Still, she looked up at him with her fierce silver eyes and nodded. She picked up her distaff from the corner. It should have been taken from her after the battle, and Agrippa wondered how she had gained possession, why no one had reported it. She turned her distaff sideways, and looked at his arm, splinted since the battle. His ribs still pained him as well, bruised and cracked, no doubt, but nothing to be done about that. Agrippa had fought in many battles over the years, and pain followed him wherever he went.

Auðr shook her head, touched his arm, and spun the distaff briefly, and with that, the pains in his arm and chest were gone. Agrippa tried not to be amazed, but he was. He thought for a moment about what it would be like to go into battle with such a sorceress, but then he snorted. This was not the Roman way, and he would not start being something else now.

“Thank you,” he said, and that was all.

With Auðr, the general descended to the prisons.

Many of his former men cried his name as he passed, amazed that he still lived after what they’d seen in the arena. He walked past the traitors destined for execution, the soldiers who’d risen to Antony’s commands and fought against Agrippa’s men. All of them seemed to have lost their minds, in any case. At last, Agrippa discovered the Damascene huddled in the corner of his cell, trying to conceal himself in a shadow.

“You are a servant to Cleopatra,” Agrippa said, and Nicolaus shook his head.

“No longer.”

“You smuggled her into the city. Do you know how to kill her?”

Nicolaus was startled.

“Is she escaped? Where is she? What has she done?”

“She is still caged, or so the priestess swears,” said Agrippa. “But I have looked into her eyes. I know what she is capable of.”

“I have only an idea of what to do,” Nicolaus said. “And that idea is a myth, not a certainty.”

From behind Agrippa stepped Auðr. Nicolaus backed farther into the corner of his cell, convinced that she was a death bringer. He’d seen her working in the arena, her hands spinning, the light of her power surrounding her. His legs had grown spindly, and he doubted he could run when his cell door opened, but he planned to try.

She peered through the bars at Nicolaus.

Agrippa watched her fingers tracing complicated patterns in the air, winding them about that wooden spindle. He opened the door of Nicolaus’s cell for her to enter.

Somehow, Nicolaus found that he could not move. Her eyes were strangely hypnotic. He felt himself tilting, and she put the flat of her palm against his forehead. Her brow furrowed, and she cocked her head as though listening.

His mind sped unwillingly through the events of his life, from his childhood to the present, dwelling on Alexandria. He felt it happening but could not control it. He watched as he paged through scrolls, filling in gaps in the text with his own inventions. He watched as he taught the summoning spell to Cleopatra and as he discovered her in the hold of the ship, the child in her hands, the dead slaves at her feet. At last, she came to his revelation. The Hydra.