Free 0316382981 by Emily Holleman Page B

eunuch should have beamed with pride, and praised her for her wit, and wondered at her resolve. “The cleverest Ptolemy of all,” he should have named her. She’d imagined it a thousand times: how he would lift her up and spin her around, as her father used to do with Cleopatra. One picture had lodged itself in Arsinoe’s mind: their father, still clad in the trappings of the Upper Lands, the double crown perched upon his head, and her sister a blur of swirling crimson. Cleopatra had dressed herself as Isis, her eyes rimmed with kohl and her flowing garment knotted at the front. Arsinoe had thought it foolish, but when she saw the two together, the New Dionysus and his Isis, she’d changed her mind. They looked for all the world like a pair of gods, exalted in their twirling heaven. And this meeting was to mark her own triumph, her reward for all those quaking nights. The eunuch had spoiled it.
    “Embrace her, Ganymedes. The girl’s earned your approval.” Myrrine prodded the tutor, breaking a dark hair from the comb’s teeth.
    “I don’t seek anyone’s approval. And I don’t need my nursemaid to beg favors for me. Hold your tongue, Myrrine.”
    The servant frowned and looked away. Arsinoe wanted to unsay her own words, but she stayed quiet. She’d learned that skill.
    “Come, my child,” Ganymedes commanded, and she obeyed, trailing her tutor through the Sisters’ Courtyard. The name itself stung; there were no sisters now. Or rather, it was the wrong two sisters: her and Berenice. But she brightened to see the water gushing from Arsinoe’s fountain. It wasn’t named for her, of course, but for one of her illustrious namesakes. Full-cheeked and full-bodied, the erstwhile queen stood between two columns, a half smile on her lips.
    But Ganymedes was in no mood to stall. He tramped onward, his hulking form dwarfed by the soaring marble archways of the porticoes. The ancients, her tutor had told her once, had built their tombs this way to mimic the towering heavens. She felt small beneath, though she suspected that her father and her forefathers had emulated this style because they felt so very large. The scores of guards that flanked the columned walkways felt large as well. She could tell by their heavy steps, their hands resting on their hilts. She counted twenty, twenty-five, thirty guards before she tired of the task. And here and there, she caught a glimpse of spattered streaks, the dark end of the New Dionysus’s rule.
    Soon Arsinoe and Ganymedes passed into the courtyards that had been built long ago, by her great-grandfather Ptolemy the Potbelly. The change was sharp. Gone were the twirling dryads and piping satyrs that her father preferred. Instead, the walls were carved with scenes from Alexander’s life: first, the magnificent general loosening his sword to cut the Gordian knot, and later, spear drawn, galloping down upon the fleeing Persian army. Arsinoe saw her own father’s face in place of Alexander’s; she wondered how he would fare if faced by such adversaries. She couldn’t be sure. The Persian king looked fierce in his chariot, whip in one hand, sword in the other. Would her father have stood and fought—or fled as he’d fled before her sister’s men?
    As she followed Ganymedes toward the library, the summer breeze blew away the flimsy ghosts of those bloody days. The grounds danced with the delights of summer, nymphs spat streams against their marble basins, roses peeked out from flower beds, figs unfolded green leaves against the blue of sky and sea. The world looked as though nothing had changed, as though the goings-on in the palace were mere child’s play compared with the work of the undying gods.
    “‘I’m not ashamed to sail through trouble with you, to make your troubles mine,’” * Arsinoe told Ganymedes, beaming. She’d prove that she merited his approval. She’d show him that she had studied the works he sent. And profited from each one.
    “You look to Ismene now