The Shards of Heaven (33 page)

“A gate to Heaven,” Vorenus said, his voice quiet.

“Or down to Hell,” Selene whispered.

 

PART III

T
HE
F
ALL
OF
E
GYPT

 

21

A C
ITY
B
ESIEGED

ALEXANDRIA, 30 BCE

It was after midnight when Vorenus left the battlefield and marched his remaining men back through the tall gates into beleaguered Alexandria. The cool air of the dark, breathed in between chapped and broken lips, was a welcome respite from the midsummer heat of the field that had hung heavy about the men as their battle had raged on long after the sunset. Vorenus drank it into his lungs gratefully, careful not to use his nose to do so. He had no interest in the stench of sweat and blood that they'd be bringing back from the day's work.

They'd won a victory, Vorenus knew, and he smiled tiredly as his numb legs carried him past the war-worn stone walls and the few remaining guards. Not that it would matter in the end, but Antony—outnumbered two to one and without a navy or even a cavalry following the mass defections of the past month's siege—had been brilliant. Old Caesar had said no one could best the man on land, and he'd been right. Everyone knew that Octavian had thought he'd strike the final blow this day, that he'd enter the city with the rising sun, triumphant in the defeat of Egypt, but he'd lost. Antony had outfoxed him, bought them all more time.

For what, Vorenus didn't know. There was no question that Alexandria would fall: Octavian's navy—bigger now after the mass defection—had blockaded the Great Harbor and even Lake Mareotis and the canal access to the Nile; and Octavian's armies had cut them off from both east and west, closing Alexandria in an unbreakable vise. Their defeat was only a matter of time, even if they had more of it now.

No matter, Vorenus thought, his smile spreading as a soft breeze pushed down the road and brushed over him. He was alive.

Without an order to do so, but without an order not to, the legionnaires behind him began to disperse as the column paced its slow way east up the wide Canopic Way toward the heart of the city. Vorenus listened to them stumbling away into the quiet dark: here in groups of two or three into a tavern or brothel, there in a whole company heading off down one of the side streets toward the main barracks close to the Lochian palaces.

It was tradition that the army's march should take them through the center of town, past Alexander's tomb, before turning north along the Sema Avenue and circling back to the barracks, but he wasn't about to begrudge his weary men the relief of a quicker return to beds and blissful sleep. And it wasn't as if the people of the city were lining the parade path: Alexandria was silent as the grave it was near to becoming, the people locked into their homes in hope that the storm of looting to come would pass them by.

Ahead, in the gloom, Vorenus saw the figure of Antony atop one of their few remaining horses: his back was straight, his head held high in pride despite the city's lack of praise for this day's good work, but Vorenus knew it was just a show. Though he remained as brilliant in battle as ever, the general had been a broken man ever since Actium. In the weeks after their return to Egypt, as the extent of Octavian's enormous victory became clear, he and Cleopatra had at first tried to arrange a fleet of ships on the Red Sea to take them to India. When those ships were burned by once-loyal vassals who capitulated to Octavian's rule, Antony had built himself a rich hermit's home out on the harbor, at the end of a jetty between Antirhodos and Lochias: he named it the Timonium, in honor of the man-hater Timon of Athens, and there he secluded himself, turning his back on the world that had turned its back on him. Cleopatra had mourned, and Octavian had crept closer. Only Caesarion had kept the state together then. Even now, coaxed into leading the city's defense by his beloved queen, Antony was a shell of the man he'd once been.

Gradually, as he walked, Vorenus became aware of the various pains in his body. There were muscle aches and strains in abundance, of course, and the cap of his right knee had been cut badly. The fingers of his left hand somehow ached despite their numbness—a lingering testament to what he'd been through at Actium—but more pressing was the seething burning sensation ripping through his right forearm, which had never really healed after being rope-flayed in that sea battle. He could see the striated lines of scars leading to his wrist had opened up again and were festering red, weeping blood. He'd need to clean them out soon, he decided.

A large contingent of men behind him stumbled off into the dark as they passed the gymnasium on their right. It was a fairly straight path to the barracks from here, but Vorenus did not follow them himself. Like Antony, he was determined to see the parade through despite the gloom of midnight. He didn't even turn to watch them go. Instead, he turned his eyes away, off to his left, to the wooded gardens surrounding the conical, treed hill of the grotto dedicated to the Greek god Pan, which was only visible as a rising blackness against the sky. Faunus, Vorenus grew up calling him: goat-man god of shepherds and fields, music and glen. Once, when he was a young legionnaire in Gaul, Vorenus had trapped a brace of rabbits and slit the throat of one over a tree-surrounded stone, offering it to the hairy god in thanks.

Vorenus let out a long sigh, wondering when he stopped believing like that. How many times had he defended the gods to the laughing, mocking Pullo? He'd been more enemy than friend to the giant of a man those days back in Gaul, but he could imagine what Pullo's reaction would have been to the sacrifice of the rabbit. “A waste of a good meal,” Pullo would have said, annoyed. “There's good meat there, and I don't see any goat-men around to eat it.” And then he'd try to take the still-warm creature, and Vorenus would have had to snatch it back, lecturing him about the folly of denying the gods and of taking what was rightfully theirs.

“Even if you don't feel certain in your soul,” he might've told Pullo, “it's safer to at least act like you believe in the gods. If the gods exist, they'll be pleased; if the gods don't exist, you're no worse off for pretending they do.”

“Except I'm hungry,” Pullo would have replied. “And since none of your gods are about to feed me, I need to take care of it myself. Give me the damn rabbit.”

