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“His face is plain enough, so nothing shall be lost if your theory fails,” Hephaestion mused, finally glancing our way and raising his cup of wine to the singer. It was impossible to discern from his droll tone whether he spoke in jest.

“You can’t be serious,” I said to both him and Alexander. “Light yourselves on fire if you wish to test your theory on a living, breathing man.”

“Or perhaps you’d make a fitting test subject,” Alexander said. After traveling for so long with the Macedonian conqueror, I recognized the gleam in his eyes, a harbinger of his wildest mood.

A pinch on my back, so hard I cried out.

“My apologies for my granddaughter,” my grandmother said. “I fear she may have hit her head as well as her shoulder in Gaugamela.” She lowered her voice so only I could hear her. “And if not, I’ll do the job myself once we return to our tent.”

“Enough of this,” Hephaestion said in a low tone to Alexander. “Fire is nothing to toy with, as you well know.”

“This won’t be like that, Hephaestion,” Alexander muttered. “We’re no longer children.”

I wondered what he meant, but Alexander studied me through slitted eyes. I shivered as he patted the singer’s shoulder. “Let it not be said that I lit Darius’ daughter afire, especially not when we have a willing and pleasant subject.”

The boy fairly preened with the feeble compliment.

Alexander gave a wild grin and tossed his cup of wine to the ground, spilling scarlet over the silken carpet as he grasped the golden urn of naphtha and poured it over the singer, then touched one of the hundred oil lamps to the boy’s dripping flesh.

“Alexander, no!” Hephaestion lunged forward, but he was on the other side of the pavilion, too far to stop his madman lover.

I leapt from my couch with a wild cry of fury, but I was too late.

For a heartbeat I thought Alexander was right, that the Eternal Fire would do no harm. But in the span of a breath, the orange flame consumed the singer’s chest, then snaked down his arms and legs. He lifted a hand and for a moment that plain face lit with wonder as he marveled at the flames dancing from his fingers.

Then he howled like a demon trapped forever in the flames of
Duzakh
.

The sound seared itself onto my memory, more terrible than my mother’s death cries as she struggled to expel my brother from her womb. My dog howled and barked as the singer dropped to the ground, burning yellow and blue so only the dark silhouette of his writhing body could be seen through the flames.

“The rug,” I cried, but everyone remained rooted with shock. I shoved the gaping Alexander from my path and tried to roll the burning boy into the precious silken carpet. The threads began to singe; he was flailing around too much to suffocate the fire. Strong arms shoved him down and held him immobile, and someone dumped a
krater
of wine atop the boy, finally quenching the flames.

Steam and the terrible stench of singed flesh filled the room, like some sort of altar sacrifice.

“Unroll him before his flesh adheres to the carpet,” my grandmother said. She was holding an empty terra-cotta
krater
, the last few drops of wine dripping from its mouth.

The singer’s skin peeled away in great sheets on his chest and limbs, the edges tinged charcoal black. The boundary of the flames remained a livid shade of crimson, raised and mottled like a slab of unpolished marble. His breathing came in lurches, as if the fire had seared his lungs. Only his face and left hand were blessedly untouched.

He still might pluck his lyre, then, but his right hand was ravaged and burned so deep that patches of red muscle showed through. Blisters were already beginning to form, pale pockets of shining skin filled with clear water. My stomach lurched and Stateira retched into the empty
krater
held by my grandmother. Barsine hurried her and my still-barking dog out of the tent and into the night air, but I fell to my knees alongside my grandmother, her clear gray eyes already ascertaining the damage.

“Can he be saved?” came a man’s voice.

Alexander hovered above us. “Interesting,” he continued. “See that he receives the proper medical attention.”

“You dim-witted, arrogant monster,” I said, gritting my teeth. I stumbled to my feet, but Hephaestion stepped between us. My grandmother grasped my bad hand to stop me, eliciting my yelp of fresh pain.

“You have your answer,” Hephaestion said to Alexander. His fingers were singed and a fine sheen of perspiration covered his face. I realized then that it was he who had helped me with the rug. “Sisygambis is an accomplished healer and will need full access to your physician’s chest of herbs.”

