The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

Parizad tapped his chin. A pathetic attempt at a first beard covered his jaw like the fuzz on a rotten peach. However, I was supposed to be silent and thus, I wouldn’t point out the shortcomings of his few dark whiskers. “They say Bessus has a hundred concubines,” Parizad mused, “but you’ll be, what . . . his third wife?”

  “Fourth.” I practically spat the word at the reminder, then glanced at my brother and scowled. “And your beard looks ridiculous, by the way.”

  Ahriman take silence, and I hoped the black demon might turn my brother’s tongue into a worm while he was at it.

  But Parizad only stroked his chin. “I think it looks dignified. So did the pretty slave I tumbled in the garden shed this morning.”

  I snorted. “If you recall, I did ask Father why he couldn’t find a nobleman to take me as his first wife,” I muttered. The welts on my back were healed to bruises now, but I winced at the remembrance. My father had emerged from his mother’s womb with a body twisted and bent like a fat harvestman spider—big-bellied with spindly arms and legs—and Parizad and I had once made the mistake of taunting him that his fists inflicted little damage on us. To our dismay, we quickly learned that his whip stung deeper than a swarm of hornets, and always avoided biting deep enough to scar or mark our precious faces. Fortunately, Parizad had discovered an interest in healing and kept his leather medicine satchel well stocked with rosemary and lavender salves, and chamomile and yarrow infusions, that eased the worst of the pain.

  I yearned to one day be stronger than the hunchbacked spider, to take the whip from my father and flay the skin from his back. But the daughter of a spider could bide her time. . . .

  We’d entered the heart of Balkh through its seventh gate, which led into its poorest and oldest section of town, and now we wound our way through a ramshackle market packed with carts of red slip pottery, frayed baskets overflowing with lentils and heads of garlic, and bloody hares strung by their back legs and bound for the city’s dinner plates. I thought perhaps we’d reached the palace when my father clambered back into the cart, but the cobbled street opened up to villas of the affluent, the scent of water lilies and oranges wafting over their whitewashed walls. They might not be palatial, but they were certainly more lovely than my father’s meager estate with its loose shutters, which had long ago given up pretending to block out the winter winds, and the stain of black mold that graced our hall’s ceiling. The streets seemed to go on forever, beyond towering Zoroastrian fire temples and the sprawling granaries, each orderly street crammed with obstinate mules, packs of mangy dogs, and slaves hurrying to do their masters’ bidding.

  And then we came to a set of walls inlaid with turquoise and engraved with images of winged lions and bearded sphinxes. Guards with silver shields and lances stood at attention atop the immense wooden gates, their eyes hidden beneath beaten-metal eagle-wing helmets.

  “Oxyartes of Balkh has answered the summons of Bessus, satrap of Bactria and cousin to the King of Kings,” my father called up to the guards, craning his neck so deeply that his shoulders seemed dislocated. “I bring my daughter, Roxana, at his behest.”

  My father spoke like a polished courtier instead of a hawker selling trinkets with fake gilding and colored glass passed off as garnets. I could think of nothing save that beyond these walls lay Balkh’s palace and my future husband, a man I’d never even met.

  And my freedom.

  Parizad leaned forward and squeezed my hand. We’d shared the same womb and wet nurse, so I knew all the squalls of my twin’s temper, the smallest nuance of his laughter, just as he knew mine. Right now I wished he would press his lips to my forehead and talk of pearls the size of swallow’s eggs and the famed Basra dates that Bessus would gift me with. Instead my brother leaned back in the cart, resting against the rough-hewn crate that contained my father’s armor. Father would give me to Bessus, spend most of my bride-price, and then travel with the satrap to the west, to face the threat of Alexander of Macedon. If we were lucky, Alexander would crush my father beneath his boots. “I wonder if Bessus might allow me a position as a healer in his army,” my brother mused, feigning nonchalance. “Then the bards might one day sing of my glory saving men on the battlefield.”

  “Perhaps I’ll make Bessus fall so much in love with me that he’ll make you one of his generals.” I gave an impish grin, prompting a smile from my brother.

