33 BC
The head of a sandstone python reared high as a giraffe from the desert floor. Although centuries of wind and entropy had dulled the fangs in its open maw, the sculpture’s unblinking glare nonetheless sent a chill slithering up Amanirenas’s spine despite the balminess of early evening. If the old legends had spoken the truth, this idol represented the likeness of Apep, the giant serpent of chaos that lorded over the underworld and attacked the sun god Ra every night. And the earthen edifice that mounted the hill behind it was its shrine.
How could our ancestors have venerated such a monster? Amanirenas thought. Even allowing the ruined temple dated to the time when both the people of Kush and Kemet roamed the grasslands that had become the desert around them, she could not fathom that they worshiped the one being both cultures now considered the most malevolent in their whole pantheon. There had to have been a misunderstanding, or a meaning that her people and the Kemetians had forgotten over millennia. But what could it be?
Cleopatra, for her part, pouted her lip as she regarded the ruin behind the megalithic statue. “I was expecting something bigger, more magnificent.”
“Both our ancestors were nomads when they built this, remember?” Amanirenas said. “They only had so much time in their wandering lives to build it. What were you expecting, Cleo, something like your Khufu’s great pyramid?”
“Fair enough. I only hope the treasure turns out to be worth our trip.”
The two queens had ventured into the desert at least a hundred miles west of Meroe, the capital of Kush, a journey which had taken them almost a quarter of a month. It was fortunate that the train of three camels Amanirenas had hired were able to carry enough supplies for the whole trip there and back. As much as the Kushite queen doubted that they would find anything in the ruins, which would impress Cleopatra or her Roman paramour Mark Antony, she hoped to be surprised. She certainly did not want to see her Kemetian friend coming out disappointed by the whole adventure.
On Amanirenas’s command, her camel lowered itself to the coarse ground, allowing her to leap off. Cleopatra did likewise while the handler in charge of the train set a stake in the ground and tethered the lead camel to it. Both queens had their swords on their hips, and Amanirenas had her bow and quiver slung over her back. One always had to prepare for bandits and hostile nomads out in the desert, as both women had learned from a hard, brutal experience. Amanirenas had not forgotten the time in their youth as princesses when they had run into Libyans while out racing chariots, with the barbarians taking her captive for ransom until Cleopatra sneaked in and cut her free.
The queen of Kemet stood still to squint at some rocky outcroppings in the distance, with one hand gripping her kopis sword’s hilt. It was not the first time Amanirenas had caught her friend staring at things like that over the past few days.
“What’s the matter?” the queen of Kush asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Cleopatra answered. “I…only want to make sure no one’s following us.”
“With all the enemies you’ve been making lately, Cleo, I don’t blame you for keeping your eye out.”
“What can I say, Amani, it’s the price I’ve had to pay for fighting my way to power.”
Amanirenas shrugged. “If you say so.”
Seen on foot from the bottom of the hill, the old temple of Apep loomed larger than it had appeared from atop Amanirenas’s camel. Its exterior had the form of a giant cylinder of crumbling earth, encircled by stout megalithic pillars. The legends had claimed that these had supported an enormous dome of thatch, which would have made the structure look like a scaled-up version of the mud huts in which the cattle-herding tribes from the savannas to the south slept in. However, Amanirenas could see no trace of such a roof anywhere in sight.
A breeze moaned like the spirits of the dead across the desert as she and Cleopatra hiked up the hill. The sun was sinking toward the dunes to the west, staining the sky bronze around it. If darkness were to fall while they were still out exploring the temple, only the scattered bushes and tufts of grass would provide them with tinder for a fire. Amanirenas did not expect the primitive temple to have a complex maze of passageways inside like an old Kemetian pyramid, but neither did she want to find herself and her friend trapped inside overnight either.
Once they reached the hill’s summit, Cleopatra leaned against one of the pillars around the temple and squinted back down the slope, hand again on her sword’s hilt. Amanirenas followed her gaze, but saw nothing beside boulders, sparse vegetation, and their camels standing in wait at the bottom in front of the serpent statue. Nonetheless, the hairs on the nape of her neck prickled, for she knew her friend had good reason to be wary out here. Anything could be lurking in their surroundings. Leopards, lions, brigands…or worse.
