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My hand had mostly healed—although a few of the fingers would likely always be stiff—and the Script of Nails flowed from my pen in a letter to Mazaeus, the turncoat
satrap
of Babylon.

Greeting to Mazaeus from Darius the Third,

The King of Kings wishes you to know that the combined treasuries of Persepolis and Babylon would throw open their doors for you if you should assist the chosen one of Ahura Mazda in fomenting a rebellion against Alexander of Macedon. Such a show of support for the one true king would be a demonstration of the utmost loyalty, for which the only fitting reward would be the eternal union of our families. The King of Kings would offer you the hand of his youngest daughter—

“She’s a woman who must be constantly occupied,” a familiar voice interrupted, “lest she wreak havoc on the affairs of men.”

My pen scratched across the page, a black scar of ink across my carefully chosen words.

Words for which I could expect to be impaled, or worse, should they be discovered.

“What do you want?” I asked Hephaestion, crumpling up the paper even as I fought the urge to flee with the evidence of my treachery. Today he was dressed in a long Persian-style robe, sumptuous and made of embroidered brown silk, mimicking Alexander’s newly adopted style. I hadn’t seen so much as the tip of Hephaestion’s infuriating nose in the weeks we’d been sequestered in the palace, and had rather hoped that I’d be spared the honor for the remainder of my natural life, or at least until Alexander’s pet was speared by a Persian charioteer. I was fairly certain I could rouse myself to attend his funeral.

Yet he came now, interrupting me while I was engaged in high treason. I willed my hands not to shake, but they refused to obey, so I crossed my arms before me, finding it suddenly impossible to breathe normally.

“I’m pleased the gardens are proving a pleasant distraction for you.” He plucked a handful of figs from a tree and popped one of the fruits into his mouth. “Lest we find you fanning the flames of rebellion in the street.”

“Are there flames?” I asked hopefully, even as I clutched my ruined letter tighter in my hand.

“None that I can tell,” he said. “Babylon seems quite content with her new master.”

“I asked you what you want,” I said irritably, shoving the letter to Mazaeus into my sleeve. “Or does Alexander simply prefer to torture his captives? Perhaps you have a pail of naphtha you’d like to douse me with?”

Hephaestion sobered at that, and tossed the remainder of the figs into the bushes as if he’d lost his appetite. “I received word that Adurnarseh died from his wounds.”

“May he pass easily into paradise,” I said, and meant it. “Another example that no good can come from serving Alexander.”

“Alexander is blessed by the gods,” Hephaestion said, and I could see his hackles rising. “He’s ruled by his passions and his ambitions.”

“That’s not a man you’ve described, but a demon flown from the very depths of
Duzakh
.”

Hephaestion clenched his fists. “I bear a message for you from that very demon.”

I waved a hand. “Then deliver it and begone. There must be a kitchen slave or a courtesan, or a perhaps even a goat, that you’d rather be buggering than wasting my precious time.”

Hephaestion gazed at the cedar beams overhead, but a vein in his jaw throbbed in frustration. “Actually, there
was
a fine-looking ewe I saw on my way here. I think it’s due in the kitchens for slaughter, but I’m sure no one would mind if I availed myself of it first.”

I gaped for a moment, then flinched when his snide laughter mocked me. “You play that you’re a woman of the world, Drypetis of Persia, but you’re only a blustering girl.”

“I wasn’t aware that a Macedonian man-whore could insult the daughter of the King of Kings,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “You have less than two breaths to deliver that message—
without
insulting me—or you’ll find yourself facedown in the Euphrates.”

It was an idle threat and we both knew it. Although I was sure Hephaestion had memorized the contents, still he made a great show of removing the scroll from his belt, sweeping an obsequious bow, and beginning to read.

“‘Upon sunrise, the entourage of Alexander of Macedon shall travel to the end of the Royal Road to the Kara Su River, the source of the King of Kings’ drinking water, and thereby rendezvous with the
satrap
of Susa, who offers a herd of camels and twelve warriors as proof of his friendship. The family of Darius, King of Kings, including his grandmother and daughters, Stateira and Drypetis, shall remain in Susa henceforth,’” he announced. “‘So it is decreed and so it shall be.’”

The letter certainly sounded like Alexander—pompous and overbearing. “Susa?” I stood, folding my arms before me. “At sunrise?”

No time to send my letter to Mazaeus, much less start a revolt. Hope withered in my chest, leaving my heart hollow. “How long shall we be in Susa?”

Hephaestion pretended to scan the missive again, then rolled it with a shrug. “Alexander doesn’t say. Preferably until you die of old age.”

I waved away his meager attempt at an insult as my hopelessness was swamped by a newly smoldering anger. “And what shall we do there?” I asked. “Weave and sew and compose songs of Alexander’s glories in battle?”

“I’ve seen your sewing and heard your singing. You’d be better suited to scrubbing wine cups and polishing chariots.”

I stomped my foot. “And you’d be better suited painted as a girl and serving in a brothel than on a battlefield.”

“Be that as it may”—he dared to chuck me under the chin with the scroll—“it is you being caged at Susa, and not me.” He saluted and marched off, his step downright jaunty.

I scarcely managed to hold in my rage until Hephaestion’s footsteps faded, scattering sparrows and squirrels from Nebuchadnezzar’s trees as I screamed and beat a gnarled tamarisk trunk with my palms, tearing open the flesh there until my throbbing hand forced me to stop. I collapsed to the ground, sobbing and breathing in the scent of rich earth.

