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“I did what I had to,” Bagoas said softly, but I ignored him.

He lifted the tent flap and announced me, raising his lilting voice to be heard over the second round of wailing from the Macedonian soldiers outside. The racket grated on my nerves and made me wish someone would slit their throats to save all our ears.

“Roxana of Balkh.” Unruffled, Stateira rose and approached, offering her smooth cheek for the
proskynesis
kiss that would have marked me as her inferior. Her eyes widened as I clasped her wrists instead and kissed her lips in the gesture between equals.

Her purple blood might have stolen my title, but I’d never bow and scrape like a commoner before her.

I dared motion to her couch. “Please, let us sit and get to know each other.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said. Her proper breeding was more impenetrable than a Macedonian sun shield, but I caught the spark in her eyes before she quelled it. I gave her my most winsome smile even as I clenched my teeth at the sight behind her: Alexander’s wedding robes, folded into a perfect square at the foot of her bed.

And she moved stiffly, as if she’d been well used last night.

“Stateira,” I said, my nails biting into my palms. “I came to offer my apologies.”

Her flawless mask of calm slipped a fraction. “Your apologies?”

“It pained me to no end yesterday to watch a woman of your stature herded among the cattle to be married. Surely you deserved a wedding of your own, such as Alexander afforded me.”

Stateira smiled, although the gesture didn’t reach her eyes. “Please don’t worry yourself on account of me.”

“My dear,” I said, patting her hand. “As Alexander’s first wife, it’s my responsibility to worry.”

She didn’t answer as Bagoas served us cups of watered wine in strange silver vessels, carved to resemble the heads of hunting dogs.

“I presume that you are an animal lover,” I said, taking a sip from the top of the beast’s head. Drab little cups in terrible taste; I’d have expected more from the daughter of Persia’s king.

“My father kept many dogs to assist with his lion hunts,” she said. “The cups belonged to him.”

“And now he is dead as well,” I said, relishing the flash of shock in her eyes. Now I knew that her sun shield could be cracked if struck at the right angle.

I might have taught her a trick or two about hardening her heart, but I would be otherwise engaged in the coming days, ensuring that her usefulness to Alexander reached its speedy conclusion. He had his marriages that bound him to Persia’s royalty, but they were the past.

I would be his future.

I flicked my hair behind my shoulder, silently celebrating the fact that the copper highlights of my long tresses far outshone hers. “One of the first things I learned when I married Alexander is that a camp of men is a lonely place for a woman. It is my most ardent wish that we be friends.”

She swallowed, hard, and offered me a terse smile. “I’d like that very much.”

We sat in silence for a moment, sipping our wine and glancing at the stark white walls of her pavilion. Voices approached from outside and I stood. “This has been a lovely visit,” I said, setting down the distasteful dog cup. “And I look forward to many more pleasant interludes in the days to come.”

The darling’s nose actually wrinkled, but she caught herself as she rose carefully to her feet. “As do I,” she said, although her tone claimed quite the opposite.

The tent flap opened and, unannounced, in barged Darius’ second daughter. I took a step back in disgust, for the addled half-wit was dressed like a farmer’s wife in a plain silk robe with her dark hair loose around her face. It was no wonder that King Darius had fled the battlefield not once but twice, and then allowed himself to be stabbed to death. This family of his was ill prepared for anything save the basest of manual labor.

I paused, waiting for Drypetis to sweep to her knees and kiss her fingers in the
proskynesis
of an utter inferior, but she hesitated only long enough to press a kiss to my cheek. I recoiled before she could touch the other side.

“Dearest Roxana,” she said. “You’re looking well this afternoon. Will you stay and visit with my sister and me?”

“Sadly, no,” I said, dabbing my cheek with the hem of my sleeve. “I have much to do to prepare myself for this evening. Alexander will surely visit me as he does almost every night.”

It was a bit of a lie, but they needn’t know that.

“Marvelous,” Drypetis said, and then the little beast dared to pat my arm. “We all pray that you’ll soon conceive.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Of course you know that the empire worries that your womb is too parched to quicken.”

“Drypetis!” her sister exclaimed, but neither of us paid her any attention.

I hadn’t expected the worthless second daughter of Darius to challenge me, but my hackles rose at the provocation, like those of the snarling dogs I’d sometimes watched Oxyartes bet our bread money upon.

“You just can’t stand it, can you?” I snarled. “It galls your illustrious family to no end that Alexander chose
me
. That he discarded you here in Susa and married
me
.”

“A situation he rectified with his weddings yesterday.”

I’d have slapped her then, or worse, but Bagoas suddenly stepped between us. “It’s time for you to go,” he said to me.

I ignored him. “The gods shall bless my womb when the time is right,” I growled over his shoulder at Drypetis. “And while Hephaestion surely did his duty and plowed your dreary field last night, your snatch will shrivel and fill with cobwebs soon enough.”

“And thus, the Bitch of Balkh’s true colors are revealed,” Drypetis said, folding her arms and looking down her bent nose at me so I felt suddenly small and inconsequential. I hated these two haughty Persian bitches then, for making me feel every bit like the filth under their feet. I was the one who had to secure my place at Alexander’s side lest I be cast out again, whereas they’d been born and would die pampered princesses. “In case you came here breathing lies and professing friendship for my sister, now we all know where we stand.” She
tsk
ed under her breath. “I spoke to Parysatis already. She may be disfigured, Roxana, but she’s not an idiot. Did you really think she’d follow through with all the depravities you suggested, just to capture Alexander’s attention? You’ll leave our cousin alone, just as you’ll leave us alone.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” My voice rose slightly, for perhaps I
had
suggested Parysatis act out a few of the tricks I’d picked up as the Whore of Sogdian Rock, perversions I knew would repulse even Alexander. How was I to know the little twit would see through my ruse? “My visits today were done with goodwill,” I said, gaining control of myself, “which I see is not reciprocated. I shall not trouble myself in that manner again.”

