The Conqueror's Wife

by Stephanie Thornton

  I stalked off from Cassander in high dudgeon, but I soon forgot my pique as the bireme found its first heavy swells.

  “I want to die,” I moaned in my dark cabin, eliciting a chuckle and a perfunctory pat on my head from Cynnane.

  “No one ever died from a sour stomach,” she said. “We’ll be on deck if you decide to join us for grilled fish and shrimp.”

  “I’d rather swallow rusty nails,” I said, throwing an arm over my head and willing the world to stop swaying. I’d taken ill almost as soon as Pella had slipped from view amid the blue sky and cavorting porpoises. Thus far I’d offered Poseidon several impromptu sacrifices from my stomach until it was wrung dry, yet it somehow still churned like sea waves in a storm.

  “Chewing mint settles Adea’s stomach when she’s ill or I’ve trained her too hard,” Cynnane mused. “Perhaps we can fetch some when we next go ashore.”

  The door closed, leaving me to die in darkness on my hard little pallet.

  Mint.

  Cassander chewed mint.

  “Cynnane,” I moaned as loud as I could, hoping she’d fetch the herb, but she was already gone.

  Even in my present agony, I wouldn’t ask Cassander for anything. Still, I wasn’t above stealing a few leaves from his pack.

  I dragged myself from my pallet, wrinkling my nose at the fetid smell that followed me. Arrhidaeus’ tiny cabin was across the empty corridor, and so cramped I had no idea how both he and Cassander would stretch out to sleep.

  The door creaked as I opened it, but Cassander was sitting on his pallet. He hastily folded the letter he’d been writing and shoved it into his pack.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I was looking for Arrhidaeus,” I lied, but the ground beneath my bare feet rolled and I clutched the doorframe. “Do you have mint?” I asked. “It’s for my stomach.”

  I expected him to refuse or at least taunt me, but Cassander took one look at my disheveled state and retrieved a paper bundle from his pack.

  “Thank you,” I said, grabbing the precious leaves and leveling him with as haughty a glare as I could muster when he pulled them back.

  “I’ll give it to you,” he said, “in exchange for information.”

  “I’m in no condition—,” I started, but stopped when he opened his mouth as if to eat the leaves himself. “What information?”

  “What is Olympias up to?” he asked, gesturing above deck with the mint. “Everyone knows she doesn’t care two drachmas for her brother, yet now she’s relocating her entire court to the other side of Greece to mourn him? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “She is a dutiful sister,” I said, pushing the words between my gritted teeth.

  “She is dutiful,” Cassander agreed. “But only when it comes to protecting her son.”

  “Are you writing to your father?” I asked, to change the subject, jerking my chin toward his half-finished letter. “Did he tell you to make good use of your time and spy on us?”

  “My father is no fool,” Cassander said. “And neither am I.”

  “Then I’m confident you can figure out all of Olympias’ plans on your own,” I said. “And be sure when you do to share that information with me.”

  I turned to leave, but Cassander cleared his throat.

  “You forgot your mint,” he said, tossing me the packet and popping the other leaves into his mouth. I caught the precious bundle and turned again to stumble back to my cabin, making it to the copper basin Cynnane had left for me just before I made Poseidon yet another offering.

  With any luck, it wasn’t mint that Cassander had just given me, but an expeditious poison to put me out of my misery.

  • • •

  I survived that night and the next, but barely.

  When we docked in Piraeus’ harbor, I went ashore and clutched fistfuls of loamy earth, nearly weeping at the solid ground beneath me. Crowds of curious onlookers had assembled to gawk at our purple sails and cheer for the royal family of Alexander. Olympias had already disembarked, forgoing the trip to the Acropolis so she might meet with the city’s archon. Cynnane planned to visit a nearby temple to Metis with Adea and Arrhidaeus, but Cassander had insisted that he accompany me to Athena’s famed temple. I planned to ride from the port to Athens, but found myself so weakened from lack of food and illness that I struggled to mount the modest mare that waited for me. I colored to the roots of my hair when Cassander knelt, allowing me to use his knee as a step.

