Rise: Dancing with the Lion Book 2 Read online

  They’d been together a year, a long time for boys their age. Leonnatos was on his second lover since Perdikkas and Derdas had been through seven. Hephaistion could’ve had a new boy with each new moon, had he wished; in the gymnasion, others sighed when he passed. Yet his affections were constant. He wanted only Alexandros. But what if Alexandros no longer wanted him? Left to his own devices, Hephaistion fretted, doubt fermenting in his belly like yeast, making a small, soft, sick knot. He could neither eat nor sleep. Finally, unable to bear more, he decided to push matters to a crux.

  The afternoon was drizzly, fog clinging to the hills and dulling the light, making slick the stone paths of the city and muddying tempers too. Hephaistion entered the megaron where Alexandros held court. Strolling along the peristyle perimeter, he pretended to study shields hung on the wall for decoration. They’d been taken in Philippos’s various battles, a nice reminder to visiting embassies: sarissai waited behind Philippos’s treaty offers. Alexandros sat at the front in a chair placed before his father’s oakwood throne, hearing legal cases. If he’d seen Hephaistion enter, he made no sign.

  Did you really expect that he would? Hephaistion chided himself.

  The case before the prince was typical: some trivial matter blown all out of proportion, the true trouble concealed under layers of petty recriminations. Hephaistion had often mediated sibling quarrels and had learned early how to recognize when only the top of the rock showed. Here, the opposing parties told a story of sheep stolen and pasture invaded. Alexandros listened, tapping the knuckles of his left hand against his lips, expression intent. When he gave his attention, he gave it all, burning like a torch. He could incinerate a man with the force of his gaze.

  Now, as plaintiff and defendant finished their accusations, he leaned back to cross ankles, looking supremely annoyed. Pointing to the one who’d taken the sheep, he said, “Return his ewe, Lakio.”

  “He can’t!” Sarpedon exclaimed. “The son-of-a-nanny-goat slaughtered it!”

  “O Zeu! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Heaving a great sigh, he gestured to the defendant. “Pay him for it, then.”

  Deciding that Alexandros had missed the heart of the trouble, Hephaistion moved to the crowd edge so he could step out front. The movement caught Alexandros’s eye, and Hephaistion jerked his chin towards the door, then left. After a few moments, Alexandros joined him in front of the secretaries’ alcove wedged beside the staircase.

  “What d’you want?” The prince stood with feet splayed, fists on hips. His right eye appeared very black, outweighing the blue like an unbalanced scale.

  Leaning into the wooden banister, Hephaistion spoke low for a measure of privacy from the men at their desks. “Making Lakio pay may settle matters this time, but they’ll be back in a month over another sheep or a cow or something equally stupid.”

  “Back off, Amyntoros. I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

  Hephaistion stared. What in the world? “You’re making a mistake, Aleko.”

  “And what would you do about the problem?”

  Hephaistion kicked away from the banister; they’d be nose to nose if Alexandros were taller. “Think, would you? This case isn’t over a sheep. It’s about the fact Lakio’s field once belonged to Sarpedon’s family. Go and ask how often Sarpedon’s flocks have ‘wandered’ over a two-cubit stone fence into Lakio’s cattle field.”

  “How do you know these things?” But Alexandros didn’t question the truth of it. Among Hephaistion’s other useless diversions, he collected gossip. The boys might call Harpalos a rumormonger, but Hephaistion knew more house-scandals than Harpalos ever would; he just didn’t go about telling everybody everything he knew. Harpalos collected gossip because it got him attention; Hephaistion collected gossip because he disliked being caught by surprise.

  Now he just shrugged. Frowning severely, Alexandros left. Hephaistion crossed the foyer to listen at the hall doors. Before long, he heard Alexandros ask the men what Hephaistion had told him to ask. Hephaistion smiled.

  Subsequent inquiry turned out the tale of a four-generation feud, and Alexandros bullied the two into an agreement. For a portion of wool, Sarpedon’s sheep could share pasture with Lakio’s cattle. Simple enough, but neither would have bent his stiff neck to suggest it. Hephaistion heard Lakio say, “It’s the principle of the thing!” and laughed softly to himself. Principle had nothing to do with it.

