and my mother’s temples. Alexander’s pampered mistress sat back hard, her chest heaving. “The child is lodged firm,” she said. “I cannot turn it.”
My grandmother leaned over my mother to clasp her cheeks in age-spotted hands. “Stateira,” she whispered. “You must push this child from your womb. Think of Darius, and of holding this child together when you see him next.”
My mother seemed to rouse then, allowing my grandmother to help her squat next to the bed. I watched in horror as the skin across her belly tightened and she cried out in agony, her eyes bulging, as over and over the pains repeated and my mother, now on all fours and almost unrecognizable from the pain and struggle, pushed and screamed while her sweat soured the very air we breathed.
To no avail.
We took turns murmuring to her and whispering encouragement into her ears as each new pain sapped her remaining strength.
Still, she clung to life.
I tried to stay awake, but the sun rose and set, then rose again before the infant finally fell from her womb feetfirst, a son with a blue face like my brother Cyrus, strangled by the cord wrapped tight round his neck. My mother lay on the bed as her lifeblood flooded from her body, staining the mattress and floor with an oncoming tide of scarlet. My throat grew tight as my grandmother forced her to swallow a mouthful of consecrated Haoma water and barked for the slaves to fetch pomegranate seeds, both harbingers of immortality served to the dying. Barsine tried to stanch the flow of blood, but there was naught she could do. Even before the pomegranates arrived, my grandmother bent to press her cheek to my mother’s nose, feeling for the breath that wouldn’t come.
I choked as she removed a golden thread from her pocket—the sacred kusti always kept near a laboring woman—and girdled it about my mother’s engorged waist, murmuring the Padyab-Kusti prayer to keep Ahriman’s demons at bay. “Your mother awaits her entrance into paradise,” she finally proclaimed. “Someone must inform Alexander.”
Without waiting for a response, I burst into the garish sun’s light for the first time in two days, gulping in the crisp air still tainted with the ash and smoke from the fireship.
My mother was dead. She had been alive when dawn tinted the sky today, but now she was dead.
I stumbled through the camp, ignoring the shocked stares, some of the soldiers making the sign against evil and death as I passed. I glanced down, only now realizing that the bottom of my stale robe was stained with my mother’s blood. My heart was heavy with grief and guilt for all the moments I’d squandered these past months that I might have spent with her, for all the times my temper had grown short as she complained of her swollen ankles and aching back.
A Companion pointed me toward the waterfront when I asked where I might find Alexander, and I trudged in that direction, each step draining the last of my energy.
I found him standing at the start of the narrow causeway that was the ruined mole, the wreckage from the siege towers still floating in the turquoise waves like detritus after a storm. The Macedonians labored to lash two ships together with a massive battering ram atop their decks. Only two days ago, I might have marveled at the ingenuity of the Greeks in the face of such a terrible setback as the fireship, but now I only shoved past Alexander’s assembled onlookers.
He looked surprised at my approach and some part of my mind noted Hephaestion sitting on a crate next to his friend, his eyes bloodshot and both of their faces covered in several days’ worth of stubble. I felt as terrible as they looked and collapsed in a heap at Alexander’s feet, too exhausted to remain upright any longer.
“Alexander of Macedon,” I murmured, my throat raw. “I bear unfortunate news from the tent of Queen Stateira.”
To my surprise, Alexander knelt beside me and his assembled Companions drew back like a wave,
My grandmother leaned over my mother to clasp her cheeks in age-spotted hands. “Stateira,” she whispered. “You must push this child from your womb. Think of Darius, and of holding this child together when you see him next.”
My mother seemed to rouse then, allowing my grandmother to help her squat next to the bed. I watched in horror as the skin across her belly tightened and she cried out in agony, her eyes bulging, as over and over the pains repeated and my mother, now on all fours and almost unrecognizable from the pain and struggle, pushed and screamed while her sweat soured the very air we breathed.
To no avail.
We took turns murmuring to her and whispering encouragement into her ears as each new pain sapped her remaining strength.
Still, she clung to life.
I tried to stay awake, but the sun rose and set, then rose again before the infant finally fell from her womb feetfirst, a son with a blue face like my brother Cyrus, strangled by the cord wrapped tight round his neck. My mother lay on the bed as her lifeblood flooded from her body, staining the mattress and floor with an oncoming tide of scarlet. My throat grew tight as my grandmother forced her to swallow a mouthful of consecrated Haoma water and barked for the slaves to fetch pomegranate seeds, both harbingers of immortality served to the dying. Barsine tried to stanch the flow of blood, but there was naught she could do. Even before the pomegranates arrived, my grandmother bent to press her cheek to my mother’s nose, feeling for the breath that wouldn’t come.
I choked as she removed a golden thread from her pocket—the sacred kusti always kept near a laboring woman—and girdled it about my mother’s engorged waist, murmuring the Padyab-Kusti prayer to keep Ahriman’s demons at bay. “Your mother awaits her entrance into paradise,” she finally proclaimed. “Someone must inform Alexander.”
Without waiting for a response, I burst into the garish sun’s light for the first time in two days, gulping in the crisp air still tainted with the ash and smoke from the fireship.
My mother was dead. She had been alive when dawn tinted the sky today, but now she was dead.
I stumbled through the camp, ignoring the shocked stares, some of the soldiers making the sign against evil and death as I passed. I glanced down, only now realizing that the bottom of my stale robe was stained with my mother’s blood. My heart was heavy with grief and guilt for all the moments I’d squandered these past months that I might have spent with her, for all the times my temper had grown short as she complained of her swollen ankles and aching back.
A Companion pointed me toward the waterfront when I asked where I might find Alexander, and I trudged in that direction, each step draining the last of my energy.
I found him standing at the start of the narrow causeway that was the ruined mole, the wreckage from the siege towers still floating in the turquoise waves like detritus after a storm. The Macedonians labored to lash two ships together with a massive battering ram atop their decks. Only two days ago, I might have marveled at the ingenuity of the Greeks in the face of such a terrible setback as the fireship, but now I only shoved past Alexander’s assembled onlookers.
He looked surprised at my approach and some part of my mind noted Hephaestion sitting on a crate next to his friend, his eyes bloodshot and both of their faces covered in several days’ worth of stubble. I felt as terrible as they looked and collapsed in a heap at Alexander’s feet, too exhausted to remain upright any longer.
“Alexander of Macedon,” I murmured, my throat raw. “I bear unfortunate news from the tent of Queen Stateira.”
To my surprise, Alexander knelt beside me and his assembled Companions drew back like a wave,
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