  “I have faith in your powers, sister,” he said, lacing his hands behind his black curls and winking. “For your beauty rivals only my own.”

  And it was true. Ahura Mazda, or perhaps the god’s evil counterpart, Ahriman, had cursed us with a grasping, grotesque spider of a father, but somehow gifted us with enough dark beauty to make both men and women weep with envy, although Parizad had yet to grow into his new lankiness. Sometimes I wondered if that was why our father hated us so, because we’d been given everything he’d been denied.

  For a moment I wondered why Bessus had deigned to negotiate with my father at all, but surely the satrap must be a great cultivator of all things beautiful.

  “Shut your gullets, you two,” my father commanded, rubbing his hands together as the palace gates groaned open on ancient hinges. “Bessus has just finished his council meeting following the recent . . . unpleasantness in Issus.”

  Parizad snorted under his breath. “More like a rout. And our King of Kings slunk from the field like a desert dog with his tail between his legs.”

  I jabbed my brother in the ribs, not wishing to listen to him drone on again about the Greek victory. I didn’t care a whit for dead soldiers rotting on a battlefield; after all, the empty-headed imbeciles had volunteered to die in the first place. And despite what I had said to Parizad, I’d never send my beautiful brother to be slaughtered by some Greek pike, to let the carrion pluck out his sparkling eyes and tear apart his perfect skin. That would be akin to sending a piece of myself to die. No, he would stay here with me, right where he belonged.

  If my father heard Parizad’s comment, he ignored it and leveled his beetle black eyes at me. “You shall greet Bessus in the Hall of Columns. You’ll scrape and bow, and make him think the sun rises and sets at the flutter of your eyelashes—”

  “Thus sealing the alliance between our families,” I recited, smiling prettily so my dimples cleaved my cheeks.

  A smile spread across his face that had nothing to do with me. “Thirteen years I’ve fed and clothed you, endured your foul tempers and disobedience,” he said. “But tonight it will be worth it.”

  Barely fed and barely clothed, but tonight I’d marry the satrap of Bactria. I would finally be somebody, with slaves of my own to gut newborn fawns for my dinner table, to oil my hair and polish the pearls and gems Bessus would surely give me as a bridal gift.

  Only then could I begin to live.

  • • •

  Bessus did have a magnificent palace, hidden from the prying view of lowborn eyes. We rode in silence along the manicured path that cut a swath through the orderly lemon trees, the fragrant air disturbed only by the flight of an errant white butterfly. Parizad helped me disembark and we continued toward the audience hall, my pale fingers held tight by his browned and calloused palm, my throat suddenly dry.

  What if Bessus didn’t want me? The satrap could have any woman as wife; why would he choose a girl clothed in moth-eaten silk with a spider for a father?

  Outside the Hall of Columns, my father spoke to an egg-bald herald, who had the gall to arch an eyebrow darkened with sormeh powder in my direction. I pursed my lips, acutely aware of the fine weave of his robe and the gold disks sewn into the wide red kamarband around his waist. I worried at my mother’s gold bangles on my wrists—the cheaply gilded kind, which my father hadn’t yet gotten around to losing on a horse bet—and brushed my black hair behind my shoulder, the better to show off her pearl earrings, although I wished they were larger than coriander seeds.

  “I bid you welcom
e to the court of the satrap, Roxana of Balkh.” The herald wrinkled his nose, sniffing as he touched the rumpled fabric of my sleeve. His voice was too high to be a proper man’s—a eunuch, then. “Delicate bones and thick hair, blacker than a winter night,” he said. “The satrap will enjoy this one, for a few days at least.”

  I resisted the urge to pinch the half man until he cried, a trick I’d often used on our idiot slaves when they didn’t do what I wished. Instead, I brushed away his hand as if he were a pesky fly. “Don’t presume to touch the satrap’s future wife,” I said. “Lest he have you cut a second time.”

  The eunuch’s eyes widened, but then he smiled and tucked his hands inside his loose sleeves. “Of course.”

  Ordering one’s inferiors was a simple task, akin to training a dog.

  “Do not look the satrap in the eyes when he greets you,” the eunuch admonished me. “Sweep gracefully to the ground and press your forehead into the floor. Can you manage that?”