And with that, I swept from Stateira’s pavilion, thankful to see Parizad skulking outside Hephaestion’s tent. A yellow mongrel dog was tied outside and growled a threat, but I grabbed my brother by the forearm and dragged him to my tent.

“Begin tonight,” I commanded as we entered its dark interior, the comforting scent of spikenard perfume soothing my ragged breathing. I dabbed more on my neck from an alabaster elephant bottle with shaking hands. “One at a time—Stateira first. Then we shall deal with the rest of them.”

“You sound like our father.”

There was a crack like a whip as my palm slapped the side of his face. He reared back. “What’s wrong with you?” he howled, clutching his face like an injured child.

“Don’t ever compare me to Oxyartes of Balkh. I do this for us.
We
do this for each other.”

He rubbed his cheek and lifted gleaming eyes to mine. “Hephaestion rebuffed me, Roxana,” he said, his lower lip trembling. “I need him.”

Piss and shit, but I wanted to slap him again.

“Don’t snivel,” I said, instead caressing his smooth cheek, which was already flushing with the outline of my hand. My beautiful brother, like a mirror into my own soul. “It doesn’t become you. Your lust for Alexander’s plaything has made you weak.”

“But I love him.”

I scoffed at that, for how could my brother love that catamite? Of all the people on earth, Parizad and I had only ever loved each other and I refused to share him with Hephaestion of Macedon any longer.

Everyone I might have ever loved—my mother and father, Bagoas, and now Alexander—had betrayed me. I’d forgiven Parizad for abandoning me in the desert with Darius, but I’d never let him leave me again.

He was all I had left.

I embraced him, and kissed the angry handprint on his cheek. “You shall soon have Hephaestion on his knees, weak with gratitude for your love.”

“You swear it?”

“On my very breath.”

He pulled back. “And if we’re caught?”

“We won’t be,” I said. “Everything shall be as we will it.”

In the end, only one of Alexander’s queens would remain at his side.

Me.

CHAPTER 22

Susa, Persia

Drypetis

We remained in Susa for five weeks after the weddings and then embarked on the tedious procession toward Ecbatana, a journey that would take many months due to the sweltering summer heat and the impressive baggage train. Hephaestion and I learned to further appreciate each other’s tastes both in and out of bed, and we stayed up long into the night arguing the merits of Greek writers, often reading to each other while naked over glasses of chilled wine and sweetmeats. I’d had plenty of practice with Greek literature after Stateira’s moonings over Plato’s droll treatises—dry enough to put even a dead man to sleep—but Hephaestion introduced me to the heady verses of Anacreon and especially Sappho.

Now my heart, paining my bosom,

Pants with desire as a maenad

Mad for the orgiac revel.

Now under my skin run subtle

Arrows of flame, and my body

Quivers with surge of emotion.

Those particular verses he’d murmured line by line while dropping kisses along my neck. I didn’t care to think of what emotion I felt toward Hephaestion now, for it was easier to insult him than to ponder how my feelings were transforming. He did make me pant and quiver for him each night, and many mornings too, which was certainly something.

My evenings might have been spent enjoying Hephaestion’s tutelage in bed-sport, but I soon spent my days in the dark interior of Stateira’s traveling cart, as I tended to my sister and her mysterious new malady.

Stateira grew listless and her stomach gave her trouble several days after our departure from Susa, a fact that the camp greeted with secret smiles and conspiratorial whispers, believing that Alexander had so quickly fathered a child on her. Even he swaggered about like a man who had sired twenty boys in so many years.

And then Stateira’s moon bloods came.

Still, her stomach remained sour and she struggled to keep down even ox broth. Then, after a few days, she would recover, and her cheeks would blossom with their rosy glow, only to succumb to the illness again.

“I wish our grandmother were here,” I said one night as I spooned watery barley
ptisan
into Stateira’s mouth. She swallowed obediently, no mean feat, as the gray sludge wasn’t fit for feeding mules. “I hate seeing you suffer like this. If you were a broken chariot axle or winch line . . .”

“Then you’d already have mended me.” Stateira gave a wan smile as I dabbed the corner of her lips with a clean cloth. “You’re so smart, Drypetis, smarter than I’ll ever be.”

“Hush,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I may be able to measure angles and mix tar, but I’ve always looked to you for guidance in everything else.”

She flushed. “Then perhaps you should pretend I’m one of your machines. I weary of this illness.”

I pursed my lips at her feeble complaint. I’d have been far more useful if my sister
had
been a splintered battering ram or a goat cart with a broken wheel that I could fix. Our grandmother Sisygambis would have known what to do, but she had remained in Susa, claiming that her old bones were too weary to traipse to the ends of the empire. I’d craned my neck as our wagons left for Babylon, watching through bleary eyes until the speck of our indomitable grandmother disappeared into nothingness, knowing it would likely be the last time I saw her. Now Stateira was left with only me to bathe her forehead with damp linens while moth-eaten physicians consulted one another.