The Coming of the King

Chapter Forty-Eight

The beast garden was a stinking mess. The air was heavy with old urine and rotting faeces and alive with flies. Inside was a cacophony of hunger, of thirst, of bestial desperation that outdid the havoc of combat a bare few hundred paces away.

Seeing Iksahra stand in the gateway, the horses, hounds and hawks threw themselves in a frenzy at the bars of their compounds, howling or screaming or belling, as their nature demanded, for food, for water, for the blessing of release.

Iksahra spat on the ground, eyes ablaze. ‘The slaves fled to Damascus and left them untended. They should die for such a thing.’

‘They are slaves,’ Pantera said. ‘It is not given them to act without orders. They are often flayed for exactly that. We haven’t time-’

‘I know. But we are two against nine. But even two such as we will better prevail if we have-’

‘Three,’ said a clear voice behind. ‘With me, we are three. Or seven, if you prefer.’

Pantera turned, slowly. Kleopatra was wildly bruised; a long welt across her left cheek half closed her eye and promised spectacular colours later. Her forearms had cuts along their lengths, one of them ragged, of the sort that responded better to clean air than to a dressing. None of it detracted from the light in her eyes.

Pride shone from her, and a new determination. ‘I’m coming with you to get Hypatia. You need me. I know the fastest way through the palace to the cellars where she’s held. And Mergus is on his way — is here.’ A shuffle of sandals and he was there, with three others. Kleopatra said, ‘He can’t go back: the Hebrews don’t know him well enough to remember he’s friend not foe and they’re winning now. He’ll be cut down simply for looking Roman.’

Mergus was breathing hard, but not greatly hurt, nor the three men with him. He saluted across the heads of the others, a gesture that promised stories later, when time allowed. He moved to the two women and there was a joining between them, as of men who have fought together in battle, who have saved each other’s lives and know the most precious of bonds, closer than many lovers. And now Kleopatra and Iksahra were a part of it.

Pantera bowed to them, for the brightness of their greeting. ‘Lead then,’ he said, and so it was that five men, two women and a cat walked down the slaves’ corridor to its end.

‘Left here,’ said Kleopatra as they poured out through the door, ‘and then left again at the junction at the end. There are stairs fifty paces further on. A guard will be at their head.’

Iksahra said, ‘Let me do this. Mergus, if you and the others could appear to form an honour guard? Let him see you as we round the corner, but don’t come closer unless I fail.’

As if ordered by an officer, the men fell into line behind Iksahra. She flicked her fingers to keep the cheetah close, and then they were at the junction in the corridor and there was no time to ask what she planned, only to watch as she stalked away, black and white, with her beast flowing gold at her side.

The guard saw the men first. His head went up, and he smiled, and was still smiling when his gaze fell on the cheetah and the woman and his confusion then, of why she should have been thus honoured, slowed his blade.

In perfect Latin, Iksahra said, ‘I am the ghul that assaulted the gate guards,’ and it seemed to Pantera that the guard had died of fright before the cheetah had ripped the life from his throat.

He died in a flurry of muffled beast noises, and not one single human sound. The smell of blood rinsed the corridor and Pantera found that, this once, he was not immune to such a thing, and that he was not alone; Mergus and Kleopatra were both paler than they had been.

Iksahra stepped round the mess. ‘We go down the steps behind this door,’ she said. ‘I believe there is a corridor to a similar door, and another set of steps and then a long corridor that winds the length of the palace and brings us to the head of the stairs where Hypatia is being kept. Am I right?’

Kleopatra brought herself past the carnage. ‘There will be a guard at each of the doors,’ she said. ‘We should have questioned this one before he died, to find if Saulos has already gone through.’

‘He has. And he knew we were coming,’ Pantera said. ‘The guard had his sword newly out.’ The others turned to stare at him. He shrugged. ‘The oil of the sheath still shone on the whetted edge. It dulls very quickly. Seneca taught me.’

‘And Seneca taught Saulos,’ Iksahra said. ‘We have to hope he has remembered less than you have or our passage will not be easy.’ She led the way at a jog-run.

Pantera followed, and wondered what he would do if he were Saulos, if he knew what he thought Saulos knew, and if he did not know the things he hoped Saulos would not know.

At the head of the next set of steps, with the gore of the next dead guard sticky underfoot, he held up his hand.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘When Menachem enters this place as its king, where will he go first?’

He saw Kleopatra tilt her head, bright as a dawn bird, thinking. ‘He’ll go straight to the king’s chambers,’ she said, in time. ‘Three rooms in a suite at the far end of the top floor. The outer room has a fountain in the centre and windows set high in the north-easterly part of the wall. Two rooms lead off it. The bedroom is to the west, with a wide bed for the making of heirs or…’

She broke off and did not detail, as perhaps she might once have done, the things her uncle did there that would never lead to heirs. Her colour high, she said, ‘There’s a third room that was once a bathing room with sunken baths, but these are laid over with boards now, and it has two dining couches and perhaps a low trestle table, although the slaves may have taken it out. This and the bedchamber connect one to the other, so the three rooms make a ring. There are no weapons in any of them, unless you can use the table. The mosaics are considered the best in the kingdom.’

‘And no guard?’

‘My uncle’s guards fled with him to Antioch.’ Disdain made her more like her aunt than she had ever been.

Pantera clapped her shoulder. A man’s response to a man, or a boy; not a girl. ‘If you are ever in need of employment, I will train you as a spy. The work is half done.’

He faced Iksahra, eye to eye, and then Mergus. ‘There will be, at most, half a dozen guards at the entrance to the last corridor; you can deal with those easily, particularly if you use the same ruse to take you close. Go now, fast, and free Hypatia and Estaph, and Berenice.’

‘You’re not coming with us?’ Kleopatra asked.

‘No. You don’t need me. I have… other work.’

‘Saulos is upstairs.’

He laughed at her, at the speed of her reasoning. ‘I think so, yes.’

She chewed her lip, considering, and then nodded. ‘It has to be you, I suppose.’

Mergus, who knew him best, caught his eye for a moment, and held it. Whatever he read there was enough. He turned away, and signalled his men with him.

It was Iksahra who caught Pantera’s wrist and held him fast. ‘You’re going after Saulos? Alone?’

‘I have to. If he escapes now… Iksahra, I have to kill him. I must.’

‘You and you alone.’ Her gaze searched his face. ‘He will be expecting you.’

‘Even so, I must go.’

‘Of course.’ Her smile was something from the desert, sharp and savage and full of the promise of death. ‘Go then.’ Her fingers sprang open, releasing his arm. ‘Kleopatra says that the newly dead go joyful to their gods.’

‘Some of them do,’ he said. ‘I doubt if Saulos will be among them.’