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When Rome’s in ruins, we are the lions
Free from the coliseums
In poison places, we are anti-venom
We’re the beginning of the end.
- “Young Volcanoes”, Fall Out Boy
Alexandria was aflame with wild rumors, the most plausible one being that Cleopatra had been taken as a slave of Rome and seven Roman armies were converging on the palace. Even the scholars who spent their days in the magnificent Library had been heard to whisper that Caesar himself had come back to life as a demon and taken Egypt’s throne. The city was restless, uneasy, and the widespread panic Cleopatra had feared wasn’t far behind. What the kingdom needed was a stabilizing influence. “And that,” Xena had said, “is exactly what we’ll give them.”
It had all sounded reasonable enough as she’d explained it to Gabrielle, leaning against the rail of the sturdy barge that carried them along the broad, silt-heavy Nile, as the unbearable heat of the desert sun chased all the other passengers to their cabins. They would arrive in Cairo by night, make contact with Cleopatra’s most trusted ministers, and Xena would take the great queen’s place, at least until she could get an idea of what Romans there actually were and how best to keep Egypt’s navy out of their hands.
Now, though, what had sounded like a reasonable (if risky) plan was starting to feel like something else entirely. “This is ridiculous,” Gabrielle sighed. “You are ridiculous.”
Xena smiled. She lay as Gabrielle had arranged her, stretched out on a couch in Cleopatra’s magnificent marbled chambers with one arm behind her head, chin tilted up to give Gabrielle access to her eyes and lips. The lazy and insolent curve of them only enhanced the luster of the wine-dark berry juice that Gabrielle had just finished applying. “That’s no way to talk to your Queen,” she drawled. Even her voice was different than usual, more alluring, honey-golden and sticky-sweet.
She was a masterpiece. Gabrielle felt that she’d outdone herself, created a vision that not even Cleopatra’s eunuchs and courtiers could have crafted. Bronze dust rubbed into Xena’s skin brought out the hint of warmth left there by the desert sun, and kohl around her eyes made them look clearer and more luminous than a desert oasis under the moon. Xena’s wild mane had been wrangled into submission under a heavy royal wig, and there was absolutely nothing about her of the half-savage Warrior Princess except a certain haughtiness in her bearing, a lithe predatory grace in the shift of muscles under her skin as she moved. She looked every inch an absolute monarch.
“You’re not my Queen,” Gabrielle drawled back, and dabbed the tip of Xena’s nose with her berry-stained brush. “Your daughter’s an Amazon princess. If anything, I’d be your Queen.”
Not even berry juice on her nose spoiled the image. Xena stretched and rose from the couch, lazy as a lioness. “Good point. Maybe we should put these on you instead.” With one foot she nudged the pile of heavy golden chains beside her, hand-forged that morning by Cleopatra’s best artificers.
“Absolutely not.”
Xena raised an eyebrow, all innocence. “Come on, you’ve been bugging me for ages to get to play the noble role. I think you’d really be able to pull it off.”
“Not if it means dressing up in those.” Gabrielle crossed her arms over her chest. She tried to pass it off as ordinary skepticism, but the sight of those chains settled as a cold dread in the pit of her stomach. Maybe it had been too long since they’d been captured or locked up anywhere, and she’d lost her nerve for it. “Xena, I know you know what you’re doing, but I have to admit I’m a little unclear on how this is going to help us stabilize Egypt.”
Xena’s teasing smile faded a little, softened into something more intimate, with a tenderness behind it that Gabrielle hadn’t seen in months, until whatever Xena had read in her scroll had brought it rushing back like rain to the desert. “Not jealous of some Roman, are you?”
Gabrielle resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “No.”
“What, then? You don’t think I can take ‘em?”
“No, it’s not that.” Even naked and chained, Xena could take down an entire cavalry unit by herself. Physical danger was the last thing she feared.
Gabrielle wasn’t entirely sure what it was that she feared, only that she’d been perfectly confident in Xena’s cunning and royal bearing until their little barge had eased up to the pier at Alexandria and she’d seen the cluster of Roman warships waiting there, motionless but still dangerous, like wolves asleep. In torchlight their long slave-driven oars had been sharp and cruel as knives, and even hanging flat in the windless calm over the river, the Imperial eagle on the banners had watched them with its unblinking eye. The last time she’d been under that withering gaze, she’d been chained in a stone cell on Mount Amaro staring back at a line of centurion shields, surrounded day and night by the sound of hammers.