The wind whistled some more, but no other sound disturbed the desert’s calmness. Amanirenas and Cleopatra passed through a wide gap in the temple’s wall that must have served as its entrance back in the prehistoric era. Within the huge cylinder rested two concentric circles of pillars that all reared taller than the ones outside, with the innermost ones stretching highest of all. All had the engraved images of snakes coiling and zigzagging around their circumferences. Some of the pictured serpents were shown devouring the stick figures of men and beasts.
Upon seeing those grisly images, Amanirenas felt another shiver down her back in addition to the chill of the shadows and the evening breeze.
A dome of earth as tall as a person’s waist sat at the very center of the temple’s interior. It had an open hole broken out of its side which Cleopatra and Amanirenas peered into, but it was too dark to make out anything within it.
“If there’s treasure, it has to be in there,” Cleopatra said.
“Agreed, but don’t get your hopes up,” Amanirenas replied.
Both women pulled at the hole’s edges with their hands, stretching their muscles as they each tore out chunks of hardened mud. To save themselves some more labor, they switched to digging with their swords. They chopped, hacked, and scraped away earth until they had enlarged the hole enough to see what lay inside.
It was not glittering jewelry, idols, or even ingots of gold or silver. Instead, what awaited them was a pile of ovular stones the size of ostrich eggs, but more elongated in shape.
Cleopatra’s jaw dropped. “That’s it? Rocks?”
“Maybe the treasure is inside them?” Amanirenas offered. “They do look like big eggs.”
Cleopatra picked up one of the stones and banged it against the dome’s surface. After several hits, it cracked in half, but what appeared within was not treasure but rock.
Yelping a disappointed curse, Cleopatra threw it onto the temple floor. “I can’t believe it! We’ve come all the way here for nothing! What will I tell Antony?”
“You have plenty in your treasury to give him, I think,” Amanirenas said.
“Any queen can give her man gold from her coffers. But it can’t compare to the riches of the ancients!”
Amanirenas picked up one half of the stone. Encased in its rocky interior were the bones of a tiny four-limbed creature like a lizard, curled up like an infant in the womb. There were even impressions of pebbly skin adjacent to the skeleton.
“It’s not just any rock, though,” she said. “It really is an egg!”
Cleopatra looked over her friend’s shoulder, her eyes widened. “An egg of what?”
“Oh, my tutor told me about these when I was a girl. They’re dragon eggs, laid so long ago that they’ve turned to stone. Our ancestors must have taken them for the brood of Apep and built a ‘nest’ of earth over them. Isn’t that amazing?”
Amanirenas gave the petrified egg to her friend, who cradled it in her hands and stroked the bones with her finger.
“It’s not gold, silver, or gemstones, but it’ll do,” Cleopatra said. “I can only hope Antony finds it as impressive as you do.”
Sandaled feet clipped on the temple floor behind them, and a big hairy arm shot out of the shadows to wrap around Cleopatra’s throat.
“Assuming you can even make it back to him, Kemetian whore!” a voice growled in Latin.
The man who had the queen of Kemet in his hold was the biggest of six in scarlet tunics who had entered the temple from behind the two women and surrounded them. All had light olive skin, paler than either the honey-brown Cleopatra or the midnight-dark Amanirenas, and short straight hair ranging in color from brown to black. Short stabbing swords known as gladii hung from their belts, with the man grappling Cleopatra tearing his out of its sheath to press its tip into her cheek.
Amanirenas unsheathed her own sword. “Who are you men, and what do you want with her?”
“The Senate back in Rome isn’t happy with this slut’s influence over Mark Antony,” the big man said. “They’ve sent us to deal with her.”
“We don’t plan on harming her, though,” the Roman to his left added. “Selling her off would be enough. I bet the Parthians over in Asia will pay good silver for her.”
“It must be admitted, though, she is a fair beauty,” the man to the big one’s right said. “It wouldn’t hurt to take a little advantage of her while she’s with us…”
“The Kushite woman isn’t too ugly, either,” a fourth Roman said. “Why don’t we capture them both?”
All the men sniggered with lecherous grins. It gave Amanirenas sickening memories of the time those Libyan tribesmen had attacked her and Cleopatra all those years ago. They too had shown the glint of lust in their eyes. Roman or Libyan, these barbarian men could be all the same.
Amanirenas waved her sword in the air. “Don’t you dare treat me or my best friend like that, you filthy brutes!”
“Then we shall settle this like civilized people instead,” the big Roman said. “Come with us, along with your Kemetian friend, and we won’t give you the slightest bruise or nick. You have our word.”
