The Coming of the King

Chapter Thirty

Over the reek of vomit, through the buzz and tease of horseflies, Saulos’ voice floated out across the beast garden, fine in all its arrogance, its petty ruthlessness.

Hearing it, Iksahra sur Anmer began to run. The cheetah was her shadow, stilt-limbed, fluid, head high, the mask of its pelt dazzling gold under the sun. Hypatia matched her on her other side. As they passed the hound kennels, Hypatia opened the gates, so that by the time they reached the stables they were two women and their beasts, walking again, but swiftly.

Eight guards stood across their way; big-muscled, part-naked men with red-gold hair and iron eyes, standing in a line in the open ground behind the stables, where a man-cage was the only thing against the back wall.

Hypatia smiled at them, meeting their eyes. She made her hounds halt, one either side, and laid her hand on their heads. ‘You know us both from the palace,’ she said. ‘It shames us that we must ask for permission to pass, when there is a battle outside and you are prevented from taking part. But Saulos has called for the hounds and the cat, to threaten the prisoner. Please call him if you wish to confirm our right to be here, or if not let us through.’

Dangerous, dangerous woman. Iksahra stared ahead, that the men might not see her eyes grow wild.

Flattered, they chose to be gracious. The biggest wore his red-gold hair tied at the side in a warrior’s queue, with bear fat streaked through it. He smiled, showing teeth fit to rip a raw bull apart.

‘The shame is all ours. As you say, we should not be here. Tell the lordling, if you dare, that a riot is building outside the walls and our place is with our brothers, holding fast against the rabble.’

The lordling. Iksahra smiled then, and saw the guards step away with the same looks on their faces as the slaves had, making the same signs against evil, but they waved them through and they passed on; two women and their beasts, welded together by the heat.

The air on the other side was hotter, and even as they approached the cage the stench of vomit was overlaid by the particular searing odour of white-hot iron, and then, unexpectedly, of burning flesh.

A man’s scream split the air.

‘Pantera!’ Hypatia said it, but Iksahra knew already. She had never heard him speak, this Leopard she had tracked across the desert, but she had come to know him through the turns and twists of the night, so that she knew the tone of his scream, the early holding, as he fought not to give way, the suddenness of release, the hoarse ending, as if his throat had broken, as well as his will. The cheetah pressed against her, hissing.

Ahead stood the cage, big enough to house a grown lion; smoke issued thinly from it.

The cage had no door, but an open front which pointed towards the stables. Six guards stood before it in a line. Seeing the women, they stepped forward, arms crossed. Iksahra stopped, waiting for Hypatia to spin her magic again and get them through.

From inside, she heard Saulos say, wearily, ‘And now you will tell the governor your birth, that you are not a Roman citizen, that this ring-’

Gold flashed in the air, raised on a bloodied arm.

From somewhere close behind, Kleopatra screamed, ‘Hypatia! Stop them! That’s the dream! ’

Hypatia was already moving. Her hounds leapt forward, fast and high, carrying the cheetah with them.

Kleopatra stood in the shadow of the stables and felt the boundaries of her world fold around her in a crashing kaleidoscope of gold and blood.

In the first moments after she had screamed, there was only movement, too much, too fast. Gold: the ring, the cheetah’s pelt, more gold than black in the noonday sun, the hounds, one gold, one dark, with flashes of silver on their collars; Iksahra, black limbs and flying black robes and a silvered knife that sang forward, that sank into the flesh of a guard whose red-gold hair flew back, whose blood was a fountain rising and rising, beat upon beat, and then falling away.

Exactly as she had done in her dreams, Kleopatra stared about her, too stunned to move, deafened by the high keening voices of the dead.

And so, exactly as she had in the dreams, she missed the moment when the first hound died. For half of her life she had lain awake in the night, trying to take herself back, to watch the line of the guardsman’s sword as it sang through the air, the particular thrust, the angle that caught the hound on the side of the neck and sliced on downward, to cleave its foreleg from its dying carcass.