  “Never do that to me again.” Alexandros shoved aside the curtain separating the private bathing room from Alexandros’s bed chamber. Hephaistion looked up from where he sat in the terra-cotta bathtub. Stalking over, Alexandros grabbed a sponge to scrub Hephaistion’s back.

  “Are Lakio and Sarpedon happy?” Hephaistion asked.

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Just trying to be attentive to my regent’s needs.”

  “You’re trying to stick in your long nose.”

  “But you took my advice.”

  “You were right, peoskephalas.” Dickhead.

  “And you can’t stand it, can you?” Hephaistion twisted to look at his friend. Alexandros didn’t answer, just stepped away. “Aleko, what’s gnawing at you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Horse shite!” Standing, Hephaistion snatched a towel to dry his chest, then tossed the cloth across his back perfunctorily before climbing out to dress. Alexandros pushed the tub over to the drain and let the water flow out the plug at the bottom into the pipe that would carry it beneath the palace. Emptying the tub was slave’s duty but Alexandros preferred doing slave’s duty to calling in a slave. Privacy mattered to him, a peculiarity they both shared. Their friends thought them strange.

  Turning back, Alexandros leaned against the tub. “Look, the Seal is on my hand. I have to prove I know how to use it, which I can’t do if everybody thinks you’re the one sitting on the throne.”

  “By the Twin Brothers!” Too irritated for a moment to go on, Hephaistion wrapped the towel around his waist. Living around Alexandros was like building one’s house on the side of a volcano: the ground was extraordinarily fertile but the explosions devastating. “I don’t want your confounded throne. Not everybody does. Some of us have a normal man’s ambition: good land, good horses, good harvest. So I gave you advice today. What of it? You got them to agree to a compromise. I don’t have your patience.”

  With exaggerated care, Alexandros rearranged sponges and oil pots on a table. “You’re deliberately missing the point. I’m prince regent, not your boy.”

  Thunderstruck, Hephaistion dropped the towel. “What?”

  “I can’t be seen to come and go at your whim.” Alexandros spoke to the shuttered window. Sunlight stabbed through the slats.

  Dressing silently, Hephaistion couldn’t have forced words past the lump in his throat even if he’d had words to say. Throwing on his cloak, he walked out. He walked a long time, all night. The next morning, he packed bags, bridled Brephas, and left for Europos.

  Occupied first in the audience hall, then with dispatches in his father’s study, Alexandros was shocked to learn that Hephaistion had left Pella. He wrote a letter with his own hand, not wanting the contents known to a clerk. It took seven tries in wax to get it right—to explain, berate, cajole—before committing it to papyrus. Hephaistion was touchy. But they were going to get this matter settled once and for all.

  Alexandros had the letter sent before supper and the reply came back at dawn, riding a sandy-bay stallion. Eumenes knocked on the door to the king’s study where Alexandros was receiving his daily morning briefing from dispatches, scouts, and his advisors on security matters. “Hephaistion is here.” Distaste colored his tone. “He said to tell you he awaits your pleasure in the megaron.”

  And that was just how he’d have phrased it too. Alexandros grinned in spite of himself and wished he’d been there to hear Eumenes’s reply. “Thank you.” The secretary disappeared.

  Alexandros let Hephaistion wait until the briefing was over—not so long—the
n took a back route to enter the hall through a side door. Arms crossed, slouching, Hephaistion stood at the room’s center facing the throne, packs at his feet on the black-and-white pebble-checkered floor. Alexandros took a moment just to admire him, then said softly, “Hephaistion,” and had the satisfaction of seeing him start. Evidently, he’d expected Alexandros to make an entrance of his own.

  Alexandros indicated the half-open door behind him, and Hephaistion retrieved his packs, allowing himself to be led up to the storage room that housed Euripides’s library. Instinct had guided Alexandros’s choice; instinct served him best with Hephaistion. When they arrived, he lit a pair of lamps whilst his friend looked around. Hephaistion had never seen this place. Before Mieza, Alexandros hadn’t known him well enough to trust him, and since, Alexandros hadn’t had much time to come here himself. But no one would bother them here; they could say what they needed to. He closed and barred the door.

  Crossing to the honeycombed wall full of Euripides’s book-scrolls, Hephaistion picked through them. His black braid swung heavy between his shoulder blades, and Alexandros wanted to stroke it. Hephaistion made him want things he barely knew how to articulate.

