Free Keeper of the Flame by Tracy L. Higley Page A

easily go unseen.
    From the steps that led from the harbor, she crept along the garden wall until she reached the juncture where the wall met the palace. Here, a small door provided a quick exit for gardeners tending to the plants and flowers outside the official gardens. She had to bend to enter, so small was the opening. In the cobwebby darkness beyond, she squeaked the door closed, then eased upright. Silent as a tomb and just as dark. But Sophia and Cleopatra had often come this way when the queen was a child. Now Sophia moved forward, grateful to be on sure footing.
    The corridor shot straight through the lowest level of the palace, and within minutes she emerged into the inner courtyard garden.
    The sun had dropped below the palace walls, leaving her in blessed shadow. Only one soldier seemed about, beside the main entrance. He rolled his shoulders as though he had stood too long.
    Sophia slipped along the inner wall, into another corridor that branched through the palace. A few yards down, and stone steps brought her to the throne room level.
    Where are you, Cleopatra?
    Would she find the queen alone, where she could entreat herto secure the release of Sosigenes? Or would Cleo be with him , the Roman who had imprisoned the scholar so unjustly?
    She slipped along the chambered hall, peering into each room she passed.
    She thought again of her rooms in the lighthouse. She would be lighting the lamps now if she were there. Settling down for the evening with some scrolls of Plato, or perhaps Zeno of Citium. A wave of anger at those who had forced her from comfort pulsed through her chest.
    She heard chanting from the throne room ahead. Though it had only a modest squared entryway, the room opened into a grand columned hall, with carved reliefs and painted frescoes in the classic Egyptian style. The Greeks had always acted so in Egypt. Part flattery of imitation and part diplomacy and placating, they continued the styles of architecture and even religion that they had found when Alexander first arrived in Egypt three hundred years ago.
    The throne room had no windows. Cleopatra’s father had built it to control the amount of light at any time of day.
    With the night spreading up the corridor behind her and only a few lamps lit in the hall ahead, Sophia at first saw nothing but the dancing flames when she approached the doorway.
    Several figures soon revealed themselves in the darkness. Cleopatra and her brother stood at the front of the hall, on the floor level below the raised platform that held two carved thrones with lion-head armrests. Before the two royals, a tiny bald priest lifted a sistrum in one hand, and an amulet on a cord in the other. Braziers on either side of the hall afforded the only light in the huge chamber, creating eerie shadows above the fluted columns, their middles bulging in the Egyptian style. To the left,a tall man with a squared jaw and steady eyes stood watching. He was dressed in the Roman fashion, with a toga that was simply a plainer version of the Greek himation swept about his shoulders, and his left hand held at his rib cage in the Roman way. She had seen him only from the distance of the top row of theater seats.
    A few others stood about, but she ignored them, drawn instead to the center of the room.
    She had stumbled into Cleopatra and Ptolemy’s wedding ceremony.
    Her foot scraped the granite floor, and the two in front turned to her.
    Cleopatra let a smile play on her lips when she saw Sophia, then held out a hand. “Of course you should be here. Come and stand beside me.”
    Sophia crossed the room, mindful of Caesar’s eyes on her. Even without speaking, he had a presence, a raw power about him that made one self-conscious. She found herself wishing she had dressed differently.
    Cleopatra squeezed her hand and pulled her close.
    “Are you certain about this?” Sophia whispered into her ear.
    Cleopatra smiled, but her answer was spoken through clenched teeth. “What choice do I