  “Of course I can,” I snapped. “I’m not a peasant you’ve plucked from the fields.”

  Although I wouldn’t mind sending this mockery of a man to trudge through manure and mud.

  At an impatient flick of the eunuch’s hand the guards opened the ebony doors to the audience hall, the herald proclaiming my father’s meager titles. I tilted my chin, but my cheeks still burned as the well-dressed nobles tittered behind their hands as my father limped and Parizad and I strode through the center of the hall under the watchful gazes of the gods of old and new: Ardokhsha, the goddess of good fortune; Bahram, the god of victory; and Ahura Mazda, the god of truth and light. But I cared as little for the gods in that moment as I did the unimpressive herd of nobles.

  Seated on the far dais was a mountain of flesh with a craggy, receding hairline, his broad belly and chest gleaming with his silk and gold robes. He lumbered to his feet and every man and woman bowed before him like ripples in an insignificant pond.

  “Is this her?” the man on the dais asked, rubbing his fat hands together as his eyes swept over me. “Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes?”

  I stood rooted in place, short of breath as I watched my future husband stride toward me, feeling his every massive step reverberate through the floor tiles. Bessus’ skin was pitted like an apricot kernel, his eyes close set, and his nose twitched like those of the rats I’d sometimes found in our pantry’s sacks of grain.

  And I was to wed this meaty rodent.

  I never thought it possible, but my father had succeeded in betrothing me to someone as hideous as he was. My stomach curdled with revulsion and disgust, and I wanted nothing so much as to turn and bolt. Instead, I forced myself to stare at the magnificence of the Hall of Columns, to imagine the way my new silk robes would feel on my skin, and how sweet the glasses of honey wine would taste at the wedding celebration tonight.

  Bessus halted, looking down as he circled me while his fingers tapped a nervous rhythm on one of his chins. “You didn’t exaggerate about her beauty, Oxyartes,” he said to my father, then reached out to clasp a lock of my black hair, twined it around his fat sausage finger, and gave a little tug, like on a mare’s reins. I resisted the urge to jerk away as that pudgy finger traced my jawline. “I know we only discussed her maidenhead, but I might be interested in riding this filly of yours more than once.”

  I reared back, yanking my hair from his grasp. “I’m to be your wife, not your whore for a night.”

  “I already have three wives,” Bessus said, his stomach rippling with his chortles of laughter. “And I’d sooner slit both my wrists than add to the collection.”

  My father joined the hall’s laughter, then said, “Surely you won’t begrudge Roxana her illusions, so fresh and naive is she in the ways of the world.” He grasped my shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh, but it was his new ring that caught my attention: a moonstone set in gold, the same ring the satrap gave to all his retainers. “I told you, Roxana, that the satrap’s attentions would bring great honor to yourself and your family.”

  My body went cold. My father had schemed and lied for his own benefit. And he had risen high because of it, while I was to be bedded by this heap of flesh, one of a hundred virgins he’d probably ruined, instead of becoming a pampered wife seated on a dais next to the man who might one day be the King of Kings.

  I wanted only one thing in that moment: to crush my father and feel him break beneath the heels of my secondhand slippers.

  I tilted my head and let my chin wobble, the very picture of youthful innocence. “My lord,” I said to Bessus, ignoring my father entirely, “I would be honored to serve you in whatever manner you choose, but I thought only flowered women were given the honor of serving as bedmates.”

  A hush fell over the hall as every supplicant leaned closer to hear.

  “Oxyartes . . . ,” Bessus growled, his fat face turning the color of autumn beets.

  “Roxana is thirteen and recently ripened into womanhood,” my father said, scraping several hurried bows on his twisted foot before the fat satrap. “I swear it.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not true. I told you that I’d not yet flowered.”

  “It is an affront to all the gods for a man to force a bud to blossom,” Bessus said, leveling his frigid gaze at my father. “And it is also an affront to those same gods to lie, Oxyartes of Balkh.”