  “So this is where you got it,” Hephaistion said.

  Alexandros pulled his attention back to the matter at hand. “Got what?”

  “The play you brought out to the dormitory: Arkhelaos.”

  “Yes, this is where I got it. And the others I loaned you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this place?”

  Alexandros almost said, I didn’t think about it, but that would start a fight. Hephaistion wanted to fight; Alexandros could feel it radiating off of him like heat from stone. “I’m telling you now.”

  Hephaistion put the scroll back. “You organized it.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the neatest person I know.”

  Alexandros smiled. “I hate disorder almost as much as I hate insubordination.”

  Ignoring that sally, Hephaistion tugged his cloak tighter about himself. “It’s as cold as a Fury’s tit up here. But you never feel the weather, do you?”

  Alexandros wondered if that had two meanings. He knelt by a chest. “Come here, I want to show you something.” If he were to reveal this place, he might as well reveal it all. “Look,” he said, opening the lid. Inside, armor gleamed. “When I was younger, I used to dress up in this and pretend to be Akhilleus.”

  Hephaistion bent to retrieve an antique Illyrian helm, turning it in his hands. The bronze was dingy but the fancy gold tooling around the edges and the high chestnut horsehair crest would suit him. “Put it on,” Alexandros said. Hephaistion glanced over but Alexandros nodded. “Go ahead.” Straightening, Hephaistion set it over his head with a sort of dazed solemnity. Alexandros followed him up with his eyes. “You look like The Rider.” The horseman hero of the Thrakians and Paionēs.

  Tearing off the helm, Hephaistion turned away. “Don’t mock me.”

  “I’m not.”

  Silent, back to Alexandros, Hephaistion picked at the leather straps. They were old and rotting.

  “Take the helmet,” Alexandros said. “Clean it up and wear it for me.”

  Spinning around, Hephaistion gaped. “This is a king’s helm!”

  “Yes.” Alexandros stood too. “It belonged to Alexandros the Golden.” King during the Persian Wars. “But my father has a helmet and so do I. That one is yours.”

  “By what right do you give this to me? If it was Alexandros’s, it’s your father’s to give.”

  “Finder’s rights.” Alexandros smiled. “No one’s used it in over a hundred years. You gave me back my sword; let me give you the helmet in its place.”

  Hephaistion blushed. Even in the dim attic storeroom, Alexandros could tell. “You shouldn’t have given me your sword.”

  “I know, but I felt badly. I had nothing for your birth day.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want anything but your presence!” Hephaistion tossed the helm on a couch. “I’m not after your gifts or favors. Or your throne.”

  Stalking over, Alexandros grabbed his shoulder to spin him around. “Look at me!” Hephaistion’s face was a mask; all the hurt hid in black eyes sharp enough to flay a man’s soul. It was time to end this. Avoiding the issue wouldn’t solve it. “Never skulk into court and interrupt me again.”

  One of those fine, straight eyebrows rose. “Even if I know something you ought to?”

  “That wasn’t why you interrupted. You interrupted to prove you could. You say you don’t want the throne, and I believe you. But you do want to rule the man who sits in it.”

  “That’s not so! You’ve been ignoring me for over two weeks and I wanted a reason.” He turned his back. “Are you tired of me?”

  Alexandros wanted to yell but kept his tone level, sublimating his own fear that Hephaistion would leave him. “I won’t fight with you, Phaistas. I’m going to tell you how it is. If you can live with that, we’ll stay together. If you can’t, we don’t belong together.” Hephaistion didn’t move. “Are you listening?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am prince. At the moment, I’m also regent. I can’t have the people thinking I’m just another man’s boy. Apollon witness, you know that.” Hephaistion had twisted his head sideways so that Alexandros could see his profile. He looked pained. “And I have not been ignoring you. I’ve been doing my duty. I don’t have the time to spend with you now that I had at Mieza. Get used to it. This is the way it’s going to be from now on.

  “If you have information for me, of course I want it. But you’ll behave with the same decorum and respect the rest of my advisors show. You will not glower in corners and call me out of the room just because you can. Do you enjoy embarrassing me?”