She clenched her hands convulsively, then brushed them over Xena’s shoulders, trying not to remember the piercing bite of the nails. “Just be careful, all right?”
If Xena felt the same uneasy dread, she didn’t show it, even to Gabrielle — but then, the whole success of the plan depended on her confidence, on never showing a flicker of doubt. “I’m always careful. Come on, help me get dressed.”
She lifted the heavy golden chain-studded collar into Gabrielle’s hands, and tilted her head to let Gabrielle place it carefully around her throat. Gabrielle felt the weight of it, heard the click as the clever clasp engaged, and tried to think of it as armor, as though she was fastening Xena’s breastplate for her the way she’d seen squires do for knights in Britannia, to protect what was dearest to them in the heat of battle.
She fitted the shackles around Xena’s wrists, wrestled a broad band into place around her waist just above the flare of her hips, and knelt to close the manacles around her ankles. When she rose again, Xena wiped the berry juice off her own nose with one finger and drew a line across each of Gabrielle’s cheekbones, painting her for war. “Don’t worry,” she said, not teasing anymore, but soft and serious the way she sometimes got before a fight. “I can handle Rome.”
Gabrielle caught Xena’s hand in hers and kissed it — it was one of the only places she could kiss without ruining the illusion she’d worked so hard on. “I know you can. What worries me is that Rome might have learned to handle you.”
“Not today, they haven’t,” Xena said, with a gleam of certainty in her eye, and that would have to be enough.
—
Marc Antony, it turned out, did know how to handle Xena, how to tease and bait her, draw her on with the challenge of noble bearing and self-restraint until he had her eating out of his hands and begging him to take her navy, and whatever else he might want that was Egypt’s, or Cleopatra’s (or Gabrielle’s).
Xena stormed out of that interrupted picnic, expecting to Gabrielle to follow, but Gabrielle was too busy fuming herself. With everything at stake — the fate of the world’s most powerful navy, the hand that would steer the blood-soaked chariot of empire, the legacy of murdered Cleopatra — all it had taken was one flash of a bad boy’s biceps to send Xena haring off into the night, chasing heartbreak under the pyramids. She could damn well manage without any servants or “companions” for a while.
The straight black wig she’d worn to blend in with Cleopatra’s handmaidens was ferociously itchy. Gabrielle tore it off and dunked her face into one of the fountain-fed basins in the servants’ quarters, then rested her forehead on the cold curve of the fountain’s rim, focusing on her breath, only her breath.
(Not the way Xena’s body had felt against hers three nights before in Alexandria, not the way Xena’s hands had trailed down Antony’s chest as she kissed him, not the cold fury on her face as she’d left the solarium or the strained, helpless finality with which she’d stood outside their hut in the Amazon village and said Maybe I’ll take a fishing trip—)
Footsteps clattered in the hall. Gabrielle took one last cleansing breath and straightened. “Xena, I — oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.“
Shiana crossed the room to dip the mouth of the empty jar she held into the fountain. “Your lady Xena is in the library with that Roman swine.”
If Xena was sneaking off to meet with Antony in odd corners of the palace like a lovestruck teenager, the greatest navy in the world was as good as his, which probably meant it was as good as doomed. “Which Roman swine?”
“The scrawny one.”
“Octavius.” Gabrielle leaned back against the cool stone wall beside the basin and rubbed at her temples, which did nothing to help the headache starting to pound behind her eyes. “That wasn’t part of the plan. What could she want with him?”
Shiana shrugged. “I don’t know what she wants with any of them. They all deserve a knife between the ribs for what they did.”
Gabrielle looked up, but Shiana’s eyes were downcast, as they’d been since Gabrielle and Xena had arrived. “We don’t know for sure who killed Cleopatra,” Gabrielle pointed out. “It probably wasn’t all of them, they’re not that good at working together. It’s only reasonable to wait until Xena finds out exactly what happened —“
“Reasonable,” Shiana said, still without looking up. The venom in her voice turned the word into a curse. “I expected that from Xena, but not from you.”
Gabrielle stiffened. “What? You don’t know anything about me.”
