The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston Page A

head tilted toward the slave. “Kill him.”
    â€œI’m unarmed,” Juba said, holding out against hope.
    Octavian’s smile only grew. “Oh, but you do have a weapon.” His arm still around his stepbrother’s shoulder, he turned him around so that he was squared up to the old man. Then the Imperator of Rome looked down at the Trident in his hands. “No need to blunt the points. Move his blood.”
    Move his blood? Juba stared for a moment, uncomprehending. Then, with horror, the realization of what he was being asked to do washed over him. He knew with full certainty, just as he’d known he could knock over the cup of wine in Octavian’s office, that he could reach out, feel the flow of blood in his old friend’s body, and stop it: with the power of the Trident he could seize up the stream of life in the man’s veins and kill him. Juba could even see Quintus’ dead eyes, wide and frozen, in his mind. But he couldn’t really do it, could he? “But, brother, I—”
    â€œDon’t tell me you’re tired. You’re rested. You said so yourself. Now. You can move wine and barrels of water. Move blood.”
    Quintus suddenly looked like a caged beast, his eyes a mix of terror and confusion. His gaze at last met and locked on Juba’s, and the awareness that they each had a choice to make passed between them. Juba had to choose whether he would kill his old friend. Quintus had to choose whether he would reveal Juba’s secrets to Octavian.
    The slave smiled and began to pull air into his lungs. He opened his mouth as if to speak.
    Before he could change his mind, Juba closed his eyes and tried to push the face of his old friend out of his thoughts. Then—forcing himself to keep down the heaving of his stomach, to keep in the tears of his eyes—he raised the gleaming Trident, held tight to the two snakes, and felt the metal beneath his flesh grow warm.
    Speed, he thought. Do it quickly. For his friendship. For his silence.

 
    6
    C LEOPATRA ’ S D AUGHTER

    ALEXANDRIA, 32 BCE
    Cleopatra Selene couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just that they were staying in the noisier old palace on Lochias while workers installed new statues at their home on the harbor island of Antirhodos that kept her awake. They’d moved back and forth between the royal palaces enough to make each feel as much like home as the other. No, it was the feeling that she was being left out that she didn’t like. She knew there was a big meeting in the council chambers, not far away. She’d heard her mother talking about it in the square that afternoon: a messenger, news from Rome.
    Rome . Lying in bed, the eight-year-old mouthed the word into the darkness, holding the sound of it out, like a long, slow exhalation. Rome.
    In her dreams it was a golden place, more opulent than even fair Alexandria. Its streets shone in the light of a kinder sun. Its people laughed in their many-colored clothes: happy, peaceful, content. For what else could the peoples of the world aspire to be than citizens of Rome? Did not her own father want more than anything to return to Rome, his home? Was that not what his fight was about? He often told her and her brothers that most Romans were loyal to his cause. Most Romans would love them. It was only a scant few—wicked men, like Octavian—who denied the true spirit of Rome, the spirit of the great Julius Caesar, which survived in her stepbrother, Caesarion.
    What news had the messenger brought? Her mother had said her father feared the worst. Probably something to do with Octavian, then. Most bad news seemed to be tied to him.
    War, perhaps. Selene knew all the servants expected it would come to that eventually. She overheard them talking about it when they didn’t know she was listening or didn’t care—how, they thought, could a girl understand? It was a lot like the attitudes of those the servants served,