But, as in the dream, she heard only the scream of a hound, dying, and knew before she turned her head that Night was dead and that Day was hysterical now, in a killing rage, and that Hypatia was standing over the still-warm body, icily calm, too calm, more frightening than if she had fallen into a like rage, using her own knife, flashing fast, but not fast enough. These guards were the best in the empire; they moved faster than a hunting hound, so that Hypatia’s knife flew to where her assailant used to be, but not where he was, and she was left standing alone with her hound dying at her feet and behind, eight more guards, alerted.

‘Stop! I command you to stop!’ The queen’s voice came from Kleopatra’s right, surprisingly close. Kleopatra had sent word calling them, and had been assured that they were on their way. Running on ahead, she had not been there to see the moment when Berenice and Agrippa had arrived at last at the beast garden. Better than anyone in the palace, they knew the use of this cage, and what happened here, and the queen, at least, knew what she must do.

But, as in the dreams, she was a long way too late.

And so Kleopatra did what she had done on a hundred different nights; turning, she dragged the jewelled display dagger from her uncle’s belt and, running forward, threw herself bodily on the back of the nearest guard and sawed at his throat with her eyes shut, feeling the thick cords of his neck beneath the blade, feeling his fingers reach for her, wrapping themselves in her hair, round her neck, yanking forward, to smash her downward on to the ground. In some of the dreams he succeeded, and she died there, by the fallen hound, her neck broken, her head askew.

But in some… she stabbed deeper, felt the rush of scalding hot blood, heard his curses bubble and fade and began the strange, silent conversation in her head that she held with the dead in her dreams, and heard her aunt’s voice again, full of royal power. ‘Back! I command you, back!’

The guards hesitated, unsure of whose authority was paramount. In that time, the one under Kleopatra died. She felt his body crumple, heard the high whispered voice of a soul released and launched herself forward, to roll on the earth in the way her riding master had taught her to roll after a fall from a horse.

She came up disoriented, with the world back to front, and too many voices all around.

Everyone was moving. Iksahra was behind her now, killing a guard with a clean thrust to his bared chest. The cheetah hung on the back of another, its great jaws clamped on his skull as the claws of all four feet ripped open his flesh. He fell as its hind feet stripped out his kidneys. Its victory-scream covered any sound he might have made in dying; a yarling, yowling demon-song, the noise of Hades brought to the living, and even the giant men of the garrison Guard covered their ears not to hear it.

Kleopatra’s own blood sang in her ears, in harmony with the cat. She balanced on the balls of her feet. In the dream, Agamemnon was there, the Germanic slave who had taught her to ride and then, secretly, to fight. In life, now, she heard only his voice through the rush of her ears: To kill, you must have surprise, small one, or you will die; this is the law of the battle. Get your man before he expects you to do it, or he will get you.

A guard had his back to her. She still held her uncle’s over-jewelled knife. Rubies shone dully now, outdone by the blood, but a garnet sang proud on the hilt, and an emerald strove to bring another colour to the day. By its light, she stabbed the guard in the back, to the left of his spine. Go between the ribs, small one. You have only one chance. Make it count. Her blade skidded on bone, slid forward and in to the hot vitals beneath. She twisted as she had been shown, but had never done, pulled out, ducked as he turned.

His own blade was a cavalry sword, as long as she was tall; no jewels there. It hissed over her head. She slashed at his thigh, aiming for the big vessel in his groin, scratched the skin and had to back away. Then her stab caught up with him and he toppled sideways, surprised. She watched him, astonished; saw the colour drain from him and leak blackly on to the packed earth. She heard his voice in her ear, Am I dead? but could not stay to answer, and did not know how.

Keep moving. Never still. In battle, the still men die.

She turned away, saw Iksahra throw a knife that seemed to bend in the air, and come straight again, on its path to a man’s heart. She saw the cheetah fly past on golden wings, blinked, and saw it again, without the wings, saw it leap up and cling to the chest of a guard, its face at his face, yarling its song from Hades, raking his manhood with its killing feet. He died of terror, no blood spilled, or none that Kleopatra could see.