Shiana carefully stoppered her jar and turned her head at last, the demure servant’s mask falling away. In its place Gabrielle saw a young woman, younger than she was, with bloodshot eyes that no tricks with kohl could hide, and a hollow, grieving hunger in the leanness of her face. “I know how you feel about Xena. I saw how you watched her with that other Roman swine today in the solarium. Do you think I would not recognize such things? I stood at Cleopatra’s right hand for years, and I have watched my Queen dine with many Marc Antonys. Only I never had the privilege of interrupting.” Her cold expression softened a little as she trailed her fingers through the water. “The hurt will lessen with time. Queens cannot be judged like ordinary people — their hearts and hungers are bigger than ours. But when all other suitors die or fall from favor, we their faithful handmaidens remain.”
“Xena’s not a queen,” Gabrielle said quietly. “And I’m not her — handmaiden, I’m her partner.”
The dismissive tilt of Shiana’s head showed her lack of interest in such distinctions. “She may not have ministers or a palace, but she has the stature of a queen. Isn’t that why they call her ‘Warrior Princess’? And you — you follow her orders. Would you kill that Roman if she asked it of you?”
“She wouldn’t,” Gabrielle said. “That’s not how Xena does things. You’ll see.”
“So far all I’ve seen is her falling into Antony’s every snare. My Queen would have had him crawling on his knees by now.”
Shiana’s voice was hot with rage, but in her face Gabrielle saw only pain — a familiar pain. It was a harder, crueler version of what Gabrielle herself had suffered, years ago, before Xena had proven to her that not even death could keep them apart for long. Shiana had no such proof, no such promise.
In the face of that anguish, the protests on Gabrielle’s tongue withered and died. “You loved Cleopatra very much.”
“I have been her companion and handmaiden since we were children,” Shiana said simply. “If she had not sent me with a message to your Xena, I would have followed her into the Night Lands. Instead I’m stuck here, waiting for you two to finish fooling around with Roman scum and do as my Queen commanded.”
“I’m so sorry,” Gabrielle said, knowing how empty it was. She took a step forward and rested a hand on Shiana’s shoulder. “I know it’s difficult, but Xena will bring Cleopatra’s killer to justice.”
“Of course you have faith in her. But you’re wrong. Justice is impossible — only bringing my queen back would be just. All I want is to see Rome die as Egypt died.”
Gently, as gently as she could, Gabrielle said, “That won’t take the pain of losing her away.”
“Nothing will take the pain away,” Shiana snapped, wrenching out of Gabrielle’s grip. Her sorrow hardened into bitterness and scorn, as though explaining something simple to one who should know better. “But that will see the pain inflicted on those who deserve it!”
There were tears in Shiana’s eyes. Gabrielle’s own throat ached. “Can’t you see that’s madness? What would be left of the world if every death had to be repaid with more death?”
“I don’t care what’s left of the world! Cleopatra died in my arms. I felt the last beat of her heart. If that happened to Xena, you would want to feed her murderer’s liver to jackals too, and damn the world. That is the way of love.”
“It’s not,” Gabrielle said, passionate, helpless, knowing nothing she said could reach Shiana in the depths of her anguish, knowing she had to try. For the thousandth time she wished desperately for Eli, to feel his hand on her shoulder and hear him speak with a gentleness that could calm even the wildest storm. For the thousandth time, she faced again that fact that he was gone, that she was left to do what she could in his place, even knowing it could never be enough. “The way of love is forgiveness and compassion,” she said. Shiana’s eyes blazed, but Gabrielle forged ahead before she could protest. “It’s a hard way to walk, I know. You may not believe me, but I do know what you felt as Cleopatra died — I have as much reason to hate Rome as you do.” Again she felt the hard curve of Xena’s shattered spine against her knees, again she heard the hammers. “But revenge will cost you your own soul, and if Cleopatra loved you then I know she would want you to live. To choose life. If you can’t forgive those who wronged you, then your hate won’t destroy them, it will only consume you.”
Shiana took a deliberate step back, straightening her spine, regaining as much of her haughty scorn as she could, drawing it around her like a cloak that could shield her from what could not be avoided. “Such noble words. Could you forgive Xena for leaving you? Or Antony for taking her?”
