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He’s hardly slept at all since Pharsalus. He sits there at his worktable, yelling for slaves to come refill the oil in the lamp, poring over that stack of documents, sorting bits of parchment, scratching out names, scribbling notes—and all for nothing! Do you know what’s in that pile? Provision lists for troops that no longer exist, advancement recommendations for officers who were left to rot in the Greek sun, logistical notes for battles that will never be fought. To go without sleep unhinges a man; it throws the four humors inside him out of balance.”
    “Earth, air, fire, and water,” I said.
    Cornelia shook her head. “There’s nothing but fire inside him now. He scorches everyone he touches. He shall burn himself out. There’ll be no more Pompey the Great, only a charred husk of flesh that was once a man.”
    “But he lives in hope. This meeting with King Ptolemy—”
    “As if Egypt could save us!”
    “Could it not? All the wealth of the Nile; the armed might of the Egyptian army, along with the old Roman garrison that’s posted here; a safe haven for the forces scattered at Pharsalus to regroup, along with Pompey’s remaining allies in Africa.”
    “Yes, perhaps . . . perhaps the situation is not entirely hopeless—provided that King Ptolemy takes our side.”
    “Why should he not?”
    She shrugged. “The king is hardly more than a boy; he’s only fifteen. Who knows what those half-Egyptian, half-Greek eunuchs who advise him are thinking? Egypt has managed to maintain its independence this long only by playing Roman against Roman. Take sides with Pompey now, and the die is cast; once the fighting is over, Egypt will belong to Pompey . . . or else to Pompey’s rival . . . and Egypt will no longer be Egypt but just another Roman province—so their thinking must go.”
    “But have they any choice? It’s either Pompey now, or else . . .” Since she had not uttered the name Caesar, I did not either. “Surely it’s a good sign that the king has arrived in all his splendor to greet the Great One.”
    Cornelia sighed. “I suppose. But I never imagined it would be like this—here in the middle of nowhere, attended by a fleet of leaky buckets, arriving with our heads bowed like beggars after a storm. And Gnaeus—” Dropping all formality, she spoke of her husband by his first name. “Gnaeus is in such a strait. You should have seen him yesterday after you left. He ranted for an hour, going on and on about the tortures he intends to inflict on you, hoisting you onto the ropes, publicly flaying you, commanding the troops on the other ships to stand at attention and watch. He’s lost all sense of proportion. There’s a kind of madness in him.”
    I grew light-headed and strove not to lose my balance. “Why in Hades are you telling me all this? What do want from me, Cornelia?”
    She took something from a cabinet and pressed it into my hand. It was a small vial made of carved alabaster with a cork stopper, the sort of vessel that might ordinarily contain a scented oil.
    “What’s this?” I said.
    “Something I’ve been saving for myself . . . should the occasion arise. One never knows when a quick, graceful exit might be required.”
    I held the vial to the light and saw that it contained a pale liquid. “This is your personal trapdoor to oblivion?”
    “Yes. But I give it to you, Finder. The man from whom I acquired it calls it Nemesis-in-a-bottle. It acts very quickly, with a minimum of pain.”
    “How do you know that?”
    “Because I tried a sample of the stuff on a slave, of course. She expired with hardly a whimper.”
    “And now you think—”
    “I think that you will be able to maintain your dignity as a Roman much more easily this way, rather than my husband’s way. Men think their wills are strong, that they won’t cry out or weep, but they forget how weak their bodies are, and how very long those frail bodies can be made to suffer before they give up the lemur. Believe