  “Thank you,” I muttered, but he didn’t answer as I arranged myself in the saddle, save to incline his head before mounting his own horse. I patted my pocket to ensure that the tiny vial of olive oil was still there, my offering to Athena today as we visited her famous statue. Apollo had driven his sun chariot halfway across the sky by the time we reached the base of the Acropolis and dismounted. My guards cut through the swath of grumbling politicians, yawning slaves, and bareheaded pilgrims by bellowing out my titles, but only halfway up the gravel path, I cursed my shortness of breath even as I marveled at the new sights around me.

  A patchwork cat meandered among the olive trees on the rocky white slopes and I paused to rub her chin, relishing her purr as I caught my breath while my guards hung back. “It’s a pleasant day to visit the Acropolis,” Cassander said, directing his gaze at the rocky precipice as I rubbed a painful stitch from my side. “Aristotle often had us meet here to sit and discuss political theory in the shade of Pericles’ achievements.”

  “You do realize how pretentious that sounds, don’t you?” I said, taking my steps more slowly with the excuse of peering down at the columned Odeon, roofed with timbers taken from captured Persian ships and home of the world’s finest musical competitions. The stray cat followed until I finally picked her up to stop her rubbing against my legs as if I carried dead birds in my pockets.

  “It’s not pretentious if it’s a fact,” Cassander said. “Any more than you draping yourself in your brother’s gold is pretentious.”

  “I don’t drape myself in Alexander’s gold,” I said, even as the cat batted at the pearl necklace around my throat. “I prefer cats and pearls instead.”

  I caught what might have been a smirk or a smile flit across his face as I set the cat back on solid ground. We walked in silence the remainder of the way until the hill leveled and opened to the rocky platform dedicated to Athena. The olive tree that the goddess had given the city spread its branches as if to clutch the rags of blue sky overhead. The white marble temple gleamed like a building stolen from Mount Olympus and I was too slack-jawed to protest as my guards ushered out worshippers laden with offerings of fruit and flowers.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whispered.

  I moved forward as if in a trance, drawn beyond the smoking altars alight with incense and into the empty sanctuary to gaze in wonder at Athena’s ivory statue. The goddess of wisdom was clad in a peplos of flowing gold and wore a sphinx – and griffin-headed helm instead of a crown. She brandished her customary long-spear in one hand, while her owl-emblazoned shield waited discarded at her feet.

  She reminded me of Cynnane, except that the goddess’ hair curled in perfect ringlets around her face instead of a mass of kinks and tangles to rival Medusa’s snakes.

  “Just the chance to behold her is a treasure far greater than any gold,” Cassander murmured next to me. There was no one else in the temple, so even his low voice seemed to echo off the ceiling. “It’s something you’ve longed for, isn’t it?”

  I could only nod.

  “And,” he said, pointing toward Athena’s outstretched hand, “she’s holding your namesake.”

  I smiled against my will, for Athena held the winged goddess Nike in her palm.

  “Your brother seems blessed by the goddess of victory,” Cassander said, “yet he bypasses wonders such as these or, worse, destroys them as he did in Persepolis
. I wonder how much time will pass before Nike withholds her gifts from Alexander?”

  I should have known that Cassander would find a way to mar even this moment with his moral platitudes.

  “Go away,” I commanded, the earlier levity we’d shared suddenly dashed to pieces. I wished Athena would smite him where he stood. “Your dour tidings aren’t welcome.”

  He looked about to speak, but instead bowed his head and backed toward the entrance, leaving me to scowl after him.

  I didn’t care to admit that Cassander’s words troubled me, that I’d wondered the same morose thoughts sometimes as I drifted off to sleep. However, instead of leaving the olive oil for Athena, I laid it at the altar of Nike’s nearby temple when no one was looking.

  “Spread your wings over Alexander and keep him safe,” I beseeched my namesake. “If only to spite Cassander.”

  For although I hadn’t seen Alexander in more than five years, I couldn’t imagine a world without him.

