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“The state of his fur doesn’t concern Ahura Mazda,” my grandmother said, standing straighter even as she took the rope, as if it were woven of gold. The sacred beast would be brought before the Queen of Persia five times during the next five days, his potent stare used to drive off the
druj Nasu
, the evil matter found in every corpse. “How did you know of our need?”

Hephaestion shrugged. “I’ve read the Avesta once or twice,” he said.

I was shocked that the
yona takabara
knew how to read, much less that he’d studied our sacred text, but my grandmother only gave a terse nod and gathered her skirts, stepping over the threshold of the Tower of Silence. The dog and then Stateira followed, my sister’s eyes downcast, but I hesitated as I passed Hephaestion and Alexander, knowing that gratitude was owed. “Thank you,” I ground out, then hurried after my family.

My appreciation survived only until I reached the topmost floor of the tower, where Stateira and my grandmother stared at the span of blue sky gaping at us from an open hole shorn from the roof. Any long-legged vultures kept to service the dead had long since flown to feast on Tyre’s corpses, although their white droppings still spackled the floor and stone walls. A breath of wind sent several gray feathers skittering across the flagstones like furtive mice.

I recalled the knowing glance Hephaestion had exchanged with Alexander when he’d appeared to accommodate my mother’s funeral requirements.

Take your mother to the Tower of Silence and let the remaining vultures do as they will.

“That filthy, toad-faced liar,” I said, kicking at the feathers and obliterating the tower’s sacred rule of silence. The Companions laid my mother’s white-clad body on the stone bier in the middle circle, while my brother’s tiny, naked body already lay in the center of the chamber. The men exchanged worried glances, then bowed and strode from the room, their footsteps echoing down the stairwell.

“Perhaps Alexander didn’t realize the state of the roof,” Stateira offered.

But it wasn’t Alexander I spoke of, though I knew Stateira was too generous. It was Hephaestion who had reminded Alexander of the location of the Tower of Silence. They had agreed to honor our mother, all the while knowing that her rites would be incomplete.

“Alexander dislikes the practice of exposure, so Hephaestion sought to pacify us and placate him—”

My grandmother cut me off. “It matters naught. We have the dog and fire, and tomorrow we shall have the sun. Your mother must be attended at all times; we will make do with what we have for the next five days. Then your mother and brother shall join the rest of the dead in the well, and we shall rejoin the living.” She held her hands up to stop my argument. “From this moment forward we shall not speak, of this or anything else.”

I bit my tongue and took my place at my mother’s side, seething in silent anger. We might soon rejoin the living, but to repay the insult to my mother, I’d do everything in my power to make Alexander and Hephaestion wish they were dead.

•   •   •

F
ive days later I emerged from the Tower of Silence, faint with hunger and smelling of death after seeing my mother’s and brother’s bodies—still laden with flesh from this world—lowered into the deep well of bones in the barren courtyard. I expected to find Alexander waiting for us, but while my grandmother and Stateira gratefully accepted the litters waiting for them, I was instead greeted by a contingent of guards and the man I’d dreamed of strangling. Perhaps it was the lack of food or the company of the dead that I’d kept too long, but I gave little thought—or at least less than usual—to what I did next.

“You,” I growled, lunging toward Hephaestion.

He moved faster than I expected for one so large, catching my wrists neatly in one of his massive hands. I kicked at him, but feasting only on hate and grief for five days had made me weak and the toe of my soft slipper on his shin might as well have been a playful nudge for all the harm it caused. The four-eyed dog had followed me and growled low in its throat.

“I hope you’ve not spent all your tears on your mother, Drypetis, daughter of Darius,” Hephaestion snarled, “for you’re going to have far more to weep about when I finish with you.”

Alexander’s lover could pulverize me with his fists if he chose, run me through with a deft attack of his sword, or bash my head against the wall of the Tower of Silence. My heart plummeted as I recognized a smaller figure with a mop of dark curls chained by iron shackles in a waiting cart, the fragrant smell of myrrh and the potent stench of fear in the air.

“Release him,” I demanded, stomping on Hephaestion’s foot and dancing from his grasp, gesturing angrily toward Bagoas. I gaped when the eunuch lifted his head, revealing a swollen eye with a bruise roughly the size of Hephaestion’s fist.

“How dare you?” My voice at that moment rivaled that of any cat looking to rut as I whirled on Hephaestion. “Shall I find small children for you to beat next? Little girls with golden curls, perhaps puppies or a simpleton?”

Hephaestion stopped short, blinking as if taken aback before he shook the irons around Bagoas’ wrists, the perfumed boy whose skin was accustomed to touching only the finest silks. “Five days ago, while on my way to deal with Tyre’s ships, I discovered this eunuch of yours attempting to slip from camp, carrying a message
you
ordered him to deliver to your father. Explain to my poor, feeble mind how King Darius also deserves to know the strength of our numbers. And the exact movements of all our men?”

I cringed to realize that Bagoas had spilled all that information to Hephaestion. Better that I’d chosen a eunuch without a tongue than one without a backbone. I reminded myself that he was only a boy with no hope of ever becoming a man, but that didn’t lessen my ire.

“Release him,” I commanded, my gaze flicking to where Bagoas cowered behind Hephaestion. “He acted on my orders and has already suffered for it.”

