Selene felt her throat swallow. “Well,” she said, “I do have business. I’m going to see the chief librarian.”
She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the young man’s face brightened even more. “Is that so? I’m here to see Didymus, too. Not to worry, though: I’ll let you go first. I’m sure your business is more important than mine. Shall we?”
The young man started walking toward the Library. He didn’t seem hurried, but she had to move her legs quickly to catch up.
“My name is Jacob,” he said as they walked.
“Oh,” Selene said, trying to decide whether she really should be walking with the odd young man. He seemed friendly enough, but was it proper? Then again, what if he was right about not being able to get in otherwise?
She was still mulling it over when they started mounting the wide, smooth steps. One of the scholars stopped chatting with a companion and approached them. He was a very young man, perhaps even younger than Jacob, though she found it tough to tell. Unlike the guards she was accustomed to at the palace, he seemed far more casual than deadly. “On what business?” he asked.
Jacob’s smile never left him as he retrieved a folded letter from his robes. “We’re here to meet with Didymus,” he said.
The scholar took the letter, started to unfold it. “From the Jewish Quarter?”
“Nearby, yes,” Jacob said.
Jewish Quarter? Selene looked over her companion again. A substantial number of Jews lived in the eastern portion of the city, said to be the largest community of them outside of their homelands to the north and east. She’d never had occasion to tour their quarter—it had built up around what once had been an eastern necropolis to rival the City of the Dead to their west—but from time to time she’d seen some of the Jewish leaders in court. They’d always been old men, speaking carefully, with long, full beards and full heads of hair. That’s where she’d seen Jacob’s oddly long locks of hair before, though. She just hadn’t recognized him for a Jew without the long beard.
The scholar started to read Jacob’s letter. “Summoned by Bronze Guts himself, eh?”
Another scholar standing guard let out a small laugh, and Jacob looked down at Selene with a quizzically arched eyebrow, but they said nothing.
The scholar looked up from the letter, then glanced to Selene. “Doesn’t name two people.”
“It should,” Jacob said. “This is my—”
“Sister,” Selene blurted out.
The scholar started to say something, then appeared confused as he looked back and forth between them. “I … um…”
“In the faith,” Jacob said, still smiling, still calm. “Didymus had wanted to talk to her, too, since she’s converting to the contemplative life.”
Becoming a Jew? Selene glared at Jacob, wanting to stomp his foot or order his seizure for such an improper—
“Ah, good,” the scholar said as he turned and opened the door for them. The heavy portal opened slowly, and Selene’s anger washed up against her thrill at gaining entrance. She thought she could smell the scrolls already. The hundreds of thousands of scrolls. The knowledge. The power. “So, you’re looking for Bronze Guts, are you?” The scholar grinned as he led the way inside. “He’s popular this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Jacob said. “‘Bronze Guts’?”
“What? Oh, it’s something we call him. He’s tireless, you know. Works right through meals. Never takes breaks. We figure his bowels aren’t real.”
“Ah. I see.” When the scholar looked away for a moment, Jacob made a disgusted face at Selene, causing her to suppress a giggle.
The entry hall took up an entire side of the six-sided building. There were offices here, and a few more guards visible in the shadows, but mostly Selene was focused on the five thick pillars on each side of the narrow reflecting pool that ran down its center. The ten pillars, she knew, represented the ten halls of knowledge within the structure itself: two to each wing on the remaining sides of the building, filled with scrolls. The scholar walked briskly, clearly intent on his duties, and soon they entered the main hall of the Library itself.
The six-sided main hall was open all the way to the high top of its dome, and Selene felt a cool chill to the air as she entered that reminded her unkindly of Alexander’s mausoleum. But the similarities to that place of death ended there. The Library was light and open while the tomb had been dark and oppressive. Unlike the shadowed pyramid floating above a single line of small windows, here large portals for light dotted the top of the dome, streaming the sun into a space built of pleasantly bright stones. The sets of doors surrounding the sides were not locked barriers between tombs but held open to a steady flow of busy scholars and servants moving between the halls with scrolls and wax tablets in their hands. Three staircases rose around the walls in a kind of spiral, connecting the three tall levels of the main hall, and the chill of the air was due not to some silly feeling of fear, Selene knew, but from the gentle cascading of the entry hall’s reflecting pool as it tumbled down three steps to the floor of the hall—the same elevation as the outside plaza, she surmised—where it entered a larger, round pool in the middle of the space. Men were sitting on curved stone benches around the rippling waters, chatting amicably, and she couldn’t help but smile.
