. “If Caesarion gives me time to speak with him, and if you start attending to your studies instead of daydreaming about . . . whoever or whatever, I’ll mention that you’re concerned about your future. Fair?”

  Selene had responded to the praise and to the promise. And the result—being allowed to weave again, which allowed her to chitchat and giggle with Octavia as they worked—shone before Eurydice on the loom.

  Now, she padded out of the workroom and immediately shuddered with cold. The servants had swept most of the snow off the second-floor balcony that ran between all the rooms, overlooking the atrium, but the tile was still slick underfoot, and she had to place her rapidly-numbing toes carefully so as not to fall. Overhead, icicles hung from the roof—something she’d never seen before in her life, and she studied them with puzzled delight, testing a sharp point with her thumb. It’s a knife, she thought. A knife of ice.

  As another gust of wind cut right through her thin layers of clothing, spitting snow in her face, and Eurydice suddenly remembered one of the spells she’d transcribed from Tahut’s book months ago. It had been designed primarily to prevent someone from burning to death under the hot desert sun of Egypt, but she rather thought that it could do more. No time like the present. Unless, of course, like Parmenides, you think that there is no time at all, and nothing ever changes. She rubbed her hands together, creating warmth there, which, with a whispered word or two in Egyptian, she intensified. Lensed with her own internal fires, and then spread out around her. Not quite it; that made me warm for a moment, but it’s not keeping the cold wind out. If I put a wall around me, that will stop the wind, but won’t I suffocate, if I keep all the air out?

  Standing there, staring over the balcony’s edge, she considered it carefully, and thought of a wall that was more like a shutter or the tight-woven cloth she’d just seen emerging from her sister’s skilled fingers. All around her, with strips of almost solid lattice to break the cold winds, but still allow airflow, just as how the shutters of the house let each room of the villa breathe. And inside . . . the warmth of her own body could spread out, just as it did under a blanket. Almost. That’s too thick. It will be like moving around inside a shell of a reed-woven basket. It needs to be softer, more flexible, like cloth—there. She opened her eyes, suddenly much warmer, and smiled happily, heading down the stairs, where the servants were now sweeping the snow from around the atrium’s fountains. With her feet now toasty warm, the snow looked like an excellent place to test her new spell.

  So she hauled up the hem of her stola and jumped right into the closest pile, thigh-deep, and shuddered a little; the snow scraped, but it couldn’t chill her, at least not for the moment. Excellent! Then she managed to lose one of her sandals in the pile and spent a moment or two digging it out before kicking the other one off and dancing lightly in the snow beside the mound—getting dubious looks from all the servants as she did so. “You’re going to lose your toes, domina,” one of the Roman servants warned.

  “I haven’t lost my mind,” she assured him, smiling. “Nor do I expect my feet to freeze at the moment. I’m quite warm.”

  Which was where Tahut came lunging out of a door into the atrium. “Princess!” the priest of Thoth exclaimed, his expression furious. “What is this magic that you are using? This is no spell that I have taught you. And you have been warned, time and again, not to experiment with the power. You have no respect for the forces with which you trifle!”

  Eurydice sighed, picking her sandals up from where she’d tossed them aside to dance. “Respected priest of Thoth,” she told him tiredly, “I underwent testing from both you and Priestess Anku. She believes me to be god-born of Isis, and thus, not a sorcerer as you and she both are.” Of course, the problem with her conclusion is that I’ve never yet heard the voice of Isis in my heart. In spite of daily prayer for months now. “As such, while I thank you for the time and care you have taken in coming here to instruct me, I think it is now time that you made your way back to Thebes.”

  She turned slightly to one of the servants, currently leaning on a broom nearby, and told him, “Help the priest of Thoth to pack his bags, and make arrangements for him to travel to Brundisium. The port should be clear by now. He may return to Egypt, and I will provide him gold to secure his passage.” That is the properly gracious thing to do, I believe. Of course, to do otherwise means that I will never be rid of him. It’ll have to come out of my budget somewhere, but I should be able to manage it.