To my surprise, Hephaestion swallowed hard as if he might eat his rage before producing the key to the irons and freeing the boy. “You may return to the tent of the dowager queen,” he said. “Take the mongrel with you.” It was only then that I noticed my grandmother standing behind me, her litter abandoned and her hands tucked into her sleeves with her chin tilted in a most imperious manner.

“It seems my granddaughter and I have much to discuss,” she said to Hephaestion, allowing Bagoas to take his place behind her, although he held the dog’s dirty rope collar between two dainty fingers. “I thank you for the return of my son’s favored eunuch.”

“You’re most welcome, Queen Sisygambis,” he said. He barked a command and the rest of the men parted to let us return to the litters. Hephaestion gestured me forward with a flourish, as if he had the power to command my very movements.

My hand itched to slap him, but I didn’t relish the idea of a bruise to match Bagoas’, especially as my wrists still ached. “I won’t trouble you further,” I said. “Thank you for not murdering Bagoas with those big fists of yours.”

He inclined his head, then called after me, “But you still owe me something.”

I stopped and turned slowly on my heel, gritting my teeth. “What might that be? A blood oath of obedience? My firstborn child?”

Hephaestion grimaced. “Obedience would be a start, but I doubt you could keep that oath past sundown. I leave to quell a revolt in Greece and I don’t wish to hear from afar that you’re causing Alexander problems. You’ll swear now that you’ll keep to your tent, or I promise I’ll make Alexander clap you in irons before he marries you off to the first moldering Greek governor he can find, preferably a hideously fat one with a penchant for buggering pretty young girls.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Is that a challenge?”

I stared at him, then gave a neat bow. “I swear I shall not commit any further treason while you’re gone.”

Then I turned on my heel and stormed away, away from Hephaestion and my failure, away from my mother’s bones, and toward whatever miserable future Alexander planned for me.

I’d promised I wouldn’t commit treason while Hephaestion was in Athens.

But I’d said nothing about what I’d do upon his return.

CHAPTER 6

331 BCE

Pella, Macedon

Thessalonike

The brown whip snake twined its way up my arm, its scales as cool and smooth against my flesh as the night air. It didn’t have a tooth in its mouth and its eyes were occluded with age, but still I stood motionless while Olympias poured a goblet of spiced wine from the painted
amphora
. The vessel’s sides were emblazoned with stark images of Dionysus’ initiates in various states of ecstasy, men’s bare arms wrapped around the women’s waists, their heads all thrown back in abandon.

And snakes. Slithering across its black and red borders were images of snakes to match the live serpents writhing beneath my feet and up my arm. Nonvenomous, they could still strike if provoked, yet they were the least of my worries on this evening of the harvest’s full moon.

The very scene on the
amphora
would play out before me tonight, and I would wake not merely a fourteen-year-old woman, but a
maenad
initiate of the wine god, Dionysus.

Olympias had commanded that I partake of the Dionysian revels and I had no choice but to obey. My life had been empty in the four years since Alexander had left as I did my utmost not to attract Olympias’ wrath. My childhood plumpness had hardened, so that Olympias often muttered that I resembled my father, thick-boned and heavy-jawed, save my pelt of golden hair, which I kept braided tightly down my back. Wealthy suitors from all over the Peloponnese had begun asking for my hand in marriage, but Alexander had ordered his mother to refrain from making any alliances and I’d stewed in boredom until I almost wished some man would storm the walls and take me away from here.

Over the past weeks, I’d sacrificed and prayed to the god of grapes and pleasure that this ceremony would fill me with purpose, that my brother’s frequent letters would cease taunting me with all I was missing in the wider world while I remained here to obey Olympias’ every whim, saved from madness by only my brother Arrhidaeus and my menagerie of animals.

It seemed a trick of the gods that the very man who had conquered the world was my brother, yet I remained unable to breach Pella’s walls until some man claimed me as his wife. I prayed that my future husband would be one of Alexander’s generals, anyone except a future king.

I would
never
be a queen, not after I’d seen the monster Olympias had become once a diadem had graced her head.

“Drink,” Olympias commanded me, curling my fingers around the goblet of wine. Arrhidaeus whimpered in the background, his fear growing palpable as slaves added more cedar and olive oil to the fire until the flames leapt taller than the barren apricot trees. Despite our move from Aigai to the palace at Pella, he’d been fearful of fire ever since the night Eurydice died; both the flames and the dark still provoked his terrible fits of crying. “Go, Arrhidaeus,” Olympias said, not even looking at him. “The revels of Dionysus are not for you to enjoy.”

“Go,” I murmured to my brother, in a voice more controlled than I felt. “In the morning I’ll take you fishing.”

“You promise?” Arrhidaeus asked, twisting his meaty hands together even as his eyes strayed toward the gate that led away from Olympias’ garden and back to the safety of the palace.

“I promise,” I said, although staring at the placid waters of a lake all day sounded as exciting as reading anything written by Homer. “Take my fat orange cat to bed with you to warm your feet.”

I watched my brother tiptoe around the snakes (like watching an elephant sidestep mice) and lumber out of the garden. Just as he craved the solid safety of the palace walls, I thrilled at finally leaving them behind, at least for one night.

“Will Cynnane be at the revels?” I asked Olympias, smoothing the fawn skin that was draped over my shoulders and masking the hope in my tone. I desperately wanted to see my warrior half sister, to ask a thousand questions about where she’d learned to throw daggers and whether she thought I could ever learn.