“This isn’t about me and Xena,” Gabrielle said. Shiana snorted in disbelief, but Gabrielle went on. “I had a husband, many years ago, who was murdered by an evil woman, an enemy of Xena’s. It took me years to move on from hating her, and every day I spent wanting vengeance was a blight on my soul. But even that monster became something beautiful, in the end, and it was compassion that saved her when no hate or pain could destroy her.”
“Maybe Xena has enemies who can’t be destroyed, but these Romans are mortal.” Shiana wiped hastily at her eyes before her tears could leave black streaks of kohl down her face. “I thought I would be by my Queen’s side until the Nile ran dry, and then Rome plucked out the heart of my life. Do you know what it’s like to outlive your own heart? To wake up, to draw breath, every minute, every day, with only emptiness at the center of your soul, muscles and bones moving with no purpose? You dare to say you know my pain?”
“I do,” Gabrielle said softly.
“And still you talk of forgiveness. I didn’t want to believe foreigners were so alien, but you Greeks are just as cold-blooded as they say.” Shiana balanced her water jug on her hip and turned away. “I respect my Queen’s wish to let you and Xena handle these jackals. But if you find the courage to bring true justice to Egypt, it will be by sticking those knives you carry into Roman throats. In the meantime, your Queen wants you in the throne room for an audience.”
“Shiana,” Gabrielle said, but the young woman was already out in the hall, her mask firmly back in place, no more than one of dozens of handmaidens carrying out her errands in the heart of an empire that she had to pretend hadn’t already crumbled into ruins.
—
“The trap’s been set,” Gabrielle said, as Brutus swept out of Cleopatra’s throne room. “Perhaps you won’t have to…”
“Kill Antony?” Xena finished. She turned, squinting against the brilliant blaze of light and heat pouring in from the desert outside. “You being on Brutus’ ship wasn’t part of the plan.”
A night’s rest had done nothing to lighten the weariness that lay heavy on both of them. Gabrielle dismissed the servants with a wave of her hand, leaving them alone in the bright, empty space. “It was the only guarantee he’d accept.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I? He knows us, Xena. He’d always be suspicious that you were plotting to betray him — and he’d be right.”
Xena rose and tossed the pharaoh’s symbols of office carelessly aside, every inch the wrathful queen. “Gabrielle, he confessed to murdering Cleopatra. I can’t let him take control of Rome!”
“Of course you can’t!” Gabrielle snapped. She took a breath, trying to rein in her temper. “I’m not talking about Rome. Xena, doesn’t he seem different to you?”
Hadn’t she seen it? The desperation in Brutus’ eyes when he’d made his confession, the way he’d fallen for a trick he should have seen through easily. The way he’d looked when he’d first seen Gabrielle’s face, the glimmer of hastily-concealed hope. If crucified prisoners could come back from the dead, then —
Xena considered. “He seems like the same old snake in the grass to me.”
“He killed Caesar,” Gabrielle protested.
“And he did the world a favor, getting rid of a more poisonous snake than he is.”
“Xena, I know how you felt about Caesar, but Brutus was loyal to him, when loyalty was essential to who he was. Brutus killed the one person he loved most, because he realized something else was more important than what he’d built his life on. That changes someone. You saw how wounded, how twisted he is. He’s in a place of such desperate darkness — but we might not have to kill him. If you can reach Antony, maybe I can reach Brutus.”
Xena scowled and started to turn away again, to stare back out at the empty desert. “He was a fool for loving Caesar. Men like that don’t share power, even with those they love. Brutus should have realized that.”
“Maybe it’s not too late.” Gabrielle moved to stand beside Xena, not quite touching her. “If you think there’s a chance Antony can turn away from deeper darkness, then Brutus should get the same chance. I want to go with him to see if he’s really changed. If there’s a chance he’s still the honorable man he used to be, maybe I can convince him to give up this insane ambition and start to make amends for the evil he’s done.”
Xena sighed and turned to Gabrielle, at last letting the invisible mantle of the Queen of Egypt fall from her shoulders. “He means something to you, doesn’t he?”
“Everyone deserves a second chance, Xena. You taught me that. And — there was a time when we understood each other. Or at least I thought we did.”