Cradled in the roots of the tamarisk tree, I knew then how Nebuchadnezzar’s wife had felt, pining for bygone days and family long since dead.

Yet there was no one to build me a magnificent garden of memories and ease my heartache. Despite my attempt of escape at Gaugamela and even inciting rebellions here in Babylon, there was only a long stretch of gray days that would lead to Susa and the inevitable word of my father’s death.

I didn’t mean to drift off, but my grief and rage were heavy burdens to bear, and the murmur of the water in the aqueducts and the chatter of sparrows lulled me toward sleep. I awoke sometime later beneath a darkening sky, a crick in my neck and my robe damp through from the earth. I sat and stretched, feeling for the letter in my sleeve, intent on tearing it into shreds and burying the evidence in at least five different holes scattered throughout the garden.

But the letter was gone.

CHAPTER 12

Susa, Persia

Hephaestion

In the height of summer Susa was reputedly a boiling scrap of sand where the air quavered with a choking heat and the city’s streets scorched the bottom of a man’s sandals like an earthen sun. If that weren’t unpleasant enough, spending a winter in the ugly and ignored bastard of Persia’s four capitals was even worse.

Susa was a bleak and vile smudge of gray, its people hunchbacked against the cold winds that sighed and howled and gnawed deep into their bones. It was a wonder that the city had been sacked so many times in its long history; had I lived here, I’d have begged any would-be conqueror to pull down its bricks to save myself the eyesore.

Yet it was in the open plain outside Susa that I stood bent over my knees with my chest heaving, having just run oiled, naked, and shivering beneath the city’s sodden sky—admittedly not the best weather to show off a man’s shaft and cods—with Alexander in farewell games dedicated to a whole bevy of Greek, Persian, and even a few Egyptian gods. Alexander had once boasted that he would run the
stadion
in the Olympic Games only if all of the other competitors were kings, but I could have beaten him by a good ten paces today. Still, the people of Susa were here to ogle their golden-haired conqueror, not me, before Alexander left them to their petty lives and we marched on Persepolis. So I’d slowed and let him pass, grinning as he embraced me at the finish, while slaves bedecked him in a laurel wreath and a thick purple
himation
.

He wrapped a thin red cloak around my shoulders. “I’ll have to train more to beat you in a fair race, fleet-footed Patroclus that you are,” he murmured in my ear, and I smiled at the old nickname from
The Song of Ilium
.

“If you think it would help,” I said, chuckling. “But did swift-footed Achilles ever beat Patroclus?”

The crowd drowned out his response as they took up his name in a never-ending chant. There were only two responses for cities toward Alexander: to fawn over him in fake adulation in the hope that he would spare their lives, or to try to kill him. Much as I loathed Susa, I was glad they’d chosen the former and saved us the trouble of slaughtering their men in the streets.

I let Alexander bask in their cheers as I scraped the oil from my body with a bronze strigil and then shivered back into my discarded Persian robes, envying a group of old men draped in thick wool
himations
who were simultaneously throwing down knucklebones and cups of unwatered wine. They’d go home every night this winter to warm beds and even warmer wives, who’d swat their hands away before they decided to ward off the season’s cold together. I, on the other hand, would don armor that weighed more than Atlas’ globe and was so cold that it felt like a million knives to touch, thus to march in ever-frigid weather with only the heat of an impending battle to look forward to.

A woman dressed in brown sackcloth with a hairier upper lip than even these bearded Persian devils hawked roasted nuts over a portable clay oven in a voice that might have shattered glass, had there been any around. She screeched at the men playing knucklebones, making them all cringe in perfect unison. One shot her a withering look before muttering something to his companions and shuffling over, resuming his place beside her and behind the piles of steaming nuts.

“Nuts,” he said in a monotone voice, warming his hands in front of the oven’s open front, steam pouring from its smoldering black coals. He was as ugly as she, with a bulbous red nose and a tangled beard that might have housed a family of rats. “Pistachios, walnuts, and almonds.”

I fished for a coin in my pocket and tossed the bit of gold to him. His face slackened with shock when he realized its value, but then twisted in annoyance as his wife grabbed it, biting the gleaming metal between brown teeth before shrieking and shoving it between her ample breasts.

“Women,” I said to the man, shaking my head with a commiserating smile as she jabbered and filled the largest bag of steaming pistachios. “Can’t live with them . . .”

“I could live without this one,” the husband hissed, receiving a thunk on the head from his foulmouthed wife as she shoved the bag into my hands. She reminded me of another Persian woman, one whose slightly fairer face did little to make up for her fishmonger’s mouth.

Yet the threat of banishment to Susa had silenced Darius’ gorgon of a daughter, a feat on par with Heracles’ slaying of the Hydra. I popped a warm nut in my mouth, wondering if perhaps I might persuade Alexander to commission a song or two in my honor for surviving another encounter with the ghastly she-cat.

Immediately upon entering Susa two weeks ago, Alexander had marched past the city’s sissoo-wood temples to the inner palace and thrown open the doors to the throne room, its flame-scarlet and night-black walls studded with tasteful ebony and tiny flecks of glittering gemstones. One could fault the Persians for gelding their eunuchs and retreating like cowering dogs on the battlefield, but their palaces were luxurious and their gardens lush paradises, especially compared with the stark utility of our Macedonian architecture back home.