The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(47)
He pointed to a tomb that was half tumbled down but still provided a decent amount of shelter from wind and prying eyes. I gestured for Sennefer to escort Cleopatra inside and led the way, sword drawn in case we weren’t the only ones—human or animal—who’d thought to take refuge there that night.
Being inside the tomb was like standing inside the shell of a cracked egg. The roof had been split open, and the night sky showed through the wide, jagged crack. Painted figures of men and women, long-faded and peeling away from the plaster, strode around a border near the top of the wall or reclined indolently on couches. Above that, where the wall arched toward the ceiling, a pair of fierce, spotted leopards sat facing each other. Guardians of the place, it seemed. I hoped they wouldn’t mind us intruding just long enough to spend a single watchful night.
In the most sheltered corner, Sennefer produced tools from one of the many pouches on his embroidered belt, and in almost no time at all, he’d conjured a neat, small, smokeless fire with admirable efficiency. I watched as he stripped off his cloak and folded it into a thick pad for the queen to sit upon. Cleopatra sank gracefully down onto it, arranging the folds of her own cloak artfully around her, as if the cold stone floor of the ancient tomb was one of the gilded couches on her pleasure barge. I admired her composure.
Sorcha sank down beside her, and the queen reached over to squeeze my sister’s hand, a silent gesture that somehow managed to convey friendship, strength, and gratitude all at the same time. Had it been anyone else, I might have felt a sting of sisterly jealousy for how close the two of them were. As it was, I was just grateful that, for all the years I had missed her so desperately, Sorcha had been able to rely on at least one true, deep friendship in a world that had never really stopped seeing her as a barbarian. Saving Cleopatra had been the right thing to do, I thought.
As the little fire began to warm the chamber, the rest of our group drifted inside and, one by one, found a space to lay down a cloak. We would sleep close by each other tonight, surrounded by the tumbled shelter of the ruins.
“Who built this place?” Lysa wondered out loud, gazing up at the painted leopards.
“The Etruscans,” Kronos said, hunkering down in front of a gap in the stone wall where he could keep another watch out. “It’s ancient. Older even than Rome, they say.”
“You mean Rome isn’t the first, last, and everything of all the whole wide world?” Gratia said with a sarcastic snort.
Some of the other girls grinned at that, but I couldn’t help wondering if Rome wouldn’t one day lie in runs, just like this place. A vanished city, a fallen empire, a forgotten people . . .
I sank down on my haunches across the fire from Cleopatra and Sorcha. “Apologies for the rough conditions, Majesty,” I said, stretching out my fingers to the warmth of the flames.
“Nonsense.” Cleopatra waved away my apology with one hand. “I’m not some delicate blossom.”
When a full goblet of wine suddenly appeared in that same hand—Sennefer was nothing if not a master of his queen’s creature comforts—Cleopatra took a moment, and a sip, and then she fixed her gaze upon me like one of the bards around my father’s fire would when I was little and they had a story to tell me.
“When I was a girl,” the queen said in a voice full of memory, “my father took me on an excursion out into the desert, past the Valley of the Kings to a place deep in the canyons. We spent three days there, sleeping under the stars, beneath the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari, in the shadow of Djeser-Djeseru—the great mortuary temple of my mighty ancestress, the Pharaoh Hatshepsut.”
“Ancestress?” For a moment, I thought my Latin had failed me, and I blinked at her in confusion. “A pharaoh? Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I was under the impression that only the . . . well, only men were allowed to take the title of pharaoh.”
“They called Hatshepsut ‘She Who Is King,’” Cleopatra explained. “But you’re right. It was a long time ago, in an age when women were considered inferior.” Her eyes shone with a hard light, like a freshly sharpened blade. I knew perfectly well her own views on such things. “So the mighty Hatshepsut,” she continued, “declared herself the son of the great god Ra, tied on a ceremonial beard and a golden phallus, and ascended the throne. None dared gainsay her. She ruled wisely and well, and Aegypt flourished under her benevolent and generous kingship.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see Elka gaping at Cleopatra, clearly impressed by the strength of Hatshepsut’s character.
“You girls . . .” Cleopatra waved a hand at where our ludus sisters were scattered about, hunkering down to prepare for a night of fitful, anxious sleep. “You are, in a way, just as much her daughters as I am. You are her heirs in spirit.”
“My queen.” Neferet spoke up from where she’d been listening. “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you mean by that?”
Cleopatra grinned at the girl who hailed from her own country. “I don’t mind at all. And you, my dear, are a perfect example.”
“I am?”
“You are the physician to this company, are you not?”
Neferet frowned, but once she realized that Cleopatra’s question wasn’t a mocking one, she nodded. “Yes. I am.”
“And you are a woman?”
Antonia leaned forward and answered for her. “She is.”