The Passion of Cleopatra (Ramses the Damned 2)

"Restoration," Julie whispered. "What could this mean?"

"I do not know," Bektaten answered. "Let us hope Sibyl Parker does."

With that, she turned.

"Come with me," she said, "both of you."

*

As soon as they set foot inside the armory, Julie gasped.

Lying on the table where Bektaten had spread out her weapons for them three nights before was Saqnos. Lifeless, nude, with a slight bloat to his features that suggested he had spent some time in the sea. But not very much. Ramses had seen what became of bodies pulled from the Nile or the Mediterranean after several days. The corpse before them now was in far better condition.

They had taken a plaster cast of his face, a perfect death mask, which now hung from the wall so it could dry. Spread out on the table behind her were detailed sketches of his head and torso, each from a different perspective on his corpse. No doubt these would be stored away with the pages of the Shaktanis, or in some great library she had yet to reveal to them, the only records that a man named Saqnos had ever lived and breathed.

"Those sketches," Ramses said, "are they by your hand?"

"This is Aktamu's gift," she said.

"Tell me there are drawings of your kingdom somewhere in your journals," Julie whispered. "Please. There must be."

"Of course. But there are glimpses of Shaktanu throughout the Africa of today. Words of the ancient tongue live on in the language of the Ashanti. The headdresses and facial markings of young Masai warriors mirror those of the soldiers who defended my palace. And the sharp, slender pyramids of Kush and Meroe, they are much like the ones that covered our lands. Lands that became the Sahara Desert. Shaktanu's collapse sent great rivers flowing south into Africa, and they carried pieces of our history and our culture. To see which ones settled and took root in other places, in other kingdoms, among various tribes fascinates me."

"And only you know their true origin," Ramses said.

"And Enamon knows. And Aktamu knows." Bektaten gazed down at Saqnos now, twined her fingers affectionately through a long strand of his black curls. "And Saqnos knew."

These last words she said in a whisper.

How to define the way she touched this fallen man now? Was it a mother's touch, or a lover's touch? Or did the touch and attention of an immortal queen combine both things, creating something far more powerful?

What had she seen, he now wondered, as she watched this man's final plummet? Had she been seized by memories of him? Had her sense of him grown suddenly tender as he fell to his death? Or had she mourned the kingdom they had once shared? Had she seen her palace, her chambers, her kingdom's tall, slender pyramids covering lands destined to become desolate and dry? Had she seen the great flock of birds that had circled the palace again and again without ever tiring, the very birds that had given away her secret to the man who would betray her?

It was possible. It was more than possible.

Ramses' own immortality had deepened his capacity for memory, widened the corridors in his mind through which memories could now emerge and be received. He realized this was why he could not help but view Cleopatra as a doomed creature, for his own memories seemed to deepen and take on more richness, even as she claimed to lose so many of her own.

Bektaten turned to the cabinet.

She removed a vial. The color of the fluid inside was different from any of the other substances she'd revealed to them. But Julie must have thought it was the elixir, because when Bektaten uncapped it, Julie cried out.

"No. No, you must not--"

Bektaten gave her a gentle, dismissive wave. Then she poured the blue-tinted fluid in a slender line along the length of Saqnos's torso. Within minutes, the flesh--the mortal flesh, Ramses reminded himself--began to dissolve. She repeated this process in slender lines that ran from his nose to the center of his forehead, the length of his neck, and then down both legs.

It only took several minutes for his body to disintegrate into a fine powder. And even this powder itself had seemed to dissolve. By the time the process was complete, there were only faint snakes of it along the table; nothing to suggest the silhouette or outline of the body that had lain there moments before.

And so it was a funeral she had invited them to. His last rites.

The death mask hanging on the wall behind them, the sketches of the corpse that had just disappeared before their eyes. Along with all references to him in the Shaktanis, these items would be the only evidence that there had ever been a man named Saqnos, a man who had served as prime minister of a lost kingdom.

"One must have witnesses." Bektaten's eyes were full of tears. She brought

her fingers to her nose, the same fingers she'd twined through Saqnos's great locks, and inhaled gently. Her last moment of contact with the man she'd just turned to dust. A tolerable farewell kiss, perhaps. Whatever the gesture meant to her, it held her tears at bay, placing them behind some great reserve of strength. "One's own hand, one's own pen, one's own mind; these things are not enough if one is to live for all time. And so on this day in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen, in the twentieth century, I say goodbye to one witness. And I welcome two others."

Such warmth in the smile she gave them now.

"It is my hope," Ramses said, "that we will be far more to you than just that, my queen."