“Do you not realize what you’ll bring about with this?” Cleopatra croaked from her stranglehold. “My people won’t take their queen’s abduction lightly, and neither will the people of Kush, for my friend here is their Kentake Amanirenas.”
“So what?” the fifth of the six Romans said. “Our legions will make short work of both your armies. None can stand against the might of the Roman Republic!”
The big Roman tightened his grip on Cleopatra’s neck. “Choose wisely, O Kentake of Kush. Either surrender your freedom and your friend’s or surrender your lives.”
Amanirenas and Cleopatra were outnumbered two to six inside the temple, and that was assuming the Kemetian could even free herself of her captor’s grapple before he choked her to death. On the other hand, a life spent in servitude far away from her kingdom would be a far more degrading fate than death. There had to be a way to fight themselves out of this situation. If the two queens of the Nile had managed to escape captivity under a whole tribe of Libyans’ watchful eye, could they not fend off a gang of six Romans?
“If you wish to take our freedom away,” Amanirenas said. “You’ll have to pry it out in battle!”
She stabbed the big Roman in his arm with her sword. He yelled out a shrill curse while his hold on Cleopatra loosened, allowing her to slip away and pull out her kopis. While their larger compatriot recoiled, two of the other Romans charged at the queens with their gladii in hand. Amanirenas parried the one attacking her, pushed him backward, and thrust toward his heart. He dodged with a sidestep and slashed at her face, his blade cutting across her right eye.
The most intense pain Amanirenas had ever felt shot through her head, and half her world went red and then black. She shrieked and fell to her knees with her hand over her eye, with rivers of blood cascading over her cheek. Her assailant cackled as he clenched his hand on her neck, yanked her off the floor, and pinned her against one of the stone pillars.
“Having second thoughts now, my lady?” the Roman asked.
Amanirenas could only gag while squirming and flailing her legs. She kicked her attacker in the ribcage and sprang onto him, finishing the brute off with repeated stabs into his brow. Another Roman’s rough hand landed on the back of her neck. Before he could close his fingers onto her, she wheeled around and pierced through his crotch, causing him to collapse with a whimper.
There were four men left. The big one had Cleopatra in his grasp again while another had his arms wrapped around her legs. While these two carried the queen of Kemet off toward the temple’s opening, the other two converged on Amanirenas and lunged their open hands at her. She cleaved one of the men’s arms off at the elbow in one stroke and split his skull with another. The other turned and ran back to join what remained of his companions outside.
Amanirenas sheathed her sword, fetched out her bow and one arrow, and hurried out of the temple. The three surviving Romans had Cleopatra’s hands and feet bound with rope and were hauling her onto a horse’s back behind its saddlecloth. Amanirenas shot at the horse’s hip, but the big Roman jumped onto it and got it to gallop away, making her miss by a wide breadth. The other two men mounted horses of their own and rode off with him, again evading her arrows. Together, they vanished behind the crest of a dune to the northeast, leaving nothing but three trails of hoofprints in the sand.
It had been eleven years since Cleopatra had rescued Amanirenas from captivity under the Libyans. Now it would be the Kushite queen’s turn to save her friend, if she could catch up with her captors at all. First, however, Amanirenas needed to make their trip to the temple of Apep worth it in some way. It would not be right for Cleopatra to come out of this misadventure without something to show her lover like she had hoped for.
Amanirenas returned inside the temple, picked up a couple of dragon eggs from their nest, and slipped them under the sash around her hips. After making her way back down the hill to where the camel train waited, she offered the handler additional payment in exchange for untying the animal she had ridden from the train so she could ride it independently. Mounting the camel again, she prompted it to gallop toward the northeast, following the trail the Romans had left.
Lucius Catullus scanned the desert behind him as he rode, with the captive Cleopatra tied to his horse’s croup behind the saddlecloth. All that was left of the daylight was a dimming red halo that poked up from the western dunes, with the rest of the sky darkening from purple to black as stars began to twinkle into sight. Sighing in relief that he could not see the silhouettes of anyone stalking them, Lucius pulled on his horse’s reins to stop it, and his companions Quintus and Decimus followed suit.
They had arrived at their camp, a circle of three leather tents huddled around a small fire, with a couple of pack mules tethered nearby. Juba, Lucius’s Numidian slave, was prodding the fire’s tinder with a stick while roasting dormice on a little spit. The lanky mahogany-skinned youth rose to greet his master with a smile.
