“And you need our help finding it?” the scholar guessed.
Before Jacob could answer, Caesarion shook his head. “I don’t think that’s what he means,” he said. “Jacob may not know where it is, but at least one of these men here does. They don’t need help finding the Ark. They need help moving it. Is that right?”
“Close,” Jacob said. “We do need your help to move it. But no man here knows where it is.” His eyes, as they did on the steps outside, raised to look past them.
Caesarion, like the others, turned to look at the slight guard who had followed them in the night. The guard’s hands raised to the cloak’s shadowing hood and pulled it back to reveal long dark hair tied back to frame the smiling face of an impossibly beautiful young girl, perhaps sixteen years old. Only his trained impassivity prevented Caesarion from gasping as Pullo and Shushu did. “I do,” she said.
“My sister, Hannah,” Jacob said from the table.
Vorenus cleared his throat slightly. “You know where it is?”
Hannah’s brown eyes flashed with something like amusement.
“But you’re a girl,” Pullo blurted out.
“I thank you for noticing,” Hannah said. She raised a hand to her head and shook out her hair as she walked past them to stand beside her brother. Her gait, unlike that of most of the marriageable women Caesarion knew, was easy and practical, not one of seduction. “The prophetess Deborah was a girl, too,” Hannah said. She swept back her cloak from her hip, revealing the black hilt of a blade. “It was she who inspired Barak to fight back against the Canaanites. And it was Yael, the tentmaker’s wife, who killed the Canaanite general Sisera and ended a war.” Caesarion thought her eyes sparkled with something more than amusement now, something more dangerous. “She took a hammer and drove a spike through his temple while he slept. Pinned him to the ground.”
Pullo’s grin was genuine. “Did she now?”
Hannah nodded. Jacob laughed a little. “So they say anyway,” he said. “And if you have not learned by now, it was the queen of Sheba who established this company. It has always been led by a woman.”
Caesarion realized he was staring at Hannah and forced himself to look down at the table for a moment.
“Sheba?” Didymus asked. “In Jerusalem?”
Jacob returned to his usual smile, but it was his sister who answered. “We do not have time for history lessons,” she said. Her attention turned to Caesarion. “The Ark must be moved. It cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of Octavian—especially when he already controls the Trident. You must help us.”
Caesarion closed his eyes, trying to focus against the tide of questions that threatened to engulf him. Octavian was at the gates. His forces were repulsed, but within hours they would be re-gathered and ready for what would undoubtedly be the final assault. Antony was gone—perhaps dead, he thought with a shudder—so where did his own duty lie? Surely it was not here in this place. Surely it was not talking of stories of the lost treasures of angels. No, his duty was to Alexandria. His duty was to his family. He should turn and run back to the palace, to protect the children. That was where he belonged, was it not?
And yet, if the stories were true, if the Shards were real, what could be more important than protecting them? The power of the gods was worth a hundred Alexandrias, a thousand. Vorenus believed he had seen the result of the Trident of Poseidon. But did that make it all true? Was that enough to let go of all that he owed to this city?
“Tell me all of it,” he said. “You tell us that there isn’t time enough for history lessons. I tell you that without them you’ll get nothing from me. I need to know. I need to believe.”
“We have killed men for knowing far less than you already know,” Hannah said.
Caesarion felt his companions all move slightly closer to him, but his eyes never left those of the girl. “You didn’t bring me here to hurt me. You brought me here because you have no other choice. You brought me here because you need me.”
Hannah was staring at him, her eyes intense in the lamplight. She was beautiful, but she was deadly. He did not doubt for a minute that she had indeed ordered the deaths of men to protect the secrets of the Ark. At the same time, he knew with equal certainty that she needed them. She needed him. What he had that would help them remove the Ark, he did not know, but their desperation was clear.
“We don’t have time,” Jacob said to his sister. For once, he wasn’t smiling.
Vorenus seemed to have sensed the same thing that Caesarion did. “I don’t think you have a choice.”
“It seems we do not,” Hannah said. Her gaze did not leave Caesarion. “But every minute here is a minute that Octavian grows closer.”
“Best to talk quickly, then,” Caesarion replied.
Hannah turned and nodded to Jacob, who sighed. “You know the truth of what the Ark is—that it’s the first of the Shards that fell when the Vested gave up their souls, their free will, in an effort to bring the divine Creator back into the world. You know the threat it can be. What else do you need to know?”
Caesarion let out a breath of his own and turned to Didymus. “Satisfy him and you’ll satisfy me.”
The scholar blinked back and forth between the people in the room. He had the look of a man screwing up his courage. At last, it seemed, his curiosity got the better of him. “How did it get here? How did the queen of Sheba come to protect it?”
Jacob nodded, thought for a couple seconds. “You know that the man we Jews know as Moses was the crown prince of Egypt before his belief in the one God drew him into conflict with his father, the pharaoh. You know he acquired both the Trident and the Ark, that he took them to the land promised to him by God. What you may not know is that one of his descendants in Judea was a ruler named Solomon, and that some nine centuries ago he was visited by one of Thutmose’s descendants in Sheba, a queen who sought after the fate of the Second Shard. She discovered that Solomon had built a great Temple to house the Ark, and that a cult had been built up around the two Shards. Not satisfied of their security, but reluctant to part with them, the queen of Sheba left behind in Jerusalem a family sworn to protect the Shards whatever the cost. Maintained in secret, this family would pass the knowledge of the truth of the Shards from one generation to another and never cease in its sacred duties to protect them. The queen’s visit, and her decision to establish this company, could not have been better timed. Before even two generations had passed, Pharaoh Shoshenq invaded Judah, followed by more attacks against Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple. The family protected the Shards through it all.”
“Your family,” Didymus said. “I knew your father was connected to something.”
“Yes,” Jacob said. “Our family. Which makes it more difficult to tell you that during the reign of King Hezekiah, almost seven hundred years ago, we failed. The object Octavian knows as the Trident of Poseidon was called by our people Nehushtan back then: the brazen serpent rod of Moses. People had begun to look to it for healing, as the stories said it had healed their ancestors.”
“The stories of your people are lies?” Pullo interrupted.
“Not lies. Half-remembered truths, Titus Pullo,” Hannah said. “There’s a difference.”
Pullo exchanged a glance with Vorenus, whose eyes were glaring at him to be silent. “I see,” the big man said.
Jacob did not seem distracted by the interruption. “Hezekiah was a true believer in the stories of the Ark: that it not only housed the tablets of the Law given to Moses by God, but that God Himself came to earth to sit upon the Ark and pass judgment through His priests, a distant memory of the fact that the Shards were wrought from the throne of God. Hezekiah believed in the Ark, and he saw the honor given to Nehushtan as an abomination. On one of the great feast days he strode into the Temple, as was his custom, and after honoring the Ark he took the Trident and tried to destroy it.”