Instead, he ran down the stairs, trying to force himself to do what needed to be done before he had time to regret it. He sprinted through the Circus Maximus and out the gates, saying a silent good-bye to any life he’d had as a historian. His fate had changed, and he must follow it.

He climbed the Palatine Hill. He would go to the emperor.

He’d lost hope of separating Cleopatra from Sekhmet. The queen he’d known was gone.

Now, in spite of his conscience, in spite of his guilt, in spite of his fear, Nicolaus sought a weapon that would kill her.

The senators convened in a secret chamber, quickly accessed from the Circus Maximus, all of them nearly frantic with excitement and shock.

“There is opportunity in this!” cried the first senator. “Augustus employs powers far beyond his control. The emperor will say the fire in the sky was an omen for his success, but Cleopatra lives, and our emperor marched through Rome declaring her dead. He is a liar and a betrayer of the republic. He deals in the very things he decries.”

“More than that. He battles against something Rome has never seen before. What is she?”

“Nothing Rome should provoke.”

“We have all seen her captured.”

“Who can know what we saw? We saw the witch take her. We did not see her destroyed. Who knows who the witch truly serves? Perhaps the emperor seeks to turn Cleopatra to his purposes. To kill his enemies.”

“We are the Senate,” scoffed one. “He would never dare.”

“Do you feel so safe?” asked another.

“The emperor is not as protected as he once was. It was only sorcery that saved him,” said another, still trembling from the proximity of the serpent, from the searing heat of the unnatural fire.

“What emperor of Rome encircles himself with witches?” howled the eldest.

“Even his uncle would never have dared traffic publicly in magic,” said the first, and the group nodded, certain of that. Even aside from all else they had seen that night, it was indisputable that Augustus had gone beyond his predecessors, beyond any code of Rome. Now it was a matter of using the emperor’s error to the advantage of the republic.

“A rebellion.”

“We are too old to rise up,” said the eldest, but even he, with his papery skin and quavering head, felt his hands drawing into fists and his young man’s ambition rising within him.

“We will not be alone in this,” said the final senator, and the rest nodded. “Augustus is not a general. He does not command the military cleanly. They were Antony’s men once, and they may be ours now.”

“And the common people?”

Surely, the events of the night were a sign of disaster for Rome. Surely, they were omens that might be found in the Sibylline prophecies or if they could not, they might be written there, given the proper connections.

The senators possessed such connections.

Once a story was told, it would catch the ears of the people. This was a story that might change the course of Rome.