Caesarion held out a hand to still the scholar—not that it was necessary, given his position—and then moved to open the door from behind it, so that he stood between the door and the girl and could put his whole body into a push against the wood if needed. Trying to appear relaxed for Selene’s sake—there might be nothing afoot, after all—he unobtrusively patted his side to reassure himself of the little blade there. Then, nodding to Didymus, he opened the door and looked around it.
Khenti was there, looking rock-solid as ever. With him was a young man about Caesarion’s own height and age, dressed in simple robes. He was, Caesarion could see, clearly a Jew: sparsely bearded, but with long curled locks of hair hanging from his temples. In his hands he held a simple cloth-wrap hat, and he was smiling. “Pharaoh,” he said, bowing. “It’s pleasant to see you so far from the palaces.”
Caesarion, seeing no danger, opened the door enough to let the young man enter. Khenti followed, stepping to the side just after he entered, to stand beside the door as Caesarion shut it. The guardchief was clearly uncertain about the newcomer.
Didymus, still standing at his desk, appeared more confused than ever, but before any of them could speak, the young Jew had turned to Selene and bowed again. “My lady Selene,” he said.
Selene’s upper lip tucked in slightly in a pout. “You knew who I was, Jacob?”
The man grinned but didn’t reply, straightening to stand before Didymus. “I’m sorry my father could not come in reply to your letter,” he said, drawing a summons from his robes and handing it to the flustered scholar. “He’s ill, and he sent me in his stead.”
Didymus took the letter, opened it, saw that it was indeed the one he’d sent. “Joachim is your father?”
“He is. My name is Jacob.”
“I see,” Didymus said. He blinked, seeming to remember himself. There was a second chair, like Caesarion’s, tucked away in the corner of the little office, and the scholar gestured to it. “Please, do sit down. We were just getting started.”
Caesarion moved his own seat closer to Selene’s stool to make room for Jacob as he pulled the extra chair out and into position in front of the scholar’s desk. Khenti remained standing, quickly fading into the woodwork.
When he sat down, Jacob had a pleasant smile on his face, as if remembering a joke. “To what do we humble Jews owe the pleasure of being called to a meeting of such powerful folk? Something to do with the impending defeat of our beloved ruler at Actium?”
Didymus seemed much more in control of himself as they all settled into their seats, only the twitch of his eyebrow betraying his surprise that the young Jew was so well informed of the situation to the north. “Only partially,” the scholar said. “Your father holds a well-deserved reputation as the finest living Jewish scholar in Alexandria. A student of history, I know. I wanted his particular experience to confirm, and perhaps clarify, a few bits of, ah, unique history we were going to discuss today.”
“I see,” Jacob said, his voice serious despite the hint of bemusement on his face. “Well, I shall do what I can in his place. He’s taught me well, I assure you. Perhaps only my younger sister knows my father’s work better than I.” He looked over to Selene and Caesarion, winking gently at the girl. “One never suspects how much they truly know, of course.”
Selene laughed lightly, and Caesarion felt that what tension had been in the room had melted away. He decided he liked Jacob, young though the man was.
Didymus leaned back in his chair. Caesarion, too, settled into his seat, noticing that Selene, still pouting a little that she’d been so easily identified on her morning’s travels, did the same. “Octavian, as you know, will probably defeat our armies sooner rather than later,” Didymus said. “While this is a concern for us all, it isn’t directly the matter at hand. What brings us together is the fact that a man at Octavian’s side, a Numidian named Juba, is trying to acquire the Scrolls of Thoth. Do you know them?”
From the corner of his eye Caesarion thought he saw the smile on Jacob’s face flicker for a moment. “I do. An old legend. The pagan god Thoth was supposed to have put his powers into them. They’re not real, you know.”
“You sound sure,” Didymus said.
Caesarion kept his face impassive, feeling quite suddenly that there was a dance going on between the Jew and the scholar, and that he himself didn’t know the steps.
“Thoth isn’t real,” Jacob said.
“Of course.” Didymus smiled. “The belief in one god is a central tenet of your faith, isn’t it?”
“‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one,’” Jacob said, the tone in his voice clearly identifying the phrase as memorized doctrine. He shrugged. “God alone is God. There is no Thoth, so he can have no scrolls.”
“So no gods but your own exist?”
“I could not be a Jew and believe otherwise,” Jacob said, before he nodded slightly toward Caesarion. “Begging your forgiveness, Pharaoh Horus.”
Caesarion felt a sudden heat in his face as his trained impassivity failed him. Certain that the emotion showed, he embraced the loss of control and tried to turn it to his advantage in whatever game was being played. “I no more believe myself divine than I believe you don’t know that there’s truth behind the legend of the Scrolls, Thoth or not.”
Jacob’s smile broadened even as his eyes narrowed in measurement. “I misjudged you, lord Caesarion. My apologies.”
“Accepted. Things are not often what they seem, my friend. Octavian’s armies would seem our biggest threat, for instance, but Juba’s goals are not to be misjudged, either.” That he himself didn’t understand Juba’s goals didn’t matter to his point, he figured. Besides, Didymus seemed ready to reveal them. “It’s just important that we be honest with one another here.”
“So it is,” Didymus said. “Juba wrote me a letter, Jacob, asking me to acquire the Scrolls for him. He was certain, for reasons I did not then know, that they were here in Alexandria. Here. In the Library.”
“You would think they would’ve been cataloged,” Jacob said wryly.
Didymus grinned. “Indeed so. I didn’t know anything about the Scrolls other than their legend, yet Juba’s certainty about them was disturbing.”
“I told you: they don’t exist.”
“Not in the way Juba is thinking, no. But that was one of the last things I found out.”
“Didymus began research on the subject at once,” Caesarion said.
“I did,” the scholar agreed, “starting with trying to trace where Juba might have learned what information he had. It took me some months, but I was eventually able to retrace his steps from Egypt to Numidia. It seems the young man—a stepson of Caesar, just like Octavian, and near to your own ages, in fact—had taken an interest in objects of ancient power, objects associated with the gods, like Poseidon’s Trident. And he had a man here in Alexandria looking for the Scrolls of Thoth.”
Seeing the memory of that night, of that assassin, beginning to overtake his friend, Caesarion moved himself in his chair noisily, bringing Jacob’s attention in his direction and giving the scholar a chance to compose himself. “As Didymus said, though, we didn’t know why he was looking for the Scrolls here.”
“But you do now,” Jacob said.
Thankfully, the scholar had once more regained his academic bearing. “I think so, yes. I believe he heard of the rumors that the Scrolls were in Sais.”
“The center for the cult of Neith,” Caesarion said, thinking aloud as he heard the news. “The Egyptian form of the goddess Astarte.”
Didymus looked positively proud. “Exactly so. Most of its holdings have been brought here, which is probably why Juba assumed the Scrolls were here, too.”