The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(66)

She raised an eyebrow, but after a moment, she graciously inclined her head and said, “There is rather a lot of sand.”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing out loud. Less than two years earlier, I’d been the daughter of a king. Serene in the knowledge that one day, after I’d attained my rightful status as a celebrated warrior, I would have become a queen of my people. I shook my head at the very thought. The girl I’d been then probably would have become the kind of queen who would have had the Cantii at war with half a dozen other tribes inside of a month.

But a leader, I now knew, wasn’t just the hand that held a sword the best. Even in small things, beneath her glittering veneer of willful arrogance and wild abandon, Cleopatra was a statesman. A diplomat and a queen, with the temperament and training to rule her people wisely. Even in the shadow of a brawling, bullying juggernaut like Rome. Especially since she was a woman.

I understood why she and Sorcha had become such great friends.

And I understood why men were powerless in her presence.

I shook my head and excused myself, leaving the boys on deck to hover around the queen like bees around a blossom, and went below to see my sister. Sorcha had not been up on deck very often since we began the journey, and I was growing increasingly worried about her. I understood, in that light, why Charon was reluctant to let her know about his own difficulties—he wanted her to focus on healing herself. Neferet had been attending to her, giving her potions to ease the searing headaches that made even the dimmest light unbearable. She’d also begun to administer poultices to Sorcha’s head wound when she’d noticed a degree of swelling around the stiches she’d sewn there immediately after we’d left Cosa.

She was there with my sister when I climbed down into the cool darkness belowdecks, holding a bowl that Sorcha weakly vomited the latest potion dose into before collapsing back onto the makeshift bed we’d arranged for her. Antonia was there too, waiting at the bottom of the ladder, and she stopped me, holding out an arm. Once we were beyond reach of our enemies, she’d switched back to wearing the plain leather sheath on her truncated limb. I looked down at it and thought to myself, Neferet healed Antonia. She will do the same for my sister. It would just take time. And a good long stretch spent on dry land.

“Maybe best to just let her rest, Fallon,” Antonia said quietly. “Nef’s been trying to make her comfortable, but she’s very restless—”

“Fallon!” Sorcha called out, her voice reedy and thin. “Is that you? Are you there?”

“Here, Sorcha. I’m right here . . .”

I went and sat on the edge of her cot. She looked at me, squinting and twisting her head so she could see me clearly with her good eye. She looked gaunt in the light of the tallow lamp that burned on a nearby crate, and the bandage wrapped around her head was stained with blood and tar-sticky unguents.

“Look at you. Your hair’s a mess,” she said, reaching up to smooth down the strands that the sea wind had been playing with all afternoon. “Where’s Clota? Have her brush it out and give you a proper plait before supper.”

I blinked at her, confused, and then looked at Neferet. Her small face was lined with concern, and she shook her head at me.

“You’ve been off in the vale again all day and look like a wild pony . . .” Sorcha kept fretfully stroking my hair. “And light the lamps, will you? It’s so dark in here . . .”

I took Sorcha’s hand and squeezed it between my own until she relaxed, sinking back into the cloak that was bundled behind her head like a pillow with a ragged sigh. After a few moments, she seemed to drift off into a doze. I placed her hand gently on her chest and stood, beckoning Neferet away from where she lay.

“Clota is my father’s bondswoman,” I said. “She took care of us after our mother died.”

Neferet nodded. “Sorcha’s confused. She has been for a while now.”

“Is it the draughts you’re giving her?”

“I don’t think so. She barely keeps enough of them down,” Neferet said. “I’m no expert, but I think she’s aggravated her old injury from the chariot accident long ago. There may be a pressure point—like a kind of bruise—on the inside of her head, but . . .” She shrugged, a look of frustration on her face. “I don’t even think Heron was skilled at remedying such a thing. There are doctors in Aegypt, though, who might be. Heron told me about them. They call them trepanners, and they are surgeons of the brain. They have tools to drill holes in the cranium—that’s the skull—and . . .”

She stopped when she looked up and saw my expression. I felt as though I might empty the contents of my stomach too, if she didn’t stop talking.

“Um.” She shrugged. “I just meant . . . perhaps they can help.”

“I’m sure they can,” I murmured, swallowing thickly.

Then I mustered an encouraging smile and climbed the ladder topside. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure. But I was sure that hovering over Neferet in the hold of the ship while she did her very best to make my sister well again wasn’t going to help.



* * *



—



The days continued to pass in a kind of waking dream. Mornings broke, blue and gold, evenings shaded to russet and purple, and the white eye of the sun glared balefully down on us from a mostly cloudless sky as we traveled ever southward across the sea. Sometimes we could see land, sometimes only waves. Boredom came and went, mitigated by practice drills and deck chores and storytelling. Usually in the form of a circle of Cleopatra’s admirers listening as she regaled them with more tales of her land and people. One afternoon, when I was done filing the burrs from my blades after a bout with Cai, I wandered over to hear what the queen was saying, leaning on the ship rail as she spoke again about her lady pharaoh ancestress.