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voices sometimes were. Meriamon wondered if he was a singer. “You will come with me, please,” he said.
    They followed him in silence. Sekhmet walked in Meriamon’s shadow, quiet as a shadow herself, all but invisible.
    The inner rooms were full of women. Meriamon could hear them through the walls like birds in an aviary, fluttering, murmuring, and once a sharp cry, abruptly cut off.
    The room to which the eunuch took them seemed to be the centermost. A slender central pillar held up the roof, and its furnishings were like those in the king’s tent, improbably, almost garishly rich. There were a handful of eunuchs huddled together as if for warmth, three or four veiled women who sat by the wall and did not speak, and in the center, the back of her chair set against the pole, a woman. Another stood beside and a little behind her.
    Neither was veiled. The one who stood was young, though not perhaps in Persian reckoning, and her face was pure Persian, beauty as flawless as a carving in ivory.
    The other was old. Her bones were magnificent; she would have been a great beauty in her day. She was still handsome, with her haughty eagle’s face and her deep eyes. She was still straight, and still, even sitting, imperially tall.
    Darius the king was a giant among his people. It was clear to see where he had come by his height, if never his cowardice. Sisygambis his mother, Queen Mother of Persia, sat on what could only be a throne, and spoke a greeting in a clear strong voice. The woman behind her rendered it in Greek, speaking it well and with very little accent.
    Thaïs inclined her head as if she herself had been a queen. “I greet you in return, great lady. And you, Barsine. How is it that they left you here, and not in Damascus with the rest of the noblewomen?”
    The Queen Mother understood. Meriamon could see it in her eyes. Barsine glanced at her, gained a flicker of permission. “I chose to stay,” she said.
    “You know that your father is fled with the king,” said Thaïs. Calm, level. Not cruel. Not precisely.
    “I know it,” Barsine said.
    “Barsine,” said Thaïs to Meriamon, “is a satrap’s daughter. Her father was a friend of Alexander in his childhood, and a friend of Greeks lifelong. Her first husband was a Greek. When he died she married his brother. That one died last year in the siege of Mytilene; and she went back to her father, and now she is here. She should have gone with the rest to Damascus.”
    “Alexander would simply have found me there,” Barsine said. Her calm was a splendid thing.
    The Queen Mother spoke in Persian and Barsine in Greek. “What does an Egyptian do in the following of the Macedonian king? Does she know that the satrap of her province is dead?”
    “Is he, then?” asked Meriamon in Greek for Thaïs’ sake. “No doubt his women will mourn him.”
    “You do not answer my question,” Sisygambis said.
    Direct, she, for a Persian. “Egypt is no province of mine or any other,” said Meriamon. “I came here to serve Alexander.”
    “Why?”
    “My father was Nekhtharhab, Nectanebo of Egypt,” Meriamon said.
    The Queen Mother’s eyes hooded. Meriamon thought of cobras. And yet there was no enmity there. Necessity only, and indissoluble division. “Ah,” said Sisygambis. There was a world of understanding in the syllable.
    Meriamon almost smiled. “The rebel, yes. He died for it. But I live. I speak for him.”
    “That is your duty,” said Sisygambis.
    Sekhmet flowed out of Meriamon’s shadow, approaching the Queen Mother. Sisygambis regarded her without surprise but with considerable interest. “That is a sacred cat?” she asked.
    “Yes,” said Meriamon.
    Sekhmet considered the height of the silk-swathed knees and sprang. Sisygambis did not move. The cat preened against her, purring. Scent-marking her; seducing her.
    She was proof against anything a human creature could send against her. But Sekhmet was the image of a goddess. Sisygambis yielded warily,