The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  I followed him into the Hall of Xerxes with its throngs of aristocrats waiting to catch a glimpse of their new ruler, but I ignored all the overdressed peacocks, running an appreciative hand over the priceless frescoes showing the famed king stabbing lion-headed demons. A hammered golden plaque bore chiseled inscriptions praising the first Darius’ expeditions against Greece in the three tongues of Babylon, Persia, and Elam. Still, Alexander took no notice of the art or the aristocrats waiting to fawn over him, skirting the audience hall’s hundred towering pillars and gesturing toward the treasury.

  “There’s more bullion inside,” he told a regiment of Macedonian infantry, many of them slack-jawed at the opulence of Darius’ ancient palace. “I want every single last coin melted down to send home to Aigai.”

  Alexander had an army to pay and feed, but that didn’t mean that I was going to forgo the opportunity to stare at one of the great wonders of Darius’ empire. I managed to shut my maw, but wandered into the throne room and whistled in reverence at the winged-lion statue rearing up over the dais, its mouth frozen midroar and massive golden paws ready to strike.

  “You should build a palace like this in Alexandria,” I mused aloud to Alexander. “Or perhaps even in Aigai.”

  But Alexander was gone, presumably knee-deep in gold bullion in the treasury.

  Someone shouted and there came a series of thumps like bodies hitting the ground. On instinct, I drew my sword and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled as they did before battle.

  I sniffed the air and panic seized my throat like a Titan’s fist.

  The acrid smell of smoke made my mouth go numb and every nerve in my body screamed in barely restrained panic.

  Four Companions burst then from the Hall of Xerxes, leering in triumph and lugging one of Darius’ many golden thrones between them, this one studded with lapis lazuli and emeralds arranged into a stunning simurgh raptor. Behind them, tendrils of gray smoke emerged from the hall, curling like claws to rasp at the walls and the ceiling.

  Alexander emerged from the treasury, fists on his hips and watching with satisfaction as the smoke grew. The flames crackled with glee as they devoured the frescoes of Xerxes battling demons, their wall of heat searing my very lungs.

  “Raze and plunder Persepolis, the most hated city in all of Asia!” Alexander cried, and lifted his hand in the signal to the waiting regiments armed with torches and swords. They streamed like starving locusts from every door of the throne room, headed toward the city’s graceful columned terraces and splendid avenues. Statues of Persia’s ancient history crashed to the ground—stone wings smashed from sphinxes and crowns obliterated from the heads of kings long since dead. Noblewomen screamed as they watched their husbands, brothers, and fathers being slaughtered, then screamed again as they were claimed by our soldiers as further spoils of war. All the while, more men streamed down the stairs, carrying bolts of shimmering silk and chests of gleaming silver, crates of bullion and armloads of golden bangles and necklaces.

  “What in the name of the twelve gods are you doing?” I yelled, grabbing Alexander by the front of his leather cuirass, but he shook me off.

  “This city harbored Darius. Let this be a lesson that I shall destroy his empire, city by city and brick by brick if I have to, until he surrenders.” His eyes gleamed like one entranced and smoke seemed to roll from his skin. It scraped the back of my throat and dug into my eyes like grains of sand.

  Fire. Zeus above, how I hated fire.

  “Persepolis surrendered, Alexander,” I yelled, hoping my words would shame him even as sweat gathered at my temples and ran down my back. This was the singer Adurnarseh again, only magnified a thousandfold. “This is the act of a tyrant.”

  Something flared deep in Alexander’s blue eyes. “This is an act of vengeance,” he said. “A repayment to Persia for their burning of Athens during the Great War and a clear message to Darius. I have finally done what my father set out to do: conquer Persia. Now it’s time that Persia learned their lesson so they never rise against us again.”

  “The sacking of Athens occurred while your grandfathers were still shitting their swaddling clothes,” I growled. “This temper tantrum doesn’t befit a man who seeks immortality and claims to be a god.”