“Forgive me, I see you took a beating back there, Master,” Juba said. “Where did three of your men go?”
Lucius’s cheeks flushed with warmth. “It turns out Cleopatra can fight better than we counted on, and she wasn’t alone. But, never mind that. The important thing is, we got her.”
He patted the bound Cleopatra on her backside. The woman growled something muffled by the cloth he had tied around her mouth.
“You know, her Kushite friend has to be tracking us down,” Quintus said, covering the bleeding cut on his neck with his hand. “There’s only three of us left, and she’s already taken out the other three. If she finds us here, we’ll all be carrion for the vultures.”
Decimus nodded. “We need more men. They should’ve hired more of us to begin with, the cheap bitch’s sons.”
“I can understand why they didn’t,” Lucius said. “It’s easier for six men to sneak in than sixty, never mind the payments. Still, you men are right that we need more protection.”
“We could seek shelter among the nomad tribes,” Quintus responded. “There should be Noba camps all over the desert between here and the Nile.”
“They may not let us in without a price, though,” Decimus said. “Those nomads like to trade, and all we have to offer is a captive whom they couldn’t afford—at least, they couldn’t pay as well as the Parthians.”
Lucius snapped his fingers. “I have a better idea! There are pirates prowling all over the river between the big cities. All we’d need to do is offer some a slice of our profit from the sale afterward and they’ll be on our side.”
“Now you’re talking,” Quintus said. “Know of any place they might frequent?”
“If I recall my map correctly, the nearest haven should be a village called Sutekh’s Sanctum to the north of here. That’s where we’ll go.”
“But what if we don’t find any pirates willing to aid us?” Decimus asked. “What do we do then?”
Lucius looked back west, narrowing his eyes in search of possible movement. “Then all I can say is, may Jupiter help us.” Juba went back to sit by the fire, grumbling in Numidian under his breath. Lucius could not understand the young slave’s language at all, but the way the boy looked at Cleopatra with a frown and a piteous shine in his eyes, it almost seemed like he sympathized with her.
After six days’ galloping through the desert on camelback, Amanirenas came within sight of the mighty Nile River once more. It appeared as a ribbon of sparkling gold and blue under the ascendant morning sun, with papyrus reeds lining its banks under the shade of palm, acacia, and tamarisk trees. Seeing so much water after two weeks out in the desert reminded the queen of Kush of how parched her own throat had become, since she had needed to conserve the water in her waterskin.
Along a bend in the river squatted a cluster of mudbrick houses with flat, thatched roofs. They surrounded a circular plaza in which stood a towering sandstone sculpture of Sutekh, the long-faced god of the desert, trickery, and barbarians. This had to be the disreputable town they called Sutekh’s Sanctum, known notoriously as a haven for pirates and bandits. Small wonder that following the Roman assassins’ tracks would lead Amanirenas to such a place. They would be right in their element there.
Entering the town from the west with her camel’s reins in hand, Amanirenas followed the narrow and crooked dirt street that passed for a central avenue, avoiding the camel, horse, and human dung littered all over it. The pungent odor of feces mingled with that of the vomit sprayed on the huts’ walls and the scent of stale beer. Men in tunics of soiled linen swaggered everywhere, belching, laughing, and bantering among themselves, with many leering at the Kushite queen as she passed by them. Not even those already with whores on their arms could resist ogling her like a hunk of beef.
If there was one thing about having lost her right eye back at the old temple of Apep that Amanirenas could be grateful for, it was that it made her blend in better with these rogues with all their battle scars. Many of them were missing entire limbs, never mind eyes, ears, or noses. Such was the life men who had discarded honor in favor of plundered coin often chose to lead.
Amanirenas felt something clutch her backside. She spun around and thrust her sword at the local man who had groped her, its tip digging into his scruffy neck. He held his arms up with a pathetic, wheezing laugh.
“How about you make yourself useful for once?” Amanirenas asked. “Tell me, did you see three pale-skinned men in red tunics come by here?”
The man pointed down the road. “Now that you mention it, beautiful, I have! They passed by on horseback with this woman tied up. I assume she’s a prisoner of theirs, maybe a bounty they want to turn in. You might want to check the beerhouse further down the street.”
