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named Fido.
    “Read this,” she said curtly when the council assembled, thrusting the scroll at Cha’em. “All of you, read it.”
    “If Antonius brings his legions, he can sack Alexandria and Memphis,” Sosigenes said, handing the scroll to Apollodorus. “Since the plague, no one has the spirit to resist. Nor do we have the numbers to resist. There are many gold statues to melt down.”
    Cha’em was the high priest of Ptah, the creator god, and had been a beloved part of Cleopatra’s life since her tenth year. His brown, firm body was wrapped from just below the nipples to mid-calf in a flaring white linen dress, and around his neck he wore the complex array of chains, crosses, roundels, and breastplate proclaiming his position. “Antonius will melt nothing down,” he said firmly. “You will go to Tarsus, Cleopatra, meet him there.”
    “Like a chattel ? Like a mouse ? Like a whipped cur ?”
    “No, like a mighty sovereign. Like Pharaoh Hatshepsut, so great her successor obliterated her cartouches. Armed with all the wiles and cunning of your ancestors. As Ptolemy Soter was the natural brother of Alexander the Great, you have the blood of many gods in your veins. Not only Isis, Hathor, and Mut, but Amun-Ra on two sides—from the line of the pharaohs and from Alexander the Great, who was Amun-Ra’s son and also a god.”
    “I see where Cha’em is going,” said Sosigenes thoughtfully. “This Marcus Antonius is no Caesar, therefore he can be duped. You must awe him into pardoning you. After all, you didn’t aid Cassius, and he can’t prove you did. When this Quintus Dellius arrives, he will try to cow you. But you are Pharaoh, no minion has the power to cow you.”
    “A pity that the fleet you sent Antonius and Octavianus was obliged to turn back,” said Apollodorus.
    “Oh, what’s done is done!” Cleopatra said impatiently. She sat back in her chair, suddenly pensive. “No one can cow Pharaoh, but…Cha’em, ask Tach’a to look at the lotus petals in her bowl. Antonius might have a use.”
    Sosigenes looked startled. “Majesty!”
    “Oh, come, Sosigenes, Egypt matters more than any living being! I have been a poor ruler, deprived of Osiris time and time again! Do I care what kind of man this Marcus Antonius is? No, I do not! Antonius has Julian blood. If the bowl of Isis says there is enough Julian blood in him, then perhaps I can take more from him than he can from me.”
     

     
    “I will do it,” said Cha’em, getting to his feet.
    “Apollodorus, will Philopator’s river barge sustain a sea voyage to Tarsus at this time of year?”
    The lord high chamberlain frowned. “I’m not sure, Majesty.”
    “Then bring it out of its shed and send it to sea.”
    “Daughter of Amun-Ra, you have many ships!”
    “But Philopator built only two ships, and the oceangoing one rotted a hundred years ago. If I am to awe Antonius, I must arrive in Tarsus in a kind of state that no Roman has ever witnessed, not even Caesar.”
     
     
    To Quintus Dellius, Alexandria was the most wondrous city in the world. The days when Caesar had almost destroyed it were seven years in the past, and Cleopatra had raised it in greater glory than ever. All the mansions down Royal Avenue had been restored, the Hill of Pan towered over the flat city lushly green, the hallowed precinct of Serapis had been rebuilt in the Corinthian mode, and where once siege towers had groaned and lumbered up and down Canopic Avenue, stunning temples and public institutions gave the lie to plague and famine. Indeed, thought Dellius erroneously, gazing at Alexandria from the top of Pan’s hill, for once in his life great Caesar exaggerated the degree of destruction he had wrought.
    As yet he hadn’t seen the Queen, who was, a lordly man named Apollodorus had informed him loftily, on a visit to the Delta to see her paper manufactories. So he had been shown his quarters—very sumptuous they were, too—and left largely to his own devices. To