His heart filled with fury as he thought of the things he’d overheard. The false messenger sent by Augustus to swear that Cleopatra was dead. The bribes paid by Augustus to sway the Egyptian army and tear them from Antony’s service. The fact that Augustus had knowingly buried Cleopatra alive.

The fact that she still lived. Antony paid no attention to the other things Augustus swore, the visions he said he’d seen in Cleopatra’s eyes. They were the visions of a coward. If he had been as drunk in Alexandria as it seemed he was now, it was no wonder he’d hallucinated Cleopatra into a monster.

Where was Cleopatra? It had been Antony’s only question in Hades, and it was his only question here. Augustus swore she was in Rome, swore she’d just left his rooms, and as Antony stood against the wall, shaking with wrath, the emperor and Agrippa had discussed their plans to trap and kill her in the Circus Maximus.

What could he do to save her? He was nothing, an echo of his former self. He had no body, no hands to pick up a sword.

Antony thought about his wife’s extraordinary resourcefulness. Long ago, in a betting game, she’d informed him that she could serve him a meal worth ten million sesterces, more expensive than any banquet that had ever graced his table.

He took the bet, scoffing, and she promptly called for a cup of vinum acer, removed one of her tremendous sea pearl earrings, and dropped it into the goblet. It dissolved, rendering the vinegar free of acid. They drank that wine together, and he laughed, awestruck at her invention.

“A glass of wine with you,” she told him, “is more valuable than anything else I possess.”

She had transformed vinegar to wine for him, no matter the price, and he would do the same for her.

It meant nothing that Antony’s hands could not hold a sword. He could still declare war against her enemies. There were many ears in Rome, and not all of them were devoted to the Boy Emperor.

Augustus thought that Antony was only a ghost, and no longer a warrior.

It was not the first time an enemy had fatally underestimated Mark Antony.

He smiled as he emerged from the Palatine and made his way down the hillside, his body nearly transparent in the afternoon sunlight.

It was not hard to find the men who had once been his soldiers. With Rome at peace, they congregated in bars and brothels, and the city was filled with them, in various phases of inebriation. Egyptian gold filled their pockets.

What would be difficult was finding men who would be loyal to him again. Most of the men Antony saw had shifted to the side of Octavian after Actium. He did not need disloyal soldiers. Antony had hoped to locate Canidius and the rest of his senior officers, the best-trained men in the army, but his lieutenant had been executed in Alexandria. Antony listened to the men sing bar songs of the bravery of Canidius Crassus. Of course his officers were dead.