  He whirled about, deadly silent as he leaned so close that I could feel the heat of his breath despite the growing flames. “I am a god, Hephaestion,” he finally said. “You cower there like a woman, ready to piss yourself in the face of a little fire and spilled blood, while I conquer the world.”

  My fist hit his cheek and he staggered back, looking up at me for a moment like a wounded child. Never before had we traded blows, not even as children. Yet he was no longer a boy, but the most powerful man on earth.

  “You’ve been granted many gifts by the gods,” I said, looking down on him from my superior height. “You are meant to build cities, not destroy them. Put out the flames, Alexander.”

  “It is only because I love you that I don’t slay you where you stand,” he growled. And then Alexander, my lover and friend, brother and commander, shoved past me so hard that I stumbled back. “Your fear shames you,” he said, his voice echoing off the walls. “Run if you wish, away from the flames that so terrify you, but do not dare to speak to me again.”

  With that, I turned and walked away, forcing my steps into measured paces as the gilded cedar rafters of the Hall of Xerxes crashed to the ground behind me.

  CHAPTER 13

  Bactria, Persia

  Roxana

  “And thus approaches our craven king,” Bessus murmured in my ear, his breath hot against my skin. His voluminous green robe was edged with black silk and embroidered with gold thread, his earlobes and every finger bedecked with jasper and onyx rings. The bronze dagger I’d watched him sharpen that morning was now tucked into his vast black kamarband.

  I gave a sly smile and trailed my fingers down his arm. “All shall be as you wish it.”

  And then all would be as I wished it.

  Only days before, Bessus had used the promise of fresh troops to lure Darius to Bactria, for the King of Kings was in desperate need of men to march with him against Alexander. Cowardly Darius was a trusting fool and stumbled headlong into the trap, allowing himself to be imprisoned and taken hostage by Bessus’ officers. Now I watched the tense rendezvous from beneath an awning of golden silk, dressed in a new yellow silk gown and matching veil embroidered with tiny stars, calfskin slippers dyed to match, and my beautiful brother at my side. Parizad was resplendent in his own robe the color of freshly churned butter, which denoted his improved position as one of Bessus’ bodyguards, a position I’d procured after mastering several of Bessus’ favorite positions both in and out of bed. Arms crossed tight against my ribs, I rapped an impatient rhythm along my forearms at Darius’ approach, for I knew what was soon to come.

  I’d expected Darius to be impressive, but the man who approached between the brandished spears of Bessus’ soldiers was haggard as a beggar, his wrists bearing heavy golden manacles instead of sumptuous bangles and his eyes dark and hollow beneath their smudged lines of sormeh powder. Only the king’s bedraggled purple-striped cloak and Persia’s eagle diadem at his brow hinted that he had once been the ruler of the greatest empire on earth. Several soldiers whispered and averted their eyes, their pity for the beaten king apparent in their drawn faces.

  I had no pity. Darius’ sun had set and Bessus’ was rising, with mine alongside it.

  “Dear cousin Bessus,” Darius said, his voice rasping. He was a tall man despite his bent back, but the chains at his wrists rattled as tremors shook his body. A king should be brave and courageous, but Darius’ eyes rolled in their sockets like an animal awaiting slaughter. “What is the meaning of this?” he managed to ask.

  “I would have thought that was obvious, cousin.” Bessus bent to kiss his fingers in a proskynesis due to his king. “You h
ave been tried and found wanting as king. Thus, I relieve you of your burden.”

  I’d been half the instrument of my mother’s death, but I’d never seen a man killed until Bessus raised his dagger against the King of Kings. He hit home with practiced ease, the tip of the dagger neatly piercing the white silk of Darius’ robe to plunge between his ribs. Shock slackened the king’s face at the quick and underwhelming kill, but my stomach clenched as Bessus’ men joined the fray, stabbing Darius again and again, the sounds from a butcher’s block while the king brayed like a sacrificial ewe.

  “By the gods,” Parizad breathed, white-faced. He moved to stop them as Bessus’ archers emerged with bolts drawn in case Darius somehow managed to escape. I grabbed my brother’s wrist with a tight shake of my head.