Xena hesitated. She knew Gabrielle and Brutus had met only a few times, under harrowing circumstances and on opposite sides, and yet they had seen and recognized something in each other — the flame of incorruptible devotion, Brutus’ for Caesar and Gabrielle’s for Xena. In that sense, they had walked the same path, as the right hand and Achilles heel of a colossus astride the known world. Both had been moved to see past the veneer of destiny and legend, to love with whole-hearted helplessness the human being beneath the trappings of awe and fear.
Only Brutus, it turned out, had been wrong to love Caesar, wrong to think that he held Caesar’s heart just because he had given Caesar his. And if he could be wrong…
Xena took both of Gabrielle’s hands in hers. “You heard him. He crossed a Rubicon of blood. There may not be any coming back from that.”
Gabrielle tried to smile, but she guessed from the concern in Xena’s eyes that her smile still had an edge of bitterness to it. “You and I know better than anyone that rivers can be crossed both ways.”
“No matter what happens tonight, there’s going to be a fight. Brutus’ ship will be directly in the Egyptian navy’s path. If you’re on board when they ram him —“
“That’s exactly why Brutus wants me there.” Gabrielle squeezed Xena’s hands. “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”
Xena smiled despite herself, unable to resist the infectious madness of hope. “And maybe we can save them both.”
—
Gabrielle didn’t know how long she drifted, sick and dizzy, on the deck of what had been Brutus’ flagship. Time had gone strange and unsteady, and it seemed to heave up and down with the waves. Sometimes it receded, and each heartbeat stretched out into an eternity the way it did in the screaming chaos of a battle, only instead of terror she felt an alluring numbness that threatened to lift her clean out of her body and scatter her to the winds like smoke. Then reality crashed over her again and jolted her back to herself — to one whole side of her head a throbbing agony, the frigid night wind off the sea clawing through her soaked cotton robes, the shouting and groaning, the rough wood of the deck under her fingers and the backs of her arms sticky with blood.
Her blood, and Brutus’.
It felt like days, or years, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute, because Xena hadn’t moved. When Gabrielle had the strength, she could lift her head an inch and see Xena, glowing white and gold in the moonlight. She could have been a statue of some Egyptian moon goddess, complete with Antony crumpled at her feet as a sacrifice, if it weren’t for her hair, raven-black and blowing in the wind Gabrielle was getting too cold to feel.
There was a gulf of empty air and ocean between them, and the jagged wreckage of spars where the two ships had crashed together, but that wouldn’t stop Xena. It couldn’t have been longer than a few heartbeats, because if it had then Xena would have come to her, lifted her out of the pitch and gore, and steadied her with a touch that could set the whole disjointed world back on its axis.
Xena always came to her. At the end of the battle, when the danger had passed. In the hush after the clash of swords had died down Xena came to her, touched her arm or her shoulder, and that was how she knew that everything would be all right.
Hands grabbed her arms and hauled her up from the deck. “Xena,” she mumbled — but no, she was looking at Xena, still standing like a statue on the deck of Antony’s ship. The body Gabrielle leaned back against was scrawny and angular, lacking a warrior’s muscle.
“Gabrielle! You made it,” a voice said in her ear. Not Xena’s voice.
Everything hurt. Upright, black dizziness swamped her senses, and her cheek throbbed with such a sharp pain that she started to be afraid something had broken. Her head lolled back against a bony shoulder, and as the sky blurred she struggled to make sense of the hawklike profile above her, crowned by a laurel wreath of gold-plated tin.
Her mouth tasted like blood, and it hurt to speak, but at least her jaw worked. “Octavius?”
“Everything went perfectly according to plan. Don’t worry, Gabrielle.” Men were rushing past her, leaping from some higher place onto the deck of both wrecked ships. They were beginning to drag the wounded away and line up the bodies of the dead to be tossed overboard. Xena still stood and watched, presiding, silent. Octavius said, “The traitors are dead. This is a marvelous day for Rome and all her allies. Your part in it will be remembered, I swear to you.”
Other hands took hold of her, hilt-roughened soldiers’ hands. They lifted her up to the deck of Octavius’ own vessel and set her down with surprising gentleness. The two disabled ships must be sinking, they were so far down below her. Xena still stood over Antony’s body, and Gabrielle was seized with the sudden terror that the deck under Xena’s feet would subside under the surface, that she would drown. Gabrielle tried to say something, to shout, to warn her, but still Xena didn’t move, even as Octavius’ men moved toward her.