  • • •

  I loved Epirus’ town of Cassope the moment I laid eyes upon it. The stark white city clung to the edge of the southeast cliff of the Zalongo Mountain as if daring the very winds to shake the entire city loose from its moorings. The picturesque city was famed for its Molussus hounds, the massive, long-nosed, shaggy dogs that fiercely guarded their flocks from wolves and thieves. We’d been in Cassope only a week before I had a pack of the beauties to claim as my own.

  Olympias made short work of assuming the position of regent for her young cousin after her brother’s desecrated body was finally laid to rest in the family tomb. Less than one week after our arrival, she sent word that I would skip my afternoon sparring exercises with Cynnane and accompany her to the city’s coin forges instead.

  Not a request, but a command.

  “Cassander will think I’ve been kidnapped if I’m gone too long,” I said, my hounds running along the path as I walked with her to the mint, one of the columned buildings that branched off the town’s agora. My loss wouldn’t trouble him, but losing me to brigands or rebels would mean that he’d be unable to finish yesterday’s lecture on the great war against Persia, a tragedy from which he might never recover.

  “I sent word to Antipater’s son that you would be with me,” Olympias said, stopping to straighten the pomegranate-topped pin that secured my himation around my shoulders. “Has he offered to marry you yet?”

  I gaped, then sputtered. “Marry me?”

  She arched an eyebrow, then gave a dainty sniff. “I assume not.”

  She turned and left me to scuttle after her into the coin forge, the smell of molten metal making me wrinkle my nose. “Why would you think Cassander would propose?” I asked, motioning for all the dogs to wait outside. They sat on their haunches without protest, better behaved than I’d likely ever be.

  “Because Antipater hopes for a union between our families to guarantee his continued power,” she said, ignoring the coin smiths as they scrambled to bow before her. “He believes himself to be Alexander’s regent and his successor too, should my son fail to produce an heir.”

  “So I should rebuff Cassander,” I said. That would be the first simple task Olympias had set me to.

  But Olympias shook her head. “Far from it,” she said. “You will encourage him in every way possible.”

  “What?”

  But now it was I whom Olympias ignored. She nodded indulgently at the eldest of the coin smiths as he rose, white-haired and with hands more scarred than not. “You honor us with your presence,” the man said. “It isn’t often that the ruling house deigns to visit us.”

  “An error I seek to rectify,” Olympias said, gifting him with a rare smile. “I wish to see how the coins I’ve ordered are progressing.”

  The smith snapped his mottled fingers and an apprentice hurried forward bearing a small wooden chest. Copper coins gleamed when he opened the box, freshly minted and slightly irregular from their stamping. Olympias plucked one from the trove and turned it over in her palm, her smile widening with unadulterated pleasure as she handed it to me.

  “A thunderbolt and a wreath,” I said, placating her as I inspected the other side. “And a thunderbolt on a shield.”

  “The three symbols of the Molossians, Chaonians, and Thesprotians,” Olympias said. “This one coin shall unite all three Epirean city-states.”

  “Making Epirus a power to rival even that of Macedon,” I said. “A threat at Antipater’s back door.”

  Not for the first time I yearned for the simple life I’d built for myself back in Pella, sparring with Cynnane and fishing with Arrhidaeus. Against my will, Olympias had dragged me back into a royal’s world of backstabbing politics.

  She nodded. “It’s a threat which shall either goad Antipater into action or terrorize him into inaction.”

  “But I still don’t understand why you wish me to encourage Cassander,” I said. “He’s spying on us for his father.”

  “Of course he is. He sees nothing I don’t wish him to see.” She replaced the coins and commended the smith before answering the rest of my query. “And his father will think twice about attacking Epirus if he believes Cassander has a chance of securing your hand in marriage,” Olympias said. “By then I’ll have the entire region eating from my hand.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised me that we were all bit players in Olympias’ game, an amusement that might plunge us into a bloody civil war.

  “Does Alexander know of all this?”