  “It’s too late,” I said, thin-lipped and suddenly light-headed. “Bessus is king now.”

  Parizad whirled on me, horror-struck. “You knew about this?”

  “I share Bessus’ bed,” I said, watching still more soldiers fall upon Darius. “And soon I shall share his throne.”

  Parizad stared at me, but my fingers threaded through his as Bessus lifted the blood-spattered golden eagle diadem from Darius’ brow and placed it on his own head. The old king’s white robe was rent to tatters and his chest pockmarked with bloody gouges that seeped wet crimson.

  “May you cross the Chinvat Bridge with ease, cousin,” Bessus whispered, a grin cleaving his face in two. He leaned down and slit Darius’ throat, allowing the feeble king’s last breath to escape in a wet hiss.

  “Darius is dead,” Bessus proclaimed in a line I’d listened to him practice countless times over the past days. “We hereby proclaim ourselves the Great King, King of Kings, Artaxerxes the Fifth!”

  For a moment no one dared breathe. I was the first to move, sinking to my knees in a graceful proskynesis I’d also rehearsed, my lips curving into a smile before kissing my fingertips. The men around me followed my example, hailing Bessus as their king.

  But not all men . . .

  “What have you done?” Parizad shrieked next to me. I tried to yank him to the ground, but he shook me off. “You’ve killed Ahura Mazda’s chosen king in cold blood!”

  Bessus glanced down at Darius’ corpse. “Thank you for pointing that out, boy. Otherwise I might not have noticed.”

  A rumble of laughter started, but ceased when my brother stepped out from beneath my silken awning. “Do you really think men will follow you, the great murderer of kings? Or shall another satrap follow your example, slay you and claim the precious eagle diadem for his own?”

  I was already scrambling toward them both. “Great King—,” I began, but Bessus pointed his dagger at Parizad, then gave an easy nod to the archers. “Kill him.”

  “No!” I screamed, falling between Bessus and Parizad, my arms spread in an attempt to stop them both. “Don’t hurt him!”

  No one moved, but then Bessus flicked a hand.

  “Stand down,” he ordered, and the archers lowered their quarrels so they were no longer aimed straight for Parizad’s stupid, noble heart.

  But I was a fool to think Bessus so charitable as to forgive the brother I loved.

  With a sharp gleam in his eyes, Bessus removed a helmet from one of the archers and tossed it toward Parizad, where it rolled haphazardly to a stop at his feet. “Since you bear such love for Darius, I charge you with protecting our former king from the marauding daevas who will seek out his rotting flesh.” He yanked the embroidered bee scarf from my head, tearing away several pins and strands of my hair. “A final gift from your beloved twin,” he said, throwing the gleaming scrap of fabric at my brother. “To tie over your nose when Darius’ desiccated corpse becomes too rank to breathe!”

  A snap of his fingers and a guard unlocked one of Darius’ golden fetters and clamped the metal over Parizad’s wrist.

  I fought then, lunging toward my brother even as soldiers held me back. My love for my twin had spared him a quick execution and instead bought him a lingering death beneath the sun’s screaming heat with only a dead king for company. My struggles against the guards made them clasp my arms tighter than Darius’ golden manacles, and scalding tears blinded my view of my beautiful, doomed brother.

  “Parizad, Parizad,” I said, my brother’s name tumbling from my lips like a fountain. “Parizad!”

  But there was nothing I could say or do to save my stupid, gentle brother. I’d endured whippings, mustard seed poisonings, and even become Bessus’ pliant harlot, but Parizad had thrown it all away with a few treasonous words.

  And now I would lose him.

  “Cease your sniveling,” Bessus commanded, grabbing my chin between his thumb and forefinger so tightly that fresh tears sprang to my eyes. “Or I’ll slay him where he stands and leave you to mourn his traitorous corpse.”

  “Go,” Parizad whispered from his place in the dust, even as Bessus’ men threw Darius’ body into a derelict goat cart, dragging my stumbling brother with them.

  “I’ll stay with you,” I said, wrenching my chin away from Bessus.