The scholar led them out to the edge of the pool and gestured to one of the benches. “Didymus is busy with another guest at the moment,” he said. “A gentleman named Nebi. We’ll need to wait here until he sends a summons. My name is Cleomedes, and I can answer any questions in the meantime.”
Nebi? Wasn’t Didymus supposed to be meeting with Caesarion? Nebi was an Egyptian name, Selene was sure. It meant “panther,” didn’t it? Her shoulders slumped a little, not only because she wouldn’t see Didymus right away, but also because she might have missed the chance to impress Caesarion with her ability to move through the city so freely.
Jacob’s own attitude, she noticed, hadn’t changed at all. She wondered if that look of pleasant satisfaction was frozen on his face. “Of course,” he said. “We understand.”
Cleomedes nodded politely then started to step toward the end of the bench. He didn’t get two steps before Jacob caught his arm.
“So Didymus is in his office right now with his other meeting?” He gestured to one of the doors on the second floor above the entry hall behind them. “That’s just up there, right?”
“No,” the scholar said. “The chief librarian’s office is on the third floor. Those are the lecture rooms and the scriptorium.”
“That’s right. I remember now,” Jacob said, shaking his head in embarrassment, the long locks of hair hanging from his temples bouncing. “I’d forgotten. End of the hall, right?”
“Yes, but we’ll need to wait here,” Cleomedes repeated.
“Of course.” Then, before the scholar could sit down, Jacob had walked past him, gesturing toward the halls opposite the entry and Didymus’ office. “I’ve always wondered why there are ten halls. Is it to sort the books somehow?”
Cleomedes stepped up to stand to Jacob’s right. “Exactly. Based on Aristotle’s divisions of knowledge. So that’s Mathematics over there.”
“Ah, I see. Labeled above the doorway. So that’s Medicine?” He pointed past the scholar, causing the man to turn his head away. As soon as he did, Jacob quickly caught Selene’s eye and winked, nodding in a crisp gesture toward the stairs behind her.
Selene just stared. Was he telling her to go? Was that why he asked about the office?
Cleomedes confirmed the medicine hall, then started to look back to Selene. Jacob laughed a little, throwing his arm around the scholar’s shoulder and sweeping his arm forward to distract his attention. “So many books, you’d need some organization like that! They say you’ve got a copy of everything ever written here. Is that true?”
“I don’t know about everything,” Cleomedes said, nevertheless looking smug. “But close to it. Name something,” he dared.
Jacob�
�s face screwed up in dramatic thought, keeping the scholar’s attention. Selene took a step backward.
“Okay … well, how about Artapanus?”
Cleomedes almost laughed. “Artapanus? Wrote a history, right? Concerning the Jews?”
“That’s right,” Jacob said, appearing impressed. Selene took another two tentative steps in the direction of the nearest stairway.
“You’ll need to do better than that for a challenge,” Cleomedes said. “We have Artapanus’ own copy. In fact, Didymus himself has been reading it of late.”
“Is that so? Artapanus’ own copy?” Jacob started walking in the opposite direction from the retreating girl. “You have a lot of originals here, I imagine,” he was saying. “Do you have anything in Aristotle’s hand?”
The young scholar was laughing again in his pride, but Selene stopped listening to their conversation. She turned, as quietly as she could, and hurried over to the wide stairwell. Three middle-aged scholars, engaged in deep conversation about circles and someone named Eratosthenes, were just starting to make their way up and she stepped into their wake, hiding as best she could manage behind them, keeping her head low and trying not to bring attention to herself.