“It’s all right. You’ll be tended to.” Someone else had hold of her now. Gabrielle gathered enough of the scattered threads of her consciousness to recognize Shiana, who took her from the soldiers and helped her to sit against the rail of Octavius’ trireme. “I thank you for the service you’ve done to my queen,” Shiana said quietly. She guided the unhurt side of Gabrielle’s head to rest on her shoulder and pointed through the bars of the railing. “I saw you cut that filthy murderer’s throat. Cleopatra is rejoicing tonight in Anubis’ land, and the jackals of the dark places are tearing apart his traitorous soul.”
Everything was starting to blur again, but Gabrielle squinted in the direction Shiana pointed. Among the dead she recognized Brutus’ blue cloak, and recognized the red gape of the slash she’d torn beneath his jaw, severing the arteries to the brain. Antony’s ship had rammed its prow into the port side of Brutus’, splitting it broadside like a wedge driven into a solid plank until it stuck. From this vantage point, the two death-locked vessels formed a cross. Brutus lay where he had fallen, his feet pointing toward Antony’s prow, his arms outstretched one to either side. Sacrificed, as so many other lives had been, to Caesar’s legacy of greed; crucified at Gabrielle’s hand on a sinking cross in the midst of the desolate sea.
She remembered all of a sudden that he had died with Xena’s name on his lips.
You too, Brutus? she thought, and closed her eyes.
Eventually Shiana had her moved down to one of the staterooms, where she spent most of the journey back to shore semiconscious, curled around an aching emptiness somewhere between her chest and stomach that wasn’t quite seasickness or a broken rib. Every time she half-woke in the rocking dark, she expected to see the familiar shadow of Xena’s silhouette above her, but it never came.
Brutus came to her instead. “You’re dead,” she told him, her tongue thick and clumsy.
He looked as he had in the Appenines, young and only beginning to feel the cracks in the foundation of his faith, whole and strong except for the mortal wound that peeked out from under his chin whenever he turned his head. He stood beside her hammock, ramrod-straight with his helmet under his arm, the picture of a perfect soldier. It was better to see him like this than as he’d been at the end; cringing, cowering, nothing more than a bundle of rage and guilt and sinew bound together by a quest he no longer believed in.
He’d always had an open, honest face, and from the way he looked now, he was thinking something similar about her. “You were dead once, too,” he told her. “I didn’t know you’d be crucified, Gabrielle, I swear to you. It wasn’t my doing.”
“I know it wasn’t.” Gabrielle closed her eyes, hoping he’d be gone when she opened them, but he remained. “I’m sorry.”
He lifted a hand to his throat in surprise. “About this? Don’t be. I understand. They shape us into what they need us to be, and we can hardly fail to fulfill our purpose. I didn’t have a hand in your crucifixion, but I would have, if he had asked it of me.”
She remembered her last glimpse of him as he’d turned away to ride for Rome, leaving her in what he thought would be relative safety — already doubting Caesar’s promises, fighting against the urge to unlock the gates and topple Rome’s great plan. “No, you wouldn’t have,” she said, passion rising in her higher than dread and sickness. “Caesar tricked you. He knew how loyal you were and he abused that loyalty to lead you down a path much darker than the one you were meant to walk. You were — you are an honorable man, Brutus —“
“Would an honorable man have murdered Cleopatra?” His face now was grave, vaguely pitying. And it was peaceful — the lines that had been carved into his brow were smoothed out, all signs of struggle erased. “Would an honorable man have turned on you like a savage beast, even in defeat? No. There are no illusions in death, Gabrielle. I was, and I am, what he made me. Just as you are what Xena’s made you.” His lips curved, a sad smile making a mockery of the gash in his throat. “I would have been more on my guard if I’d known you had such skill with a blade. She’s a good teacher.”
“No one made me anything.” About that, at least, she had no doubts. Since she’d killed Roman soldiers to save Xena’s life she’d felt guilt and fear, but never regret. Brutus roused pity in her, and his sorrowful certainty made her want to weep for what he’d lost, and she would have gone back and stopped herself from killing him if she could. But she would not regret no longer being the pacifist Brutus had left dangling on Caesar’s hook as bait to lure Xena to her death. “Xena’s afraid that she made me into what I am,” Gabrielle said quietly. “But she’s wrong, and so are you. I made myself. She only taught me what I asked to learn.”