  My beautiful brother shook with terror, but tried to steady his voice. “Go, Roxana, and be a queen.”

  But Parizad was my other half. Panic welled in my throat, for we had never been apart and now he was abandoning me for a dead man. He had torn out my heart with both his hands, leaving a gaping, bleeding wound in my chest that would never heal.

  “But I love you,” I whispered.

  “And I you,” he said, tears spilling down his soft cheeks as he lifted his irons in a gesture of helplessness. “And I swear we’ll be together again, if only in paradise.”

  I wanted to throw my arms around him, but instead forced myself to turn my back on my brother, part of me dying with every step that took me farther from him even as Bessus lumbered to his waiting chariot.

  I spared a last glance at Parizad, so tall and so handsome, his nose already beginning to redden under the sun’s glare as it had when we were children.

  Even if I did become queen, a crown would never fill the place where my heart had been.

  • • •

  Weeks of traveling to the capital of Bactria passed in a blur. I was sentenced to days spent in a lonely oxcart without Parizad at my side and resigned to nights spent bathing Bessus and using my long hair to dry his great folds of flesh before he took me on the ground, the bed, or anywhere he wanted. The people cheered for their newly crowned King of Kings as he approached them draped in an impeccable purple robe and golden cape he’d stolen from Darius’ baggage cart. His thick waist was bound by an exquisite girdle woven of golden thread, like a colossal net crafted of the sun’s rays. His gilded chariot was blinding, as were the two stunning white horses that pulled the vehicle while a eunuch rode beside him with a screen of goat hide and a bronze fly whisk.

  I was carried in a holly-wood sedan several lengths back from Bessus, my wrists circled by golden bracelets topped by lynx head finials glowering with green jade eyes. Tiny golden doves perched on miniature altars dangled from my ears and I wore the finest silk robe I’d ever seen in my life, black as a winter night and embroidered with fearsome griffins. Bessus had promised me even more gold once Alexander was killed, claiming that he would drape my naked body with gold thread and weave gems and coins into my hair before he tumbled me on the floor of his treasury.

  I’d wanted gold, pearls, and silk and now I had them in droves, and my own eunuch too, a lithe young man with a lilting voice named Bagoas. He had reputedly pleasured Darius but was taken as part of the spoils from Darius’ baggage cart, then reassigned to serve my every whim. He did so with such silent dedication that I imagined myself with a collection of pretty eunuchs one day, far more impressive than a stable of matched horses. Even as Bagoas hooked the dangling doves through my ears, I knew that just weeks ago this largesse would have made me shriek with joy. Yet I would n
ever be happy again, not while the sun bleached my brother’s bones.

  I would not cry. Not here, in front of the crowd.

  Instead I forced myself to smile and nod at the mass of Bactrians until we passed beneath the gate to Bessus’ palace. His waiting nobles bowed and thronged behind him in a perfumed current to carry him to his throne room. If I’d been Bessus’ queen, I might have been permitted to follow and sit behind a filigreed screen, but as a mere concubine I was expected to wait on Bessus’ pleasure in his chambers. Still, Bessus had sent his wives away for safety, two to Persepolis and one to the fortress at Sogdian Rock, so I had his undivided attention here in Bactria.

  And I planned to make good use of the opportunity.

  I took Bagoas’ proffered hand, softer than silk and more lustrous than pearls, and stepped from the sedan with my head held high despite the many stares in my direction. One man in particular, Ariamazes of Sogdiana, had traveled alongside Bessus and leered at me every chance he had.

  “I need a moment,” I murmured to my guards, then hurried to the nearest alcove before tears of grief and frustration spilled down my cheeks. I’d scarcely leaned my forehead against the cool stone wall when a rough hand grabbed my elbow.

  “You seem to have done well for yourself, spreading your legs for Bessus.”

  I clamped down on my cry of shock to see my father, his bottom teeth thrust forward while his eyes darted from me to the final carts and horses trickling through the palace gate. I could tell he was adding the figures for how much wealth Bessus had accumulated by seizing Darius’ baggage train, his beady eyes bulging as he approached the total.