“Of course,” Alexander murmured, the mercurial gleam in his eyes finally banished as he snapped his fingers at a slave. “Fill a chest with the singer’s weight in gold, a fitting reward for such a noble sacrifice.” The slave nodded and scurried away, likely worried he’d be the next to be doused by naphtha.

“Noble sacrifice?” I choked. “You tortured your own singer! What songs will they sing of you now?”

I knew instantly that I had gone too far.

“You shall not speak,” Alexander ordered in a frigid voice, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. “Lest I be required to send your father a letter detailing the death of his youngest daughter.”

The singer moaned, but his pain-glazed eyes still stared up at Alexander. The foul Macedonian knelt and reached down as if to touch the boy, then recoiled. My rage burned hotter than the flames at the Father of Fires, for Alexander couldn’t even bring himself to touch the ruined creature he had created.

“The
basileus
thanks you,” Hephaestion said to the singer, and I was shocked to see his eyes shining, but then he blinked and I thought perhaps my mind was playing tricks on me. Alexander’s slave returned then with the medicine chest and my grandmother poured a draft of poppy milk and dribbled it into the singer’s mouth. It wasn’t long before the boy’s eyelids drooped, allowing him blessed peace.

“Does anyone know his name?” I asked, but no one answered. “What is his name?” I asked again, almost hysterical.

“He is Adurnarseh,” Hephaestion said quietly. “He sang for me once or twice.”

Adurnarseh. His name meant
the word of a fiery man
.

I closed my eyes against the irony. Adurnarseh had sought glory through fire, but it had lasted a single bittersweet moment. Now he would have to live with its aftermath for the remainder of his life, provided he survived his wounds.

“We ride for Babylon at dawn,” Alexander said, looking everywhere except at the singer as the boy was levered onto a shield and carried from the tent. “There I shall expect the family of Darius to make public oaths of obedience and lend me their full support as I greet the Persian populace.”

So Alexander required us to betray my father and persuade our people to accept him, after we’d just watched him immolate one of his own. Then again, perhaps this had been a warning to me, and to my family. The weight of everyone’s stares fell upon my grandmother and me, as if daring us to defy Alexander. For once I held my tongue, even as I gritted my teeth until they threatened to crack.

I’d swear Alexander’s petty oath if I had to. And then I’d destroy him and cackle with glee to witness his fiery destruction, just like Adurnarseh’s.

•   •   •

B
abylon was a decaying old queen, her gaily painted temples bent-backed and surrounded by moldering brick walls like a frayed robe trailed too long in the dust. The city of Hammurabi the Lawgiver and Nebuchadnezzar the Builder was decrepit now, her glory squandered by heavy taxation and the incessant wars of the past decades. Yet even still, her seven-story ziggurat gleamed like a copper crown from its pinnacle in her skyline and she stood tall, waiting to greet this latest force assembled at her gates.

My father had brought Stateira and me here many times to marvel at the colossal Etemenanki ziggurat dedicated to Marduk, the blue and gold tiles of the Gate of Ishtar with its procession of aurochs and dragons, and Nebuchadnezzar’s lush Hanging Gardens. Stateira had fidgeted as my father explained the process of baking and glazing the bricks of the Ishtar Gate, of arranging them into place like a giant puzzle, and building its cedar roof, but I had hung on his every word, enthralled by the vision he created.

It was the Ishtar Gate that swung open to receive Alexander exactly seven days after Gaugamela, the conqueror still smelling of the seawater and hyssop used to purify him after the singer’s death. Even before the smudge of city had become visible on the horizon, the
satrap
Mazaeus rode out with his sons to pledge loyalty to the Macedonian marauder. The swarthy man with a beard of perfectly coiled ringlets had led my father’s right wing at Gaugamela, but now he bowed and scraped to Alexander, hoping to save his derelict city and return it to its former glory.

Alexander drew up his army as if to advance, but the move was unnecessary. Officials poured out to greet their conqueror as priests lined the cobbled path with silver-plated altars burning so much frankincense that even Ahura Mazda must have cringed at the excess. The Processional Way was strewn with pink and white rose petals, and crowds cheered as Alexander rode forth in my father’s golden chariot, pulled by Bucephalus and surrounded by his Companions. One word was chanted over and over, taken up by the crowd and echoed by grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives.

