“Open the corpse,” he said, and Agrippa pulled out a small blade and slit the corpse’s belly.

Octavian was horribly reminded of a sacrifice. Everything inside the body cavity was pale. The emperor had seen enough battles, attended enough deathbed rites, to know that this was not a side effect of death. This was something else.

The man had been drained of his blood.

“Gods,” murmured Agrippa.

The day after Caesarion’s execution, the body of the boy’s tutor, Rhodon, had been discovered in the Museion. It had surely been the action of thieves, nothing unusual in a port city, but the man who reported the death had been terrified. He claimed the body was strange. Shriveled. Octavian shuddered as he remembered. He had not connected it with the queen, not then.

One of Agrippa’s men shouted, beckoning them to view a heap of women’s clothing he’d found on the deck. A rough cape and a linen gown. The emperor caught a whiff of a familiar scent, perfume emanating from the fabric.

He suddenly realized that he was trapped. He looked frantically around. Would she come from the river or the sky?

Another legionary directed Octavian to the small pile of gold coins on the table. They were marked with Cleopatra’s face. Octavian felt his pulse racing. His eye fell on something else.

A silver box engraved with images of Isis and Dionysus.

He’d last seen this box in Cleopatra’s mausoleum. It was a companion to the pyre he’d had her chained to, and inside it was all that was left of her husband.

Octavian stifled a moan. She’d been here. Now she was gone, and he had no way of knowing where she would appear, or who would die next.

He lifted the box of Antony’s ashes. She would not have carried it so far only to leave it behind on purpose. It had to have been an accident. Sooner or later, she would realize that she’d lost it, and then —

He wrapped it carefully in his cloak. It was more precious than gold to him now, more useful than his weapons or any hostage. According to Selene, she did not care about her children but only about her husband.

The box might be the one thing Octavian had that Cleopatra wanted.

That and his own life, he knew that well enough. The only reason he was still alive was that he’d been exceedingly lucky. He could stay no longer in this country. He’d depart for home, where he might have enough time to assemble his own forces and the forces of others against her.

His stomach lurched in a most undignified fashion.

“We return to Alexandria,” he announced. “And then to Rome, as quickly as can be arranged. We do not go toward peace. Marcus Agrippa. You and your men will go in search of something special.”

Agrippa looked at Octavian, his eyes unreadable.

“What is that?”

“Sorcery,” the emperor whispered, thinking of Alexander, thinking of what his hero would have done if faced with such things as these. “Magic to defend Rome. We cannot fight without help. You will find the most powerful sorcerers the world can give you.”