He smiled, showing broken teeth, and bowed, stiffly. ‘My lady, I thought you a vision, conjured from thirst and hunger and cold,’ he said. ‘And you have brought food and water and warmth. Thank you.’
She thought, You won’t thank me if you’re stronger for it when they crucify you, but she had not the will to say it. He knew it anyway; it was in his eyes. After a comfortless pause, she said, ‘I could bring herbs if it would help. They might let me back in again.’
‘They won’t.’ Hypatia was still at the bars. Her eyes said, I have read the note. I cannot speak of it aloud. ‘We heard sounds upstairs, as if the whole garrison were there. Have they taken control of the palace?’
‘Saulos is in the king’s chamber now. My uncle is making ready to leave.’
‘You’ll go with them,’ Hypatia said. Her voice was cold, distinct, set to carry to the corridor’s end, where waited a man afraid of witchcraft.
‘Yes,’ said Kleopatra and shook her head.
Hypatia signalled to Berenice, who bent and dragged the pile of food across the floor. The sound echoed off the ceiling.
‘You and Estaph need to eat first,’ Hypatia said. ‘I ate this morning, before I came to you.’
They did, with alacrity, and, beneath the sounds of their feeding, Hypatia murmured, ‘This message must get to Pantera and Menachem. Yusaf can arrange that — he has contacts among the War Party and some of them must still be left in the city. You must leave here as soon as you may. Tell Iksahra that if she were to take you to Alexandria, I would consider it a personal favour. She should find a woman named Athanasia who tends the shrine of Isis in the road of the Golden Scorpion, near the Temple of Serapis. Iksahra is to tell Athanasia that the Chosen of Isis has named her successor. She will be able to choose her reward. Tell her that. And tell her… tell her she knows the shape of my heart. She will know what that means.’
‘Iksahra is the new Chosen?’ Kleopatra asked. It did not seem likely, but then a great many unlikely things had happened in the past days.
Hypatia said, ‘No,’ and waited.
Kleopatra gaped. Her blood surfed in her ears. ‘I am not… I can’t be… I don’t…’ She gathered herself. ‘I don’t see the dead. The Chosen always does. I heard so.’
‘I didn’t at your age,’ Hypatia said. ‘There are twelve years of training in the temples of Egypt before you step out and take the name for yourself. And I must be dead, of course, for that to happen.’
‘I don’t want you to be dead.’
‘Hypatia…’ Berenice came to the bars, bearing the almond cakes. She said the name aloud, for the guard, and then, more quietly, ‘Are you sure? You said it earlier, but I thought-’
‘That it was an excuse to join you in the council chamber?’ Hypatia pulled a wry smile. ‘It was, but it was also true. Unless you forbid it?’
Berenice shook her head. ‘Kleopatra will be safer there than here and Damascus would not suit her; without my word against it, my brother and sister would try to find her a husband. Isis will treat her better.’
Kleopatra had to stuff her fist in her mouth not to speak, not to let spill the noises crowding her throat. Those given to Isis did not squeal; she was sure of that, and she was too close to squealing.
When she could find the right breath, she said, ‘But you will be freed. We won’t leave until you are.’
‘No. You have to leave.’ Hypatia reached through the bars to catch her hand and held it.
‘Iksahra won’t leave you,’ Kleopatra said. She did not know how she knew that, but she was certain it was true and Hypatia showed every sign of believing it. She had closed her eyes and turned her face to the floor.
‘Tell her it’s my wish,’ she said, presently, and looked up. ‘Tell her that if she thinks we can’t get out of here without her, she does no honour to my reputation.’
‘But this is the dream.’ Kleopatra’s eyes held Hypatia’s, not letting her go. ‘This is the cold, black part of it. Where the pain starts. I have seen it. So have you.’
‘I know.’ Hypatia broke the lock of their gaze and twisted free of Kleopatra’s grip. Stepping back, she placed a kiss on the heel of her hand, and stretched through the bars to touch it on Kleopatra’s wrist. ‘But the dream has many endings, and not all of them are bad. Trust me. I do not intend to let your aunt die, or Estaph. We have work yet to do before the gods weigh our hearts against Ma’at’s feather. Go now. Take the message to Yusaf. Tell him to find whoever he trusts most to take it safely across the desert to Pantera. Then go to Alexandria with Iksahra. We will find you there when we can.’
Chapter Forty-One
Iksahra rode south under the high sun.
Her mare was the pride of her father’s breeding. Her hide was the colour of almond blossom, her mane and tail unblemished charcoal, her feet black as onyx, and as hard. She was fleet as the hot south wind and could go all day at a canter without need for rest or water. Her one colt foal was a yearling now, the hope and pride of Iksahra’s own breeding herd, left behind in her homelands under the care of a woman who had seemed competent and interested and useful; at least that had been the case in last year’s summer, before a man had dangled the sweet meat of vengeance within Iksahra’s grasp, before she had discovered that vengeance did not feed her heart’s hunger.
The ghost of her father joined her as she passed the palms, the olives, the green pastures south of Jerusalem. He complimented her on the mare, on the cheetah that ran ever at her heels, a living ghost, a shadow in gold and black.
He sat cross-legged on the horizon at the level of her shoulder and tilted his head and asked, Why do you do this? Why are you riding from one man to another with a message you cannot read, the contents of which they will not share with you?
‘Because Hypatia asked it of me.’ It was not entirely true; Hypatia had asked that Yusaf send the one deemed most reliable and Iksahra had named herself that, leaving Kleopatra in Yusaf’s care. It had seemed the same thing at the time, but sounded different now, when she spoke it aloud in the echoes of her own head.
The ghost that might not have been her father gazed at her askance. And you always do her bidding, this woman?
‘She may die.’ She may die, and my heart will die with her. She did not say so, even in the echoes of her head, but the ghost heard her anyway, and his laugh was a long stuttering titter, which disrupted the smooth rhythm of her horse. That was how she knew it was not really her father; he had never laughed at the things she cared about.
Under the hot sun, Iksahra spoke the words Anmer ber Ikshel had taught her for the dissipation of ghuls and kicked her mount faster along the route Yusaf had drawn for her in the dust on his floor.
Noon came and went. The sun devoured them, spat them out, ate them again. The olive groves and date palms became scrubbier and less frequent and gave way finally to rocks and sand and waterless desert wadis.
Soon, rocks grew on either side, as scorching ovens. Heat became pain, and burned away the memories of a night when nothing had really happened, but which, even so, had left her feeling torn from her past without sight of a clear future.
Near the end now, Iksahra urged the mare on. The cheetah ran nearby, never tiring. They raced faster. The world was blinding light and hot earth and ropes of saliva frothing back from the bridle and the cat’s hot breath at her heel.
Sometime later, the mare pricked her ears and the cat grunted a warning. Ahead, a spark of light flickered where an ignorant man let his sword blade catch the sun, not knowing that the ifrit used such things to discover where men camped, that they might trap them in the night.