Throne of Isis by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788636179
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-07-10T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Six

A soldier in winter quarters asked little but to be warm and fed and supplied with the occasional woman, or if his taste ran elsewhere, a willing boy. So much Dione understood from what she had seen of armies. Warmth, Cleopatra had brought in the form of winter clothing; food, too, she had brought, and wine. Women and boys they found, one way and another.

Commanders, however, knew no such simplicity. Antony, with his queen to warm his bed and enliven his councils, grew more grim rather than less.

It came to a head not long after Cleopatra arrived in Leuke Kome. She was better, Dione thought; the cold clean air agreed with her, and likewise her lover’s presence, though she quarreled with him more often than not. They were just past one such contention, over what, Dione did not remember. Payrolls, maybe, or Judea. A courier brought a satchel of letters, and one separate from them, that Antony leaped on with a lion’s growl.

Dione, behind the queen’s chair, was close enough to see the seal. Octavian’s. She had seen it once or twice before.

Antony did not open the letter at once. He held it, scowling. “It’s something weaselwise again,” he said. “I’ll lay wagers on it. Slithering out of agreements, breaking compacts, calling me a breaker of faith for choosing you and not his milk-faced sister.”

“So read it,” said Cleopatra, “and get it over.”

Antony looked as if he would have argued, but he shrugged and broke the seal. He read in a mutter, too fast to follow – until he let out a bellow that rocked the tent on its poles. “That son of a barracks whore!”

“You flatter him,” said Cleopatra, soft after his thunder. “What has he done now?”

It took Antony a while. He was too furious to speak, first, then too intent on finding new depths of invective. Eventually he began to make sense. “We’re not a triumvirate any longer. He’s got rid of Lepidus. The little rat’s been retired to write his memoirs. And this is the first Hades-reeking word I’ve heard of it!”

Dione lowered her hands from her ears. They were still ringing, but she could hear Cleopatra well enough. “Maybe there’s another letter in the bag, consulting you on the matter.”

“You know there isn’t.” Antony stalked through the tent, the letter still clutched in his fist. “He thinks, because he’s got Rome, that he has everything. But he doesn’t. He has nothing. Nothing but spite.”

“You know you despise Lepidus,” said Cleopatra, “and only found him useful to preserve the fiction of a triune power over Rome. That’s long outlived its usefulness. Can you fault Octavian for tiring of the pretense? At least he let the man live. He could have had him killed.”

“How do we know he didn’t?” Antony raked fingers through his hair, casting the careful curls into disarray. The thin spot on top was clear to see, but for once he seemed not to care. “It’s not that he got rid of Lepidus. It’s that he did it without me.

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