  “You can’t dismiss me—” Tahut spluttered.

  “As I am a princess of the house of Ptolemy, and the lady of this villa, yes. I can,” Eurydice said, enjoying the moment slightly more than she should have. “And I have. Have a pleasant voyage.”

  “But you cannot! You do not understand the powers you have.” Tahut forgot himself so far as to catch her by the arm. “What you’re doing now? You could roast yourself alive. Are you so foolish and arrogant that you will not submit to the wisdom of your elders?” He’d raised his voice to her. And she could, for an instant, sense the vibrations of his voice reverberating out. Felt them touch the icicles above, and the snow on the tiled roof. A patch of snow, shaken by his voice slid down, tumbling to the tiles of the atrium below.

  Eurydice didn’t move. She simply looked down at his hand on her left arm. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a door open into the atrium; someone had clearly seen what was going on, and had come to intervene. But she’d tolerated this buffoon for months now, and had quickly ascertained that while the other mage-priests of Thebes might be skilled practitioners of magic—they had to be, in fact, for them to have bound so many spirits to her and her siblings at birth!—that Tahut-Nefer was too respectful of tradition and convention to be of any assistance to her beyond the basics.

  She raised her right hand, humming under her breath. She caught the echoes of his voice and amplified them. Found the right note, and shattered the icicles that coursed down from the roof like frozen waterfalls, and, rather than letting them fall, made a hooking gesture as she trammeled them up in a net made of her will, and brought them all arrowing towards him at once. A volley of frozen arrows, each point promising death.

  And then she stopped them, a foot from his body, surrounding him like needles in a cushion. And let them fall, shattering as they dropped through the snow around him in a perfect semicircle. Everywhere besides where she stood, herself.

  Meeting his dark eyes, white-rimmed all the way around now, Eurydice said quietly, “Not too many years ago, if you touched the arm of a princess of Egypt, daughter to a living goddess in the body of a queen of the Nile, you’d have been fed to the crocodiles. How fortunate for you that you stand in Rome, nearer the Tiber than the Nile.” She paused. “You’re dismissed, priest of Thoth.”

  Tahut-Nefer scrambled away from her, slipped, and fell on his ass on the slick, snow-covered tile, and continued sliding back away from her, using his hands and feet to hitch himself along the ground. On gaining the drier ground of the balcony’s overhang, he managed to regain his feet, and his voice. “You will regret this, princess,” Tahut warned, his voice shaking. “You will regret the day you spurned the wi
sdom of Thoth!”

  “I don’t spurn the wisdom of the gods. Just yours.” Eurydice called after him. “What you have of it,” she added in a sour mutter.

  All around her, the Roman servants were backing away slowly. The one or two Egyptian servants looked close to genuflection. “Oh, stop that,” Eurydice told them all in complete annoyance. “I haven’t gone insane. Insane would have been actually impaling him with all that ice.”

  “Think he shat himself, domina,” came a voice from the periphery of the atrium. “Sure smelled like it when he went by.”

  “Good. I’ve hated the insides of that man since the first time he sneered at Rome as barbarous,” one of the other servants replied, provoking a wave of nervous laughter from the rest.

  Eurydice tried to bury her smile, and failed.

  “Go about your business,” came Caesarion’s voice from behind her, stern and distant. She turned in surprise, and found him scowling at the servants. “Don’t you have better things to be doing? You. You go help the priest pack. I want him out of the house in the next hour. Before he has time to remember that he too, has spells to call upon.” Still scowling, he caught Eurydice by the arm and propelled her towards his study, where a brazier had been lit against the chill and damp. “Where are your sandals?” he asked, staring down at her feet as she skidded on the wet tile of his study, nearly twisting an ankle. “Aren’t you cold—no. No, you’re not.” He released her arm, looking exasperated.

  “That is what started the whole incident,” Eurydice replied. It was better, when Caesarion looked to be in this mood, to say as little as possible, and wait out the storm.

