Her distaff was under guard, somewhere nearby. She could feel it, if she could not see it.

Now that she had seen Cleopatra, she knew that she would need it. If there was any hope at all, it rested in Auðr.

She was seized with a spasm of coughing, raw and painful, and when it finally ended, her hands were spattered with blood. She felt about on the tapestry, testing the strength of her own thread. Cleopatra was coming, no matter the seiðkona’s health. Without the distaff, Auðr could be of little use.

She opened the door into the corridor and made her way through the marble complex. As she walked, she brushed aside the threads belonging to all those who lived in Rome. Her own thread was knotted with these destinies, its golden span tangled and braided in ways she had not imagined it could be. She might ensure the fall or the rise of Rome with her actions here. She might break bloodlines, or make them. Most of all, she might find the source of the chaos, the thing that was twisting the pattern, the reason she’d come.

The queen, and whatever it was that twined with her.

Cleopatra’s fate rippled, a strong strand, weaving itself against the souls of those in this house. She was coming, then. She had decided to act.

The seiðkona found a barely bearded youth standing uneasily against a wall. Her distaff was inside the room he guarded. She bent her back, a crippled old woman in need of an arm to hold. As the youth approached her, she worked a small magic.

The boy smiled upon her and opened the door.

12

Cleopatra crept out of Virgil’s doorway and into the city. She moved quickly over the stones, wending through alleys as though she carried the map of Rome in her bones. She did not know this sector, but she could smell the Theater of Pompey, and she went toward it. Julius Caesar’s heart’s blood, shed there so many years ago, gave off a metallic, vinegary tang that was instantly recognizable.

She heard the sounds of the inhabitants of Rome, even though she did not see most of them. The splashing of chamber pots emptied over balconies, the terrified cries of those in the grip of nightmares, the coos of Parthian courtesans to their clients, the stretching joints of acrobats preparing for the next day’s employment.

She trotted past Caesar’s rose gardens and across the wooden bridge over the Tiber, her body regaining memory with each step. Before her was the enormity of the Circus Maximus, the chariot racing and gladiatorial arena, with its high wooden walls and oblong shape.

There, on the other side of the arena, was the Palatine Hill, crowned so thickly with white marble structures that it looked like a snow-capped mountain. Atop it, gilded, and shining even in the darkness, was the Temple of Apollo, newly built since her last visit. There were more new buildings, too, chief among them a complex that she knew housed Octavian. Augustus, Nicolaus had told her, but she did not care that her enemy had changed his name.