Amanirenas tossed the man a silver coin as an expression of gratitude, or perhaps to buy off any more advances from him. She continued following the avenue, passing the sculpture of Sutekh in the central plaza, and arrived at a stout, wide building that gave off an even stronger odor of beer than the rest of the town. A crude stick-figure drawing of Sutekh himself holding a mug of foamy beer indicated the building’s function. Outside the establishment’s door, three horses stood tethered to a post, with one of them having the captive Cleopatra bound to its back.
Not such a smart move to keep your prisoner unattended while you go in for a beer, Amanirenas thought with a smirk.
After tethering her camel alongside the horses, she used her sword to cut through all of Cleopatra’s bonds, including the cloth around her mouth. Once freed, the queen of Kemet gave her Kushite friend a tight, warm embrace.
“I knew you’d come for me, Amani!” Cleopatra said.
“Of course, I would, Cleo,” Amanirenas replied, “And I even got you something to give your Antony.”
She pulled out the two dragon eggs from her sash and gave them to her friend. Cleopatra stashed them both under her own belt and gave Amanirenas another hug and a kiss on her cheek.
“We’ve gotta get out of here as soon as we can,” Cleopatra said. “The Romans came here to hire more men to join them.”
It was then that the three Romans came out of the beerhouse, as if her words had somehow summoned their presence. This time, they had a whole gang of local men following them, all armed with swords or knives. And they gathered into a ring around the two women, snarling like a pack of famished jackals.
“I knew you were coming after us, O Kentake of Kush,” the big Roman said. “But that’d be good news for us now. It means we get to sell you both to the Parthians like we wanted!”
Cleopatra tore out her sword and brandished it. “Then come get us!”
The men roared as they closed in on the two women. One man grabbed for Amanirenas’s neck, but she ducked and rammed her head into his stomach, creating an opening in the ring as he fell. She burst through this opening, hacked off the tethered end of her camel’s rope, and whistled to Cleopatra who was busy fighting off the other men.
To help her friend, she shot an arrow into one of the men’s necks, opening another gap for Cleopatra to run through. Together, the two queens of the Nile mounted the camel and galloped back up the avenue, dodging locals in a jagged path as they fled for the town’s western exit. After them raced the Romans on their horses, quickly closing the distance behind them with their animals’ superior speed.
The big Roman man, who rode ahead of his compatriots, chucked his gladius into the camel’s flank. The wounded animal fell forward, throwing Amanirenas and Cleopatra off, and both women crashed into the wall of a hut beside the street. As they struggled to get up, the Roman pursuers dismounted, and the big one’s two companions towered over them with the sunlight glinting on their swords. One banged his gladius’s pommel on Amanirenas’s brow, and the world went black in her good eye.
Amanirenas’s left eyelids drifted apart to reveal a slim silver crescent surrounded by twinkling lights in a black sky. A dull throbbing pain remained in her forehead as her vision sharpened. She was on the deck of a small galley that rested along the Nile’s eastern bank, with coarse ropes hugging her figure tight against a hard pole of wood which had to be the mast. Standing before her was the sneering big Roman, whose teeth gleamed like demonic fangs from the yellow light of a torch mounted on the ship’s gunwale.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the Kentake of Kush who has awakened at last,” he said.
Next to him stood a taller, more slender man of local Kushite stock with a necklace of gold coins and crocodile teeth. He too had a grin every bit as malevolent as his Roman companion’s as his hand rested on the hilt of a battle-nicked longsword.
“Welcome to my humble vessel, my Kentake,” the second man said. “I am Nedjeh, your captain. Lucius here has promised my crew and I a handsome cut of his profit in exchange for our help. He tells me you and your half-bred Kemetian friend did his own men some serious damage a few days ago.”
“We were so close to doing the same to your men!” Amanirenas heard Cleopatra cry out from the mast’s opposite side.
“And yet you did not,” Lucius said. “Instead, you two chose to flee like cowards, and look where that got you. Now you are ours to use as we please.”
Nedjeh laughed. “Speaking of using them as we please, I must say they’re both comely young women. Why, I would have them entertain our men for a while, except that would require undoing their bonds and therefore giving them a chance to escape.”
As much as the idea of those unwashed pirates and Roman assassins using her and her friend to slake their lust made her skin creep, Amanirenas had to admit the pirate captain had raised a legit point. In a way, it disappointed her that they would not succumb to their base desires as easily as most bad men would. At least then she and Cleopatra would have a window to fight their way back to freedom.