  “If you wanted him gone, you could have done it months ago,” he pointed out, still frowning, and stepped behind his desk, a solid ten feet from her. “Quietly. Respectfully. Peacefully. Instead, you’ve made a damned enemy today. He might not be an impressive one, but he’ll bring a report of you back to the temple of Thoth, and that will poison their opinion against you.”

  Eurydice blinked. That was not at all what she’d expected to hear. She’d expected to be told that she’d acted like a hysterical woman, had overstepped her bounds—no, Caesarion’s never called me hysterical. But he might have been right to say I overstepped . . . wait. No. I didn’t. As I told Selene weeks ago, I am the lady of this house. Not quite a queen, but . . . there are probably wives of petty kings who’d envy me.

  That took a moment to digest. After thinking, Eurydice replied, carefully, still on her feet, “It honestly didn’t occur to me that I could dismiss him until just a few moments ago.” Her tone became rueful. “He’s long overstayed his welcome. I apologize if I’ve made dealing with Egypt more difficult.” She hesitated. “Though, Caesarion . . . it could be argued that handling Tahut in that fashion is precisely what Egypt needs.”

  He’d just taken his seat, and frowned up at her now. “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve had several thousand years of absolute autocratic rule. They understand that. But from what I’m seeing in the dispatches, the prefect that Father appointed, and Mother approved? Gaius Cornelius Gallus? Seems to be causing nothing but unrest there. They’re used to their autocrats. Not ours.” She shrugged, still feeling guilty that she’d caused a fuss, when her job was to make things appear effortless.

  “You’re saying I should threaten to throw more of them to the crocodiles?” Caesarion asked, his tone dry and distant.

  “They might respect it more than threatening them with crucifixion,” she offered, but he didn’t smile. She closed her eyes and wearily reviewed everything she’d just done. “I was childish,” Eurydice said after a moment, tonelessly. “I let my temper get the better of me, and made a showy gesture of anger. I showed too many of my capabilities in front of the servants, some of whom could be reporting to other great houses. It . . . won’t happen again.”

  A whisper of movement, a breath of air against her face, and then she felt her face cupped lightly by a warm hand. “Eurydice,” Caesarion said, his voice kinder than it had been in some time, “while all of that is true, do you think for an instant that I’d tolerate someone man-handling you?”

  Her eyes opened, and she caught the expression of rueful humor crossing his face. “I was halfway across the atrium to put him on his ass myself when you handled him, but the satisfaction I’d have felt at breaking his jaw probably rightly belonged to you,” he added. “No one touches a lady of Rome in such a disrespectful fashion. Particularly not a daughter of the Julii.” She felt his thumb rub against her cheek, and he started to lean down—and then caught himself and pulled away again. “And my . . . sister.” He returned to his desk and asked her, with a show of cordiality, “So, have you decided what birthday you want on my revised calendar? Any days seem particularly auspicious?”

  Eurydice blinked again. The storm had passed much more quickly than she’d expected, but he’d returned to treating her with a formality reserved for a stranger. A guest in his office. Feeling as if she’d been invited to warm herself by a fire, only to have a door slammed shut in her face, Eurydice looked at the floor for a moment. “Since my birthday was always the last day of the year—and December now has an extra day, plus an additional one every four years to account for the leap year—I’d thought of making my birthday Ianuarius second. That way, I’ll get a birthday this year and then immediately, four days later, when the new calendar takes over, I’ll have another. And thus, I’ll suddenly be two years older, and everyone will be forced to take me more seriously.” Including you.

  Caesarion looked up, and for a wonder, actually laughed. “It doesn’t work that way. You’d be one year older on parchment, not in reality.”

  “Parchment reality is all Rome heeds, some days.”

  Another reluctant snort of laughter. “And why the second day of the year, not the first?”