  “He has given me free rein at home while he pursues his campaigns in the east,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she glanced up from her inspection of the remainder of the coins. “Everything I do is for Alexander, to protect his interests in Greece while he pacifies our enemies and earns eternal glory. Heroes in centuries to come shall beg on their knees for the opportunity to kiss my son’s feet in the Fields of Elysium.”

  I shivered then despite the heat of the forges, wondering what sort of simpleton Olympias took me for that she expected me to believe all her plots and schemes were a sacrifice to be laid at the altar of Alexander’s greatness.

  And I wondered what other sacrifices she was willing to make in the name of her son.

  CHAPTER 15

  Persepolis, Persia

  Hephaestion

  Persepolis burned like dry kindling in summer.

  Whether Alexander planned for the fire to spread and consume the whole city, I knew not, but spread it did.

  In later years bards would sing the tale of an Athenian courtesan named Thais, Ptolemy’s favorite in his gaggle of mistresses, and boast that she challenged Alexander to punish Persia for sacking her native city and putting its remaining men to the sword. The song claimed that a garlanded Alexander swayed on his feet and followed the trail of dancers and flautists in Thais’ wake, stopping to watch as she flung a sputtering torch onto the floor of Xerxes’ throne room and danced beneath the cedar rafters as the wood caught the blaze.

  That was a lie, for Alexander commissioned a singer after the ashes of Persepolis had settled in order to save his image from being forged into that of the ravaging conqueror he’d so sought to avoid.

  He had become a demon, a man I no longer knew.

  In a great irony, the Tower of Silence and the tombs of Persia’s dead kings had survived unscathed, but the rest of the city may as well never have existed. The ashes in Xerxes’ throne room stood tall as my knees and I keened like a grieving man when a messenger informed us that the ancient archives had burned, including the famed copies of the Zoroastrian Avesta and Zend, written on cow skins with ink of molten gold. My first thought was of Darius’ women, how Sisygambis, Stateira, and even Drypetis would mourn the loss of their sacred texts, their words now ashes scattered by the very flames that their god held so dear.

  But soon Darius’ women would have more to grieve than words on paper.

 
; Alexander and I hadn’t spoken since the night of the fire and I’d spent many sleepless nights wondering if I should remain behind as he pushed into Bactria. I had hardly a memory without Alexander’s smiling face and golden hair; to leave him would have been akin to cutting off my sword hand. So instead, I swore that I’d make him atone for what he’d done to Persepolis by designing a greater palace, constructing a larger library, and rebuilding the city to rival even his Egyptian Alexandria.

  To save him from himself.

  We left the ruins of Persepolis as the wild red tulips blossomed, drawn east by the lure of Darius’ crown. Reinforcements had joined us and rumors of the King of Kings’ ever-changing course reached us daily, first that he had retreated to Balkh and then to the Caspian Gates. We followed at a pace so blistering that good men fainted in their armor on the side of the Royal Road and horses collapsed, left to rot beneath a blanket of their own lather.

  Then came news of Darius’ arrest by Bessus, his own cousin and the satrap of Balkh. We abandoned the infantry and rode at a brutal gallop across the desert by nightfall, not bothering to stop for food or to refill our water flasks. Finally the sun rose in shades of vivid purple and orange, illuminating a line of abandoned baggage carts on the horizon.

  Alexander and the other men prepared to ride ahead at the promise of riches and abandoned weapons, but all I craved was a flagon of water to wash away the grit that filled my mouth, reminding me of the ashes of Persepolis.

  The soldiers pulled away dusty blankets on the line of carts, revealing baskets of grain and chests of iron shields, but nothing of substantial value, nor any kraters of water. A lone cart remained untouched and abandoned off to the side. With any luck, it would be a water cart or, even better, one filled with amphorae of sweet date wine.

  Another soldier beat me there, a Macedonian named Polystratus who had been cursed with the most terrible jutting chin the gods had ever sculpted. The wagon was high off the ground, but not covered by any blanket. Polystratus tested a wheel spoke with his weight and hauled himself up.