“Then may you find it easier than I did to live with your deeds.” For a moment some of the energy, the light of life seemed to come back into him, and he leaned towards her, voice earnest. “I don’t want to be remembered as a dupe of Caesar’s. Tell them, Gabrielle — I was loyal, but not blind. The things I did, I did with my eyes open. For love of Rome.”
There was something wrong with his eyes, she realized — they were darker than they had been, wine-dark like the sea that had swallowed him, and they looked now at something far beyond her face, far beyond the confines of the ships’ cabin, beyond the boundaries of life. Gabrielle reached out to touch the back of his hand, but she couldn’t quite reach. “Did Rome ever love you?”
“Once,” Brutus said, his voice strangely resonant, as though it was echoing down to her from a great distance. “He was Rome, and he loved me once, when we were young. Beware what’s left when love fades, Gabrielle.”
“I don’t —“ she said, but someone was shaking her shoulder, and she woke.
—
”Octavius thinks this has been a victory for Rome,” Xena said bitterly. “One great empire in ruins, and another one about to have its two best military minds replaced by an idealistic teenager. Some victory.”
Gabrielle paused on the threshold of Cleopatra’s balcony, taking a moment to be grateful for the sight of Xena back in her usual armor, no longer bronzed and painted, all her royal gravitas once again channeled into ordinary restlessness. Her fingers tapped on her chakram in a fidget unbecoming of a Queen.
That energy would have them moving on soon, back downriver to Alexandria where Eve waited with Cyrene, then back to Greece’s familiar shores and cities or on to somewhere else, somewhere entirely new. The only reason they’d stayed this long was at the advice of Cleopatra’s personal physician, a grave and motherly old woman who had recommended Gabrielle rest and recover from the head injuries she’d sustained in the battle. She’d spent most of the day asleep, and only now, at sunset, had come looking for Xena in the hushed and empty halls.
Barefoot, Gabrielle crossed the marble still warm from the day’s heat and leaned on the railing at Xena’s side. “Octavius thinks he can do good on the throne. Maybe he’s right.”
Xena’s voice was heavy with disgust. “Antony could have done good, too, if he hadn’t given in to his damned Roman ambition. The only one of them who could have loved something besides Rome and himself, wasted. That whole battle was just a waste, of good ships and good men. It was no victory for anyone.”
“It was for Shiana. She got the revenge she wanted for Cleopatra’s death.” At Xena’s surprised glance, Gabrielle added, “She came to my room to thank me again, and to tell me that she’s leaving. She’s going back to stay with her family in the Nile delta.”
They could see the Nile from where they stood, cutting broad and straight across the desert like the blade of a sword. The docks were out of sight behind one wing of the great palace, but Gabrielle could imagine the crowds gathered there, discussing in uncertain whispers the news that their Queen was dead and her foreign assassins were allies now.
“We’ll be heading that way ourselves soon,” Xena said absently. “How are you feeling?”
“All right. But I’d feel better knowing we were leaving something behind that would last.”
“That’s up to Octavius and his ideals.” Xena’s tone made it plain what she thought of the strength of those ideals. “And Cleopatra’s ministers, the greedy old goats.”
“Was it worth it, all of this? Just to avenge Cleopatra and put Octavius in charge?”
The silence stretched, the question hanging suspended like a guillotine blade.
At last Xena shifted and said, “There was no one here strong enough to stand against Rome without Cleopatra, and of the three of them, Octavius will do the least damage. Brutus was a traitor and Antony a killer. There was no other choice we could have made.”
Gabrielle touched Xena’s arm, seeing the grief in the way she turned her head, hiding behind the curtain of her hair. “Brutus was more than a traitor, and Antony more than a killer,” she said. “What was he to you, Xena? Don’t tell me that was all a ruse, just part of the plan.” It wasn’t just jealousy, the insecurity that gnawed at Gabrielle sometimes in the face of Xena’s powerful and many-splendored suitors. Gabrielle knew the difference between the aggressive over-played seduction Xena used to manipulate men, and real passion. She’d let it goad her, let it make her angry when he’d been a flesh-and-blood threat, large than life and lusting for power, but all that was over now and she couldn’t hate him, any more than she could hate Brutus. All she wanted now was to know.
