“I want to write to Augustus,” Nicolaus insisted.

“He reads the prophecies,” Virgil said.

“Augustus has put Rome in danger. He has put the world at risk by capturing her.”

“Then write that,” Virgil said. “Terrify him. Terrify Rome. Make them think their doomsday is coming, and all because of what Augustus has done. Is that not what you believe? This is an opportunity. Didn’t you dream of becoming a historian? This is a history, though it claims to be prophecy. Tell them what they have done, and if it serves the senators, it serves you, too.”

Thus it was that Nicolaus the Damascene began to write prophecy, passing each page to a bribed guard as he finished it. His mind was vague and scattered, but writing kept him from falling over the edge of sanity. He wrote the truth, or at least as much of it as he could, in the guise of a sibyl, thinking back on the various books he’d scanned in Virgil’s library and the tone of the prophets’ voices.

“Then shall all declare that I am a true prophetess, oracle-singing, and yet a messenger with maddened soul. And when thou shalt come forward to the Books, thou shalt not tremble, and all things to come and things that were, ye shall know from our words,” he wrote, pretending that these same words had been written centuries before.

The prophecies would be published as newly discovered, unearthed from an ancient ruin, scrolls found rolled into an amphora or entombed with some hero. They would be read aloud in the Forum and all across the country, drawing support away from Augustus and toward his foes. If the emperor would not deal rationally with Cleopatra, if he would not understand that he caged an immortal, then perhaps someone else would. She must be destroyed, and though Nicolaus did not know how to destroy her, he hoped that someone who read his words might. As for Sekhmet, Nicolaus could only hope that if Cleopatra were killed, the goddess would go back into oblivion, back to where she had been before they summoned her.

Nicolaus was not permitted to use Cleopatra’s name —even oracles could not know everything— and so he named her “the widow.”

He was not permitted to speak directly of Augustus, so he referred to him obliquely. “And then shall come inexorable wrath upon Latin men. Three shall, by piteous fate, endamage Rome. And perish shall all men with their own houses, when from heaven shall flow a fiery cataract.”

Three men and the eye of Ra. Augustus, Antony, and Agrippa, he meant, though he might as well add himself amongst that group. Sekhmet, a flaming vengeance making her way across the heavens. They all would perish, and it was all of their fault. Antony for inciting Cleopatra into trading herself for his life, Augustus for warring against her in the first place, and Agrippa for serving as his general.

As he wrote, his mind chewed over the possibilities. Somewhere in his reading, somewhere in his books, there was an answer.