A wolfish smile lit his features. Zenobia was going to be very angry at the boy. Now the young king of Palmyra would be making his first serious royal decision, and that decision was going to cost him his throne. Yes, Zenobia was going to be very angry, and he could not blame her, for as a ruler himself he understood. She and her late husband had worked hard to rebuild the Eastern Empire, and now he would take it.
Aurelian pushed himself off the platform and walked back into the heart of the encampment, noting as he went that the centurions were already drilling smartly.
It was not to his sleeping tent that he returned. Rather, Aurelian hurried to his main tent, where the business of the empire awaited him. Durantis, his secretary, was already hard at work opening the dispatches and separating them into piles according to their importance.
"Good morning, Durantis. Any emergencies?"
"No, Caesar. Nothing serious."
"Anything personal?"
"A letter from the Empress Ulpia. She writes that although she is well, your niece, Carissa, is not. The late months of the young lady's pregnancy do not seem to agree with her."
"Any mention of my niece's husband, Marcus Alexander?"
"No, Caesar."
"Well, let us get to work then on the correspondence," the emperor said. "I have plans for the afternoon hours." He settled himself in a chair and began to dictate rapidly to the wheezing scribe who sat at a side table, while Durantis murmured small asides and reminders into his ear.
In Aurelian's sleeping tent Zenobia was busily talking to Bab and Tamar. "What was his state of mind when you left him, Bab?" she demanded of her old nursemaid.
"He was very distressed by your capture, Majesty, and quite worried as to what he should do. The lady Flavia never left his side."
"Good for Flavia," Zenobia remarked. "She is stronger than her sweet appearance would tell. He must not surrender."
"He is not you, my dear," Tamar said with an air of finality, "and he is not Odenathus, either. If he does not surrender your life could be forfeit. Palmyrans would follow you anywhere, Zenobia. They would starve themselves to death and murder their children to please you; but you have not the right to ask them, my dear. You cannot repay their loyalty with death and destruction. You have lost this war. Do not drag Palmyra and all its peoples into the war you wage within yourself."
Old Bab drew her breath in sharply. Tamar's words had been a truth that no one else had ever spoken to Zenobia, but the beautiful queen tossed her dark head angrily and replied, "My only war is with Rome. From the day that they killed my mother Rome has been my enemy. If Vaba opens the gates to them he is no son of mine. I will fight the Romans till my death!"
"Is there no reasoning with you, Zenobia? Since you learned of Marcus's marriage this hatred of yours has been a burning spur to drive you onward toward your own destruction. No, do not glower at me. Everyone but you sees it. I am here with Bab because your father asked it of me. He will not live much longer, Zenobia, and his greatest fear is that you will ruin all that Odenathus worked so hard for, and by your own impetuous and stubborn acts steal Vaba's heritage from him. You are his favorite child, my dear, and all Zabaai ever wanted for his daughter was that she be happy."
"Happiness?" Zenobia's laugh was harsh. "There is no such thing, Tamar! There is survival, which goes to the victorious, to the wisest, the wealthy, the clever, the strong! With survival one may gain a measure of peace, but that is all."
"Do not be cynical with me," Tamar snapped, her good nature and patience coming to an end.
"You are a disciplined woman. Use that self-discipline now, if not for your own sake men for the sake of those who love and care for you." She put a loving arm about Zenobia, and for a brief moment it was as it had been so long ago in that other time when everything had been so simple and there was no Marcus Alexander Britainus.
Then Zenobia shook Tamar's arm from her shoulders and said, "I can promise nothing, Tamar. Go back to my father and tell him that I love him. It is the best I can offer."
With a sigh Tamar kissed Zenobia upon the forehead, and with Bab to escort her safely through the encampment back to the tents of her son, Akbar, she left the queen to her solitude.
Furious, Zenobia looked for something to throw, but Aurelian's spare quarters offered nothing, frustrating her further, and she burst into tears. She was horrified at her own actions, but she could not stop the copious flow that poured from her eyes and down her cheeks, streaking them with hot salt. It was as if all the sorrow, the pain, and the disappointment of the last months was finally purging itself.
In the heat of the afternoon Aurelian returned to his own quarters with the idea of pleasuring himself once again with his beautiful captive. He was hardly prepared for the sight that greeted him. Zenobia lay upon her back on the couch; her exquisite golden body gleaming temptingly through the sheer black silk of her kalasiris; one arm flung protectively over her eyes, the other by her side, the hand curled into a fist. One leg was up, the other stretched straight. The evidence of weeping was plain upon her face, and for the briefest moment Aurelian felt pity for the brave queen she had been, but this was a woman as he liked them: pliant and helpless. He sat beside her.
She opened her silvery eyes with their black and gold flecks, and the hatred leapt forth to scald him. "What do you want?" she hissed venomously.
In an instant Aurelian's compassion vanished, and reaching forward to hook his fingers into the neck of her gown, he ripped it in two with a swift motion. "I wouldn't think after last night, goddess, that you would have to ask me that question," he replied mockingly; and when she attempted to rise he held her down, a cruel arm across her throat, effectively pinning her while his other hand began a leisurely exploration of her magnificent breasts.
She lay mutinous, her fury quite evident, while he played with the full silken orbs. Zenobia's nipples had always been sensitive, and now she quivered as he rolled first one and then the other between his thumb and his forefinger. "You will soon bore me if you are so quick to passion, goddess," he mocked her, and then he laughed, for if looks could slay men he knew he should lie this minute cold and lifeless upon the floor of his tent.
"Pig of a peasant," she snarled at him. "Is force the only way you can have a woman?"
"You were quick enough to beg for release last night," he countered, looking down into her angry eyes.
"Did you not teach me that it was lust, Roman?"
He chuckled. "Lust may generate your desire, goddess, but the results are the same as if you loved me. You yield!"
With a shriek of outrage she began a struggle against him. Quickly he removed his arm from across her throat, and catching her hands, yanked them above her head as he bent to kiss her. She tried to bite him, but he only laughed, and bent again to kiss her passionately, his warm lips pressing hungrily upon hers, and forcing them apart so that he could run his tongue across her clenched teeth and murmur against her mouth soft entreaties all the while seductively fondling her breasts. She fought, desperately trying to avoid the tingle deep within her that now began to fight its way to the surface of her consciousness regardless of her struggle to avoid it. She fought, desperate to avoid this strange emotion that he called lust, an emotion that seemed to control her very thoughts.