On the other hand, if lust for flesh could not tempt these men to free their captives, maybe lust for something else would.
“Wait, Captain Nedjeh, you’re in this for the coin, aren’t you?” Amanirenas said. “You should know that I am your Kentake, and Cleopatra is the Queen of Kemet. We each have more in our coffers than any Parthian buyer could ever dream of.”
The leer vanished from Nedjeh’s face as he leaned toward her. “What are you proposing, woman?”
“I’m proposing that, should you free us and row us back to Meroe, we’ll reward you more than anyone else ever could. You won’t have to live life as a pirate anymore!”
“Now you’re talking, Amani,” Cleopatra whispered.
Lucius scowled. “Don’t listen to that temptress, Captain! She’s trying to—”
Nedjeh whipped his sword out while facing his Roman counterpart. “She’s right. I can gain more from helping her than you. You should’ve thought better than counting on pirates for help, Roman!”
“Then Pluto damn you, bastard!”
They clashed their swords several times, slicing at and evading one another in a contest of agility and swinging iron. Men shouted and stamped their feet on the deck as they gathered around to watch, with the two other Romans shouting Lucius’s name while the Kushite pirates shouted Nedjeh’s. Even Amanirenas could not resist voicing her support for the pirate captain, for he was her and Cleopatras’ only key to freedom.
The duel ended when Lucius’s gladius clove down Nedjeh’s skull to the brain. Watching their leader topple onto the deck, the other pirates roared with rage and jumped onto Lucius and his two Roman associates. More blades clanged against each other, accompanied by more death rattles, and more blood sprayed outward from the ensuing melee.
The ropes holding Amanirenas and Cleopatra to the mast loosened and fell off. It was a man with a knife who had cut them, but he looked neither Roman nor Kushite. He had a reddish mahogany complexion like a pure-blooded Kemetian’s and a bush of curled locks on his head. However, the tattooed black triangles running down his cheeks recalled those of Libyans and other peoples of the African continent’s northwestern reaches.
“I am Juba, a Numidian,” the man said. “I am the one called Lucius’s slave, but I want nothing more to do with that Roman dog. You are free, my queens.”
“Thank you so much, kind man,” Amanirenas said. “My friend and I owe you everything.”
“One more thing before you go. I believe we found these on you, Cleopatra. Not sure what they’re for, but they’re yours again.”
Juba handed Cleopatra the dragon eggs. Her eyes widened with a twinkle when she held them in her hands. “I know Mark Antony will love to hear the story behind these!”
“Not so fast, you two!” the Roman Lucius growled.
Having broken himself free of the melee on the galley’s bow, he stabbed his slave in the back. He swung an arm at Cleopatra, but Amanirenas kicked him in the hip before he could reach her friend. After he fell onto the deck, Cleopatra pounced on him and hammered one of the eggs into his brow, shattering his skull. The remaining two Romans dashed toward her with blood-soaked gladii. Grabbing the murdered Juba’s knife, Amanirenas chucked it into one of the assassins’ faces. The river pirates grabbed hold of the other one and delivered to him a furious flurry of stabs.
Once all the Romans were slain, the surviving pirates picked up their bodies and tossed them into the river. It was not long before the crocodiles showed up to devour them in a foaming frenzy, dyeing the water dark red.
One of the pirates murmured a prayer over Nedjeh’s body, picked up his sword, and approached Amanirenas. “As Nedjeh’s quartermaster, I will be taking his place as captain. Is your promise to him now forfeit?”
“Not at all,” Amanirenas said. “My friend and I will reward you and your crew on two conditions. First, you row us back to Meroe. Secondly, give up your life of piracy and embrace honesty. You will find you will no longer need to steal from others soon.”
The new captain bowed before her. “Then thank you, my Kentake. We’ll head upriver to Meroe after sunrise. You have my word.”
Cleopatra held up the dragon’s egg she had used to bash in Lucius’s head and flicked off the blood and brains on it with her finger. “To think I thought these were useless rocks when I first laid eyes on them!”
“Considering how useful they turned out to be, I can believe they’re a blessing from a god,” Amanirenas said. “Never would have expected a blessing from Apep, though.”
“Maybe we’ve misunderstood the serpent of chaos all this time.”
“Perhaps we have, Cleo. Perhaps we have.”