‘ Saulos! ’

She heard Hypatia’s high song-voice and heard a hound’s curdling yell and turned again, with dream-stilled slowness, and saw Hypatia… Hypatia running through the last of the guards to stand over the body of her second dead hound and face Florus, the governor, who had lifted a blade that he clearly did not know how to use.

He stood waving it as if the breeze of its passing might cool him, might cool the battle, might stop the woman with the ice-cold eyes from walking straight up to him and slicing her knife, back-handed, across his throat.

He died, folding up, hissing like a punctured bladder.

And then there was stillness. Stillness and blood and gold; the emperor’s ring lay on the floor by the brazier, which was cool now, unbellowed, a deep cherry-red, darkening by the moment.

Kleopatra turned a full circle. Hypatia: safe. Her hounds, Night and Day: both dead. Kleopatra could feel the pain of that, like an icicle sawing at her heart, but Iksahra was safe, and her cheetah too. It stood, head high, scanning, just as she was doing, looking among the dead, to the living, to the four remaining guards, who stood aside, kept still at last by Berenice’s command, with sullen faces and murder in their eyes, to the king, whose eyes held loss of a different kind, to the dead who cluttered the earth, to the cage, where a man hung…

Hypatia reached him first, but Iksahra was there with a knife to cut the cords high above his head, so that he fell forward into Hypatia’s arms, and that was so exactly like the dream that Kleopatra dared not look into his mouth, dared not ask, dared not listen for the first bubbling, tongueless mumble.

Instead, she stepped behind him, away from the red-white marks burned across his chest, and struggled with the cords that bit into his wrists. Her fingers, which had been so nimble with the knife, were wooden sticks; uselessly haphazard.

‘Let me.’

With care, as if she were fragile, Iksahra took Kleopatra’s hands and folded them away and slid her own knife under and cut the cord with only a small split of skin, and even then no blood welled up, because no blood was in his hands; they were green-grey and cold.

‘If you can rub them?’ Iksahra was gentle, her black eyes questing, not hating. Kleopatra found she might weep. ‘Have you killed before?’ Iksahra asked, holding Kleopatra’s two hands in her own.

‘Not men. Not anything, actually.’ She had thought about it, but never done it. ‘I think… I think I can hear them. After they’re dead.’

Iksahra’s black gaze pinned her still, banished the whispering. She nodded, said, ‘Later, you can ask Hypatia. For now, be still. Wait for us. We will attend him and then there will be peace and time to attend you.’

‘Has he…?’ Kleopatra craned her neck, trying to see, still not wanting to.

‘He is whole, see?’ Iksahra slid aside so that Kleopatra could see all of him, naked, bruised, lying flat on the bloody earth with his head cradled in Hypatia’s hands and Hypatia’s tears hot on his face. She saw him shift his head a hair’s breadth and look at her, meet her eyes, and then he looked at Iksahra, and then the cheetah — a small smile at that — and then last to Hypatia. She saw him take in a breath, saw how much it hurt, saw him focus his will, the effort of it, saw his mouth form the single name before it came out

She heard Hypatia say, ‘Saulos is gone. I’m sorry. We couldn’t get through the wall of guards in time. Florus was his scapegoat. He is dead.’

She did not say, I sent the last of my beloved hounds after him, or he would have plunged into your heart a white hot poker, and you would be beyond anyone’s reach.

Neither did she say, The hound took your death for you. She didn’t say it, because there was no need; Day’s body lay still beside them, warm, with a poker, dulled to black now, standing proud of his chest.

Pantera drew in another breath, and asked his second question.

‘War?’ A whisper.

‘Yes. We will prepare for that. But first we have to make you safe. There’s a gate where the beast ordure is taken away. It leads into the Upper Market. Iksahra says Mergus and Estaph are waiting there. If we go quickly, before Saulos gathers his men, we can lose ourselves in the city and then, later, find Menachem. If anyone can keep you alive in what Jerusalem will become, he can.’