“Liberator!”

My eyes watered, but I blinked hard, praying that my father wouldn’t receive word of this treachery. Alexander and his men passed beneath the watchful eyes of Ishtar and her stone lions, winged Marduk and his painted dragons, into the heart of the traitorous city. The streets that fanned out from the Processional Way were crammed with cages of pacing leopards and roaring lions, whirling acrobats and chanting priests. The music of stringed lyres, silver pipes, and skin drums drowned out the joyous shouts of freedom.

“People of Babylon!” Alexander yelled, and the crowd stilled. “I come here not as a conqueror but as your liberator, freeing you from the yoke of Darius’ heavy taxation. Babylon shall once again assume her place among the grand cities of the world.” Alexander flung one arm toward a pile of rubble and the other toward the copper-topped ziggurat. “The famed temple of Esagila shall be rebuilt with its gold and jewels to once again blind all who look upon it. And the gold statue of Bel-Marduk shall be recast and returned to its rightful place in the ziggurat of Etemenanki.”

The crowd cheered wildly and Alexander waved and nodded, even daring to take off his helmet with its double egret plumes so all of Babylon might see him better. I prayed for a Persian arrow to find its mark in his eye or temple, but the herd of dumb sheep continued their incessant bleating, ecstatic in the presence of their conqueror.

Then Alexander turned toward us and the Babylonians calmed. “Darius, the supposed King of Kings, has fled from us twice on the battlefield, yet the gods have seen fit to trust me with the protection of his cities, his mother and daughters. It is my honor and privilege to enter Babylon on this historic day, to assume his place as your rightful
basileus
.”

My grandmother and Stateira lowered their heads in unison, but I waited a moment longer, making sure that Alexander and those near enough could witness the hate burning in my eyes. Only then did I dare bend my head to the
yona takabara
, although I kept my back stiff and refused to kiss my hand to him in the sacred
proskynesis
as so many in the crowd now did.

Alexander of Macedon was not a god. He was only a man who had climbed too high and would soon discover how far he had to fall.

•   •   •

A
lexander remained five sumptuous weeks in Babylon, minting new coins from my father’s gold bullion—stamped with his own haughty profile—visiting Nebuchadnezzar’s vast treasury, and gorging on pike liver, lamprey roe, and pig kidneys at countless banquets and poetry recitals. I wondered if Alexander ever thought of the poor singer left behind with a hill of gold in Korkura, if Adurnarseh still breathed or if his corpse now fed the worms. But if Alexander did wonder, he never asked. Instead, he charged blithely forward.

Forbidden from leaving the palace, I spent most of my days and even several nights in the famed Hanging Gardens. I climbed the open-air terraces that Nebuchadnezzar had built for his homesick Median queen, sitting beneath the canopies of almond and fig trees, spruce and cedars, cypresses and rosewood, juniper and tamarisk. A squirrel leapt from branch to branch over my head and a brown sparrow hawk soared into the clouds. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine that I was in the mountains of that queen’s homeland, the whitewashed pillars of the terraces transforming to the snowy peaks above the forest. When Stateira had first visited the gardens, she’d feigned interest in the assorted trees, but I’d pressed a hundred questions to the eunuch who’d been commandeered as our guide, ceasing my queries only after I’d learned that the terraced roofs were made of reeds reinforced with bitumen and laid across cedar beams, then layered with baked brick and lead so the moisture from the top levels wouldn’t compromise the stability of the whole. In addition, there were aqueducts to force water upward from the Euphrates via an ingenious screw mechanism, while rainwater could gather in cisterns on the roof.

Some were inspired to write poetry about the curve of their lover’s cheek or the first burst of sunlight after the darkest day of the year. It was fortunate that I was no poet, for I’d have composed verses to the might of a lowly winch or the glory of an aqueduct.

It wasn’t poetry I wrote today, but something much more vital.

There had been no word from my father since we’d reached Babylon, although whispers claimed that more
satraps
like Mazaeus were abandoning him, casting their lots with Alexander to avoid utter destruction.

I still prayed that my father would best Alexander on the battlefield, but that seemed less likely with each passing day. Fortunately, there was more than one way to win a war.