  Triumph surged over me, hot and golden, at the panic written clear on my father’s face, that one of his schemes might unravel like a gossamer spiderweb attacked by a child’s stick. He dared not call me a liar and spoil his precious goods before Bessus’ eyes. For once, I would beat him.

  “I swear I thought she was ripe for the plucking,” my father said, mopping the perspiration from his forehead even as he speared me with a dagger-sharp gaze. “Perhaps if we return in a few weeks—”

  “I have no use for children or liars.” Bessus snapped his fingers at the eunuch. “Roxana of Balkh is to be returned to her father’s house, but Oxyartes will accompany me as I leave to rendezvous with the King of Kings. I’m of a mind to have him pull my cart, but perhaps the Greeks will do us all the favor of shooting his miserable hide full of poison arrows.”

  “I thought you wished for the use of my weapon foundries,” my father started, but Bessus cut him off.

  “King Darius can make use of some other foundries for his fight against Alexander. Yours are tainted by Ahriman’s shadow and no longer of interest to our king.”

  My father twitched, then whirled on me once Bessus’ back was turned, his hand on my arm so tight it threatened to shatter the bone. “You stupid little idiot. Don’t think I’ll leave Balkh without making you wish you were dead.”

  A chill coiled down my spine, for I’d been so swept up in shredding my father’s plans that I hadn’t thought he might still find a way to make me suffer. I shuddered even as Bessus turned. “Oxyartes!” he barked. “I said you would accompany me. Must I teach you to heel as well?”

  My hunchbacked father flushed an angry scarlet, but bowed and limped toward Bessus, leaving me to heave a shallow sigh of relief and wonder if perhaps I’d have been better off spreading my legs for the satrap like an obedient daughter.

  I’d lied, but now I’d forgone one trap and stumbled into another of my own making.

  Yet I was the daughter of a spider. And spiders are never caught in their own webs.

  • • •

  With nowhere to go, I dared to sit on the bottom step of Bessus’ dais while the Hall of Columns emptied. Parizad sat beside me, rummaging through the leather satchel at his waist.

  “Sometimes I think you’re the smarter of the two of us,” he said. “And then you go and pull a maggot-brained trick like that.”

  “You’d rather have a sister whored to that saggy elephant?” I plucked a loose string on my sleeve, watching with satisfaction as the entire edge came unraveled.

 
“I’d rather still have a sister, which isn’t likely after Father finishes with you. There are worse things than spreading your legs for a man like Bessus.”

  Perhaps I should have accepted Bessus. My father might sell me to a leather tanner just to spite me now, leaving me smelling of urine and my hands wrinkled like prunes for the rest of my life. Still, his greed might prove my saving grace, for a tanner likely couldn’t afford to outfit him with gold and moonstone rings.

  “Piss and shit,” I cursed under my breath. “I should run away.”

  “And where would you go, big sister?”

  I breathed in the smell of dusty herbs and earth that always clung to him. “I was going to wear rubies in my hair and sleep on silk, and have an army of slaves to attend to my every whim. I might have been queen one day.”

  “I know,” he said, stroking my head. “And you still might.”

  “What?” I lifted my head.

  “I think you might be very ill, very soon. Violently ill, in fact,” Parizad said, his voice soft.

  “I feel fine, for now at least—” But I stopped when I saw in his open hand two misshapen glass vials filled with round yellow seeds and dried leaves the color of a twilight sky. “What are those?”

  “Mustard and rue,” he said. “I’ve gotten out of a few beatings myself by being so sick Father dared not touch me. Mustard and rue always do the trick. You’ll feel terrible for half a day, but it’s better than not being able to move for a week from the lashes.”

  I grinned and bumped his shoulder. “You sly demon.”

  “You really will call me a demon once these sour your stomach.”

  I opened my hand and let him empty the seeds and leaves into my palm. “You’re sure this will work?”

  “Take them quick enough and I might be forced to call Bessus’ physician.”

  I caught his meaning. “I may have to stay overnight. . . .”

  “And Father and the satrap will be gone by dawn.”

  I took a deep breath, then downed the herbs. My gorge rose at the overwhelming taste, but I swallowed. “I love you, little brother,” I said. “Even if you did just poison me.”