Xena was many things, and a coward had never been one of them. She turned to face Gabrielle, showing her the same agony of impossible love that had veiled her that night in Cleopatra’s bedchamber, when she’d seen the power of Antony’s heart for herself. “He was a challenge,” she said slowly, searching for words. “A distraction. You were right — I let him distract me. I should have seen what he was from the start.”
The faint breath of a breeze blew in off the river, and though it was a welcome respite from the lingering heat, Gabrielle shivered. “This whole mess, everyone said it was for love. Brutus killed Cleopatra in the name of love, because he loved — Rome. Shiana would have killed Brutus, and Antony and Octavius and any other Roman she could find, because she loved Cleopatra. And Antony loved you —”
“Antony didn’t love me.” The ragged edge to Xena’s voice seemed to betray the words, but Xena wouldn’t lie — not about something like this. “He loved Cleopatra, and the idea of the empire Rome and Egypt could build together, with him as its Emperor and her as his Empress. To a man like him, it was a beautiful dream.”
“And we couldn’t save them.” Gabrielle leaned forward, braced both arms against the marble, as though without its support the heaviness of her heart might not let her stand. “Either of them — any of them.”
“Love can be used to heal, or it can be wielded like any other weapon,” Xena said, her voice raw an open wound. “Gabrielle, I’ve been such a fool.”
Gabrielle leaned against her, resting her head on the familiar curve of her leather-padded shoulder. “Love makes fools of all of us.”
“You want to know what Antony was?” Xena slipped an arm around Gabrielle’s waist, pulled her close. “Antony was safe to love, and safe to lose. A distraction. To Cleopatra he could have been something magnificent. To Egypt he could have been a pharaoh, to Rome an emperor — but so much less than what I already have.” A bitter smile touched her lips. “A love who couldn’t touch my heart. I haven’t wanted that since Borias.”
Gabrielle felt the tension in Xena’s arm around her, the way Xena’s fingers dug in just above the band of her skirt, as though trying to keep hold of her in a howling gale. She rested her own hand over Xena’s. “Safe to lose?”
“I was afraid of losing you for so long that I learned to handle that, after a while. But now that there’s you and Eve, I have to fear losing you to save her. Or the gods taking you both. Antony almost made me forget that, for a day or two.”
Gabrielle blinked furiously, enough to clear her vision. “Love is fear of loss,” she said quietly. “Eli told me that once.”
“Eli was right.” Xena brushed her thumb over Gabrielle’s split knuckles, cut and bloodied on Brutus’ armor. “I’ve never been so terrified.”
“Then the gods are winning,” Gabrielle said firmly. “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter how they split us up. If this fear takes you away from me, then that leaves one less person to keep Eve safe, one less person fighting at your side. Fear only helps them.”
“And hurts you.” Xena bowed her head, brushed her lips over the back of Gabrielle’s free hand. “Can you forgive me?”
“If you can let go of this fear.” Gabrielle turned and cupped Xena’s face in her hands, drew her close and rested her forehead against Xena’s, feeling the hot tears course down her cheeks, stinging where they touched her wounds. “No one can take me away from you, not even a god. Even if they kill me, I’ll never leave you or Eve. You know that, don’t you?”
Xena stroked her hair. “I’ll need time, I think. To wrap my head around it.”
“Time is the one thing we don’t have. If we go back to Greece, to anywhere they can reach, they’ll only come after us again.”
Xena was quiet for a moment. At last she said, “There’s a reason I left my mother in Alexandria. She’s looking for some scrolls for me in the library there. The Codex Moirai.”
It was a name out of bardic legend, a near-mythical book — but if there was any place to find such a thing, the Library of Alexandria was probably a good start. And if there was anyone bold enough to go looking for it, of course it would be Xena. Gabrielle couldn’t even manage to be surprised. “You want to find the Fates?”
“Who else can tell us how much time we have?”
“We have eternity,” Gabrielle said at once. “This life and all our lives.”
Xena’s lips brushed her temple, and Gabrielle rested her forehead against Xena’s neck. Her bruised face ached, but she didn’t care. Xena’s hand was heavy and warm at her hip, Xena’s arms around her. “We have tonight,” Xena said quietly. Her love was stronger than her faith, but that was all right; Gabrielle was used to have enough faith for both of them. “We have tonight.”