  “No.” Hephaistion frowned at the ground and almost Alexandros relented, but if he did, he’d lose this battle. Hephaistion was stronger than he knew. It all lay beneath the surface like the power of his name-god: forge-fire, earth-fire. He controlled, but did so covertly, and Alexandros suspected that half the time, he wasn’t even aware of his own machinations. That smoldering power was the source of his magnetism. To win the love of most men was easy, but to win Hephaistion . . . that was another matter entirely.

  “Confound you, you’re proud,” Alexandros said. Hephaistion turned, smiling ever so slightly. He thought he was winning. The prince fired his catapult. “My mother advised me to get rid of you.”

  Hephaistion’s fine nostrils flared. “So that’s why . . . The bitch! You’ve been ignoring me because of her.”

  “I have not been ignoring you! You’ve been demanding attention when I’ve work to do. I shouldn’t be up here now, but you matter to me.” For the first time he looked away. “My mother meddles, but she’s right in one thing—the men have to know I rule for myself. I’m not ignoring you; I’m fulfilling my office. It’d be gratifying if you’d help instead of fight me.”

  “I’m not fighting you—”

  “Shut up!”

  His friend fell silent and Alexandros grinned despite himself. “I’m stunned. You’re learning to take orders.” Then he ran a hand through his hair. “Idoú! You’re my dearest friend, but out there”—he pointed in the general direction of the audience hall—“I’m regent, and you’re a Companion’s son. If you can remember that, we can keep our friendship.”

  “Friendship. Yes.” Hephaistion’s voice was as bitter as bad grapes. “But nothing else. You made that very clear.”

  Annoyed, Alexandros rubbed at his eyes. “I thought you said you wanted us to be friends foremost. Did you change your mind?”

  “No.”

  “Well neither have I. I’m not fickle that way. Nothing has changed; you still have first place in my heart, Philtatē.” Beloved friend. Alexandros met Hephaistion’s eyes. “But I have to keep the men’s respect. I’m prince, and one day—gods willing—I’ll be king. I can’t rule unless the people respect me.”

  “What you’re saying is that if
I make you choose, I’ll have lost.”

  “Choose what?” Alexandros threw up his hands. “I am who I am.”

  Hephaistion spoke quickly, nervously. “I need to know you’re not ashamed of me. You said it yourself: you’re prince. I don’t trust my luck in having you.”

  “Your luck? I’m the one who got lucky. Kalos Hephaistion.” Beautiful Hephaistion. “You could have anyone you want.”

  Hephaistion’s response was immediate, furious, and not at all what Alexandros had expected. “Why do you think that if a man’s beautiful, he can’t love like other men? I’m not made of stone! I thought you wanted me, not my face, but you’re no different than the rest: all you love are my looks.” He was crying. Tears glittered on his lashes, and unlike most Makedonians, he hated to cry before others. “For myself, I’m nothing to you.”

  Momentarily stunned, Alexandros stared. Then he blew like a volcano.

  “Are you dim? Did you not hear a word I just said? I could tell you I don’t care about your face, but I’d be lying. I love to look at you. But I don’t love you for your looks. Herakleis! I love your wit, your honesty, even your blasted sarcasm. You’re my other self. If you can’t tell the difference by now, you’re stupider than I ever credited you. Do you love me because I’m prince?”

  “You being prince gets in the way more often than not.”

  “I could say the same of your looks.”

  Hephaistion’s eyebrow twitched. “Well, your father likes them pretty and dumb.”

  Too startled for a moment to reply, Alexandros finally broke up laughing. “I doubt even he’d deny that. But I’m not my father, and you’re not dumb.” Alexandros ran a palm down Hephaistion’s arm. His friend smelt of wet wool and horses. “I’ve work to do. Go and unpack, then come and stand with me in the audience hall.”

  He glanced up. Hephaistion’s expression was still cautious, but he inclined his head slightly before leaving.

  The Thrakian border had always been as dangerous as dry timber in summer. Now, a patrol brought word that the Maidoi had swept down to invade Bisaltia, threatening Philippos’s supply lines. It made a tottering, delicate development, and Alexandros called a council to announce that he’d take the reserves north to meet the invasion whilst Antipatros held the Seal. He spoke quietly to the men gathered in his father’s study, he behind the big table, they in front. He hadn’t planned to use the table, but his authority needed bolstering. All the others in the room were at least thirty years his senior.