  “Because Alexander said that if I did that, I’d be older than he was, and he’d be damned if I suddenly became second-born. He proposed taking Ianuarius first for his birthday to keep ahead of me.” Eurydice looked away again. “But if, as you say, it doesn’t make a difference? Then I’ll just keep it late in December.” She shrugged. “Heraclitus says that the river that flows by is, year by year, not the same river anymore. It has different fish. Different water. Different banks, after a flood. Parmenides says that time is an illusion, and nothing ever changes, nor ever will.” She shrugged again. “That the future is fixed, because it isn’t the future. It’s just a now that we haven’t experienced yet.”

  “And which of them do you believe?” Caesarion asked, his voice gentling.

  She hesitated. “I really hope that Heraclitus is correct. But I do not know.” Because if he’s wrong, how would I ever get out of bed in the morning again, knowing that nothing in my life will ever change?

  Caesarion nodded, then said briskly, looking down at the scrolls in front of him, “So, if you’ve dismissed Tahut, and I understand that our priestess of Isis is of . . . minimal help with your powers, for all that you’re god-born of Isis—”

  “She thinks that. I don’t know what I am,” Eurydice muttered under her breath.

  Caesarion’s head rose. But rather than chastising her for the interruption, he asked, gently, “Would it be such a bad thing to be?”

  “There hasn’t been one in two hundred years, by their reckoning.” Eurydice approached his desk, and feeling daring, put her hands on its surface, leaning closer. “May I tell you something in confidence? Anku told me something terrifying, and said it was reserved for priests of the Seven Gods. I don’t think Tahut knows of this, though. And you’re . . . well, you are god-born of Isis. You hear her voice.” Eurydice bit her lips. “And you should know this.”

  Caesarion set his stylus down. “Tell me,” he encouraged, taking one of her hands in his.

  Eurydice closed her eyes again. “Most of the gods of Egypt are dead,” she whispered.

  “What?” His voice rang back off the walls, and she lifted her other hand in an ur
gent gesture to lower his voice. “What did you say?” he added, this time in a hiss.

  “She said that a terrible pharaoh, some two thousand years ago, was a sorcerer, but not god-born. Not born with all the power of the others of his house. And this man, whose name was wiped off the walls and out of the scrolls in an effort to erase him from history, went about binding the gods of Egypt, and slaying them, one by one. He wanted to convert Egypt to the worship of just one god—Aten. And Aten helped give him the power to do it.” Eurydice shuddered. “Together, the other gods finally overcame him. They had no choice but to leave Aten alive. They were too few now to defend Egypt without his power. So Aten, Amun-Ra, Isis, Thoth, Sekhmet, Horus, and Set are the only true gods left in Egypt. All the others? When people go to their temples to pray? They’re praying in tombs to gods who can no longer answer. And that’s why all their sorcerers are so terribly limited, Caesarion. That’s why they’re mostly confined to temples, and told never to change even a single word of their spells. Because look what happened the last time one of them thought differently than the rest.”

  Caesarion swallowed. Hard. “And Egypt has been slowly declining in power ever since,” he said, gripping her hand tightly, though he still stayed on the other side of the desk. “Once a great empire. Now, just a province of Rome.” He paused. “I never wondered why I never heard Osiris. Everyone knows he’s dead, though people pray to him anyway, assuming he’s alive-in-death. But maybe . . . maybe this explains why you never hear Isis, and I hear her so rarely?”

  Eurydice shook her head. “Anku says Isis probably doesn’t pay attention to me because I’m too Roman,” she replied simply. “But I’m Egyptian enough not to want to see a great civilization fall under the weight of its own history. Its inability to move with the speed of Time’s feet.” She smiled lopsidedly. “Assuming Time is real.”

  Something flickered through his eyes then. His fingers tightened on hers, and he looked about to speak. And then he sighed, releasing her hand. “A puzzle for another day,” Caesarion told her wearily. “Thank you for telling me, sister. I was, however, going to ask you, that since Tahut and Anku have been unhelpful, what do you think would help you in learning to use your abilities?”