The scholars departed the stairway on the second floor, leaving the stairway clear to the third floor, so Selene pulled her linen dress away from her ankles to run up the rest of the way. At the top she glanced down to the floor of the main hall one last time—just catching a glimpse of Jacob as he led the young scholar over and into one of the open doorways—before she turned and headed through her own double set of doors, into the hall where she hoped to find Didymus.
The third-floor main hallway, like the entry hallway two floors below it, was lined with pillars. Between them were a series of doors, a few half open to reveal tables and piles of scrolls with the occasional scholar or priest in concentration among them. A single door stood at the end of the hall, shut. Selene stepped up to it lightly, hearing voices from within. She leaned forward to listen, trying to make them out.
“How long, then?” It was her Greek teacher’s voice, no doubt. She smiled.
“Not long at all,” she heard Caesarion reply. “The battle may already be done. And not for the best, I fear.”
Selene’s smile grew. Caesarion must be going by the name Nebi, she decided, to keep his visit quiet. He thought he was so clever. Wouldn’t he be surprised to find out she could—
“Selene,” said a familiar deep voice behind her.
A part of her instinct told her to run, but it was the other half of her instinct—the royal one—that she obeyed. She withdrew from the door and stood straight, head held high and face controlled as she turned to face Khenti. The dark-skinned head of the guards stepped out from the shadows behind the nearest pillar, his face impassive. She silently cursed herself for not being more careful. He’d gone out with Caesarion this morning, so she should have expected that he would be around. She should have looked. “Guardchief,” she said with a curt nod. “Pleasant to see you here.”
Khenti’s eyes narrowed and he frowned slightly. “I imagine so,” he said. Then, before she could reply, he looked over his shoulder down the line of pillars toward the main hall and spoke something in Egyptian. She wasn’t as comfortable in the language as Caesarion was, so it took her a moment to translate it to Greek in her mind. “I’ll watch her from here,” he’d said.
Silently, like ghosts, two more Egyptian palace guards melted out from the shadows behind pillars and bowed first to her, then to him. Selene just stared. Palace guards? Had they been following her this whole time? How long—?
“If you will, Shushu,” Khenti said to one of them, still in Egyptian, “inform Kemse that the young queen is safe and sound.” Khenti’s gaze returned to Selene. “And that she’s looking forward to returning the shawl she stole. She’s quite sorry for the trouble she’s caused this morning.”
Selene smiled politely, the best she could manage in her shock. The other guards bowed once more to the two of them before they filed out in silence.
“So you’ve been busy,” Khenti said quietly, returning to addressing her in Greek.
Selene shrugged. What business was it of his?
“The world is an unfriendly place,” he said. “You shouldn’t be out alone.”
Selene considered a few curses before settling on the proper thing to say. “I wasn’t alone,” she said, eyes flicking to where the guards had departed.
Khenti’s frown broke into a hint of a smile. “That’s true,” he said. “Still, in the future, it would make our lives much easier if Your Majesty would follow directions, impressed though we are by your obvious ingenuity. One of the supply ferries?”
“Of course,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing to have done. How did he know that?
“Clever,” he said. “But, please, no more. I’ll ask Lord Horus to give you and your brothers more liberty. Just please don’t sneak off, my lady. There are too many people who want you dead.”
Dead? “Why would anyone want—”
“Dead, Selene,” he repeated. “It seems the world is coming—the war is coming—whether we’re ready or not. Perhaps it’s time you understood that.”
Before she could reply, Khenti had stepped forward and was reaching past her to knock on the door.
16
THE STORM OF WAR
ACTIUM, 31 BCE
Dawn on the day of the attack had brought dark clouds, a bad omen made worse when they began to burn the ships whose rowers were either dead in the burial pits or had defected across the lines. Watching the thick black plumes of smoke rising to meet the storm-promising sky, Vorenus had felt a sorrowful resignation to death that had surprised him. Death didn’t frighten him overmuch—he had done his due diligence to honor the gods, even on this gods-doomed day—but he was accustomed to feeling a kind of bloodlust take over his mind when battle approached. It was something he and Pullo, even when they were young and thought themselves rivals, always knew they had in common.
But not today.
