“Why should we surrender our holding to you?” the elder priest asked. His eyes were no longer clouded but bright.

“And why should I not kill you?” Agrippa asked the priest, pulling a concealed dagger from its sheathe against his thigh and swiftly drawing it beneath the old man’s chin, not to cut his throat but to warn the other priests. Why did Agrippa’s men not move? What delayed their hands?

A thin trickle of blood made its way down from the blade. A scratch.

It was then that Agrippa felt his own throat begin to constrict.

Outside the temple walls, three men in homespun cloaks watched the gate. The smallest of the three fit his gloved fingers into the spaces in the stone. He hauled himself carefully up the wall, his muscles wobbling with exertion.

His companions, a younger man with ink-stained fingers and saddleweary thighs after three days’ hard riding from Rome, and a tall man, his dark skin nearly invisible in the shadows, hesitated for a moment and then, breathing deeply, followed the emperor into the temple.

12

Chrysate crouched on her haunches, nursing a flame and pinching a lump of beeswax in her fingers. Now that Augustus was finally gone, she was at liberty to cast the final portions of her love spell. Selene would relent. She’d already cast the rudiments, with the birds and flowers who sang for the child a nonstop melody, a trance-inducing chant, but Selene had managed to resist most of them. She would not resist this, and now that Chrysate had renewed herself, she was strong enough to perform it. She shuddered. It was exceedingly unpleasant that Augustus had seen her coming out of the cauldron, but she’d dealt with that well enough, throwing herself through the shadows and into his bedchamber, concealing herself there. The theriac had made the emperor uncertain. She’d merely emphasized it, and it had yielded a happy outcome. Augustus had left Rome shortly thereafter, no doubt because of his concern over his sanity.

Already tonight, Chrysate had slipped into the silver room, past the guards. The Psylli had been the only true barrier. Had he been guarding the room, she might have had more trouble, but he’d departed with Augustus. Now she had the silver box containing Cleopatra. She felt more confident by the moment. Why had she been so afraid? All she needed was Selene. It would work. It had to. For a moment, only a moment, but it was enough, she’d been able to see Hecate in the scry, chained still but stronger than she had been.

Chrysate sculpted the wax into the form of a young girl, her bosom and waist newly curving but her limbs still childlike. She entwined a long black hair into the figure’s flesh, twisting the strand about the figure’s wrists, and binding them behind the girl’s back. She sang as she did this, a wordless incantation in a voice by turns rough and silken.

When the figure and spell were nearly complete, Chrysate pulled a golden pin from her braids and stabbed the doll through the heart. It opened its waxen mouth and gasped. It stretched out its waxen arms and writhed on the floor, pinned like a butterfly.