Vorenus imagined himself standing between Pullo and the sacrificed creature, holding up the remaining one. “The gods did feed us,” he would have said.

Then the big man would have looked at the little wiggling creature and laughed. “There are
two
of us, Vorenus. And two rabbits! Praise the gods, Greek and Roman! Don't offend them, brother: give me the other one!”

Vorenus allowed himself a grin, lost in his thoughts. It
was
how the conversation would have gone, wasn't it? They'd said much the same to each other over the years, had they not?

Not anymore, though. With Pullo cast out from the legion—only by the mercy of Caesarion allowed a job as a personal guard assigned to protect Didymus at the Great Library—they saw each other only rarely these days, and when they did, their talk never turned to such serious matters. Vorenus didn't doubt that Pullo had probably sensed the change in him. And since Pullo surely knew about the Shards of Heaven now, about the one God and His death—or His exiled silence, which Vorenus figured amounted to the same thing in the end—his old friend probably knew the reason why. That they'd not discussed it was only because Pullo, that great man-killer in battle, was too kind to point out that he'd been right all along. Pan, Faunus … no matter the name; there was no god but God, and He wasn't listening anymore. That rabbit had indeed been wasted.

Vorenus felt his stomach growl at the thought, and if not for the pains in his arm, his legs, and even his heart, he might have laughed.

*   *   *

The palace, Vorenus noted at once, was far quieter than he would have expected. It was customary for some celebration to have been arranged for Antony's return, with Cleopatra dressed in her finest linens and jewels to hail her beloved, but not this night. This night it seemed no one was waiting for them.

Vorenus could see Antony's disappointment. Even broken-spirited as he was, the general's dark-circled eyes betrayed his sorrow at missing his wife's welcoming embrace as he strode up the wide steps and entered the main hall. Only Vorenus was with him now. The rest were settling into their quarters in the barracks outside or, in less happy circumstance, recovering from their wounds under the guidance of the Asclepian priests that Vorenus had grown to know so well given his own injuries.

The braziers in the hall were only sparsely lit, giving the space a dim aura between pools of flickering heat. In one of those rough circles of light, not far from the passageway leading to the balcony from which Vorenus had jumped some two years earlier, two men stood in whispered conversation: Khenti, the Egyptian chief of the palace guards, and Caesarion. A few slaves and minor priests shuffled elsewhere in the shadows, but the hall was otherwise mournfully silent and empty.

“A poor welcome,” Antony said to Caesarion when they grew close, his booming voice echoing loudly off the stones in the empty chamber. The sudden sound of it seemed to startle even the general. When he next spoke it was in a more hushed voice. “A poor welcome indeed.”

Caesarion, appearing to Vorenus' eyes at once so much older than his seventeen years and yet still the child he'd taught to play games in the courtyard, nodded. “It is. I'm sorry.”

“Heard you not that we were victorious today?” Antony's words were in the mode of his customary boastfulness, but his heart didn't seem to be in it, his tone as passive as his voice. “We turned them back.”

For now, for today, Vorenus heard himself adding in his mind. But he said nothing.

“Yes,” Caesarion said—his smile proud or sad, Vorenus couldn't tell. “A fine day's work. I should have ordered some feast in celebration. As it was, I sent the wine to the temple of Asclepius, for the wounded.”

“A poor choice,” Antony muttered, his voice sounding more defeated than defiant at the pharaoh's decision. “Wine is wasted on the dying.”

Caesarion's shoulders shrugged in reply.

“But what of my queen?” Antony asked. “Your mother.”

“Her Highness has retired to Antirhodos,” Khenti said, his eyes unreadable in the dark. “This afternoon.”

“And the children?”

Caesarion appeared to take Antony's question to include him. “Still here. All of us.”

Antony started to say something more, then stopped and turned to look down the hall to the balcony. After a moment he began to walk, slowly, in that direction. The others followed him out to stand, as Vorenus once had with Pullo, overlooking the palace grounds and the Great Harbor beyond. Antirhodos was a stretch of black against the moving reflections of the water. Antony set his hands against the stone wall and stared out at it as if seeking movement.

“She didn't tell you she was going to the isle?” Vorenus asked from beside him.

“Not today,” Antony said quietly, the cooler wind off the ocean brushing through his still-thick curls of hair. “Though we did talk about it coming to this. Someday.”

Vorenus agreed, not knowing what else to say.

Caesarion was standing back from the balcony, beside Khenti. “She said the island would be more easily protected than the palaces here,” he said. “I disagreed.”

“Of course,” Antony said, his voice distant. “Good man.”

“Thank you, sir,” Caesarion said, genuine pride in his voice.

After a minute, Antony spoke again. “Are there priests with her?”

Caesarion took a moment to answer, and when Vorenus looked back at him, he saw that there was confusion in the young man's face. “Priests?”

Antony didn't turn back. “She may want to pray,” he said into the night.

“The priests of Isis are at the temple there, as always.”

Antony's nod was almost imperceptible. “Isis,” he said. “The resurrecting goddess.”

The other men said nothing, and Antony just stared out into the harbor, face dark.

“I can call a boat, sir, to take you out to the island,” Vorenus said.

“No. No matter. The light's out.” Antony's eyes turned to Vorenus, but his gaze seemed somewhere else, somewhere far away. “I'll pass this night at the Timonium,” he said.

“As you wish, sir,” Vorenus said. “Though the children—”

“The children…” Antony choked off the words, his body tensing for a moment as he froze up, thinking. “No, no,” he said, as if responding to a question. “Let them sleep. A peaceful night.” He breathed deep of the air. “Sleep.”

“Yes, sir,” Vorenus said.