Perhaps he was just getting old. Or perhaps he was too close to the truth to convince himself that they stood any chance of victory. Whatever the cause, he’d been certain as he’d watched the sun rise that it was the last dawn he’d see.
Though he had lived to see noon, nothing in the half-day of slaughter had yet convinced him that anything but death awaited him today.
Keeping his stance wide on the salt-slick, heaving deck of Antony’s flagship, Vorenus peered north through the sheeting rain, trying to ascertain the status of Octavian’s vessels. There were close to a thousand ships on the water today. The numbers were on Octavian’s side, though not by much. And his fleet was mostly biremes and triremes, smaller ships than their own flotilla of four hundred or so heavy quad- and quinqueremes. The size difference was substantial: it would take little more than a single strike from the triple-beaked bronze ram at the head of one of their massive ships to sink a trireme. The even smaller biremes would likely be blown into splinters.
If only they could catch them.
Octavian, as he had on land, was refusing to give fight. He’d begun the morning far off from the shoreline, not moving in for the battle. Then, when at last Antony gave the frustrated order around noon to head forward into the storm, into Octavian’s lines, Caesar’s adopted son had given way, backrowing out of reach of their wave-plowing rams.
Not out of reach of each side’s ranged weapons, though: the blood of the day so far—and there had been much of it—had been wrought through the air. Archers’ volleys that pinned men to the decks and made pincushions of their side-curved shields. Great iron bolts shot across the waters that could cut through two men at a time. Skull-size stones launched from deck-mounted ballistae that could blow men to pieces. Greased firepots of oil that made a mockery of the rain, vaulting through the air to explode on the decks in infernal heat. Even now Vorenus could see, like parodies of lighthouses on the water, ships burning on
both sides—though there were more among their own lines. Bigger ships made for bigger targets. It was astonishing luck that the flagship had suffered only minor burns about the deck.
Though Antony had for a time paced about the ship, raving about cowardice and dishonor, Octavian’s tactic was clear and sensible: he was going to let Antony’s men row and row until they were to the point of exhaustion or death before he attacked. The rowers were the heart of the ship, after all. Indeed, on clear days, with their rhythm beating steady and sure, Vorenus had often closed his eyes and imagined himself standing atop the hollow heart of a great giant swimming in the sea. But weakened by disease and hunger, sick from the pitching waves, and forced to row harder and longer than they were meant to, the rowers at the heart of these giants were fading fast. Vorenus could see it in the increasingly erratic lift and stroke of their long oars, and he could feel it in the chaotic shouts that echoed up from belowdecks. Octavian, he was certain, was seeing it, too. They wouldn’t have long to wait now.
He looked over to his right, where Pullo was standing tall and unfazed by the weather or the arrow that had managed to pierce his shield far enough to rip into his bracing shoulder. He was kicking his feet to snap the shafts of other arrows that had landed around him, trying to keep his balance as the storm-stirred seas pitched against the massive vessel. Over the past few hours they’d found that the hundreds, if not thousands, of iron points embedded in the deck made for a useful addition in the wet, shifting conditions: their shaftless necks were welcome points of traction and grip when one’s feet were inclined to slide out along the wood.
On the other hand, Vorenus had noted more than once, they were also hell on one’s knees when fresh volleys came down and the legionnaires hunkered beneath their large rectangular shields.
“They still backing off?” Pullo asked, voice betraying only moderate interest.
Vorenus nodded. Their thinning squadron of archers still alive on deck fitted arrows and launched a fresh salvo up into the gray sky. Red shields flipped up and overlapped into traditional tortoise formation on the deck of one of Octavian’s smaller ships nearby, and Vorenus saw a few of the shields cave away as arrows slipped through the gaps and found targets. Never enough, though. It was only a matter of time. He could only hope that Cleopatra would do the right thing when that time came. He’d managed only a few moments to talk with her in private after the generals had met during the night, and she’d seemed none too eager to hear his advice, but perhaps something of what he’d said had sunk in. There was no way of knowing now, and not for the first time he wondered if they should have stayed with Cleopatra instead of Antony. But, then, it was one betrayal to speak against his commander and quite another to act against him. Let Cleopatra do what she would now. He would stand and die where duty called.
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