Daughter of Sand and Stone Read online

  MORE BOOKS BY LIBBIE HAWKER

  Tidewater

  The Sekhmet Bed

  The Crook and Flail

  Sovereign of Stars

  The Bull of Min

  House of Rejoicing

  Storm in the Sky

  Eater of Hearts

  Baptism for the Dead

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Libbie Hawker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503947634

  ISBN-10: 1503947637

  Cover design by David Drummond

  Illustrated by Lane Brown

  For my nieces, Agatha, Maia, and Aubrey. May you grow up to be warrior queens, each in your own way.

  And also for Paul.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  PART TWO

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  PART THREE

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PART ONE

  Zenobia bat-Zabbai

  260 CE

  1

  Born to Know the Scent of Blood

  On the last day of spring, the moon is just past full and still visible, pale and round in the late-morning sky. The women of the great chief take their embroidery, their gossip, and their games to the shaded rooftop where the breeze is cool. This is the season when the winds come from the east—from Eran and from India beyond, slow and languid and heavy with the odors of spice: the bitter taste of golpar; the bright bloom of coriander; the low earthy hum of rose; and cinnamon, sweet and compelling as a lover’s voice.

  These are the odors of wealth, of gold. And gold is the odor of blood.

  The wind carries the rich smell of the ancient oasis, the place called Tadmor. It is a pool of yellow-green water sunk in a carpet of green vegetation so bright it startles the eye amid the endless expanse of desert. Tadmor breaks the high ranks of dunes and the flat pans, the dry basins with their hard, cracked floors and outcroppings of stone, all of it the same listless dun, the same gray-gold. It is a sanctuary, ringed with date palms, those swaying old sentinels that have dropped sweet fruit to caravanners for countless centuries, the palms offering up their friendly bowers of deep, damp shade. Beneath the perfume of the lush things that grow in the date palms’ shadow, the breeze lifts the scent of the pool itself—a bitter sulfur that fills the colonnades and alleys of the nearby city of Palmyra.

  Now and then a stronger wind sweeps through the city streets, through the avenues of white limestone and painted walls that spread below the chief’s palace like the weave of a fine new rug. The wind flattens the veils of the women on the roof, pressing the thin fabric against the backs of their necks. The chains of gold discs hanging from their bright, flat-topped turbans chime, and their hands, as narrow and delicate as ornamental vases, flick the silken veils away.

  These women—four of them, at any rate—are the very jewels of Palmyra.

  Forty years of life and six spells in the birth chamber have left little mark on Berenikë, the great chief’s wife. Her hair is still as black and glossy as hand-rubbed ebony. She is a tiny woman with a strong, sharp nose that speaks of her Macedonian blood. Her pointed features and black, shining eyes evoke a small songbird, all fear and flight. But when she turns a dark, level stare on companion or servant or even the chief, she is a sacred ibis, a thing of stately grace and divine confidence. When she moves, her claims ring true: that she is of the blood of old royal Egypt. When she speaks, her throat is full of the voice of Cleopatra, queen of kings, she who stood against the might of Rome.

  As Berenikë sinks onto her cushions and takes a book of poetry from her servant’s hands, the three young women settle about her. They are her daughters, her only offspring to survive the brutal ravages of childhood, and all the legacy left to the great chief. Nafsha, the eldest, is narrow-faced, but not without her own stamp of beauty in her onyx-hard eyes and regal bearing. Zabibah, second born, is as sweet and melting as a cake of honey, round and soft and biddable. And Zenobia—ah, Berenikë sighs. Zenobia is still unmarried at seventeen.

  Berenikë’s bright, birdlike eyes land on her youngest daughter. She studies the girl as Zenobia locks a length of blue silk into an olivewood embroidery frame and slicks a scarlet thread between her lips. She could as well sharpen a sword on that tongue as thread a needle.

  Over the past two years, the names of eight suitors have been laid at Zenobia’s feet—eight good men with caravans and established trade routes, men whose workers know the desert well and whose reaches extend beyond the eastern wadis into the far-off lands of silk and spice, silver and gold. The chief would have been proud to call any of the prospects a son-in-law, yet Zenobia has rejected every one.

  The girl seems unaware of the cheerful gossip and quiet laughter around her as her sisters and mother, and her cousins and aunts—the courtly companions of Berenikë and her daughters—settle in the shade. Unlike Nafsha and Zabibah, who have been brought back to their father’s palace for shelter while their husbands are off making war, Zenobia does not need the distraction of her family. Her face is calm and stoic as she begins her stitches, her mouth silent. She knows the smell of blood, Berenikë thinks, and somehow the girl’s acceptance of danger is a comfort to her, despite Zenobia’s infuriating rejection of so many fine suitors. Berenikë returns to her poetry.

  Far below the great chief’s rooftop, the blows of a craftsman’s hammer ring. A merchant’s voice rises in a shout, a coarse call to the men who unload the goods from his camels’ packs. From one of the cistern plazas an ass brays a rasping protest as its panniers are laden with heavy skins of water. Even with nearly all the men away, Palmyra continues on its course.

  This is a city of unsurpassed riches, its wealth as vast as the desert’s sprawl. It is the golden hub around which the Roman Empire turns, creaking beneath its own lumbering weight. In a city such as this, where even the lowest-born craftsmen can afford silk, and the servants wear white linen from the south, a pampered girl may grow to comfortable womanhood and live out her years in happy peace. She may lay all day on a bed of fine cushions if she pleases, kept as well as the Egyptians keep their cats, the pet of a wealthy husband’s home, as untroubled and safe as a kitten on a cushion.

  But that sort of life is for the women of merchants—those whose bloodlines originate in far-flung lands, from the same distant places that yield up the spices and dyes that flow along the trade routes into Palmyra, and from Palmyra into the coffers of Rome. Zenobia is no coddled woman, no Egyptian cat. She can trace her line back to the very foundation of Palmyra—and beyond. She holds her chin high as she works precise stitches into the length of blue silk and looks down her aquiline nose
at her work. She will not bow her head to any woman or man, so why, indeed, should she bow to a needle?

  Zenobia’s father is the great chief—the Ras, as the tribes say. His name is Amr Ibn Zarib, though the citizens of Palmyra affectionately call him Zabbai. In Palmyra he stands second only to the governor. For the Amlaqi tribe, he stands first.

  In days long ago, generations before Rome seized control of Palmyra, four nomadic tribes tended the oasis and the beautiful city that grew up beside it. Although Rome did its best to blot out true Palmyrene culture—when has that sprawling empire left one of its conquests unaltered?—the tribes’ influence can still be felt in the city today. Children learn the tribes’ names as soon as they can say mother or father: Mattabol, Komare, Ma’zin, and Amlaqi. The tribes are as much a part of the city as the white stone of its temples and palaces.

  Although traders from every land have settled here, now you can scarcely find a born Palmyrene who cannot trace his blood back to the great desert tribes. Some, of course, have purer blood than others, and blood counts for much in Palmyra. All the tribes are great forces, it is true. They work together like brothers, minding the city and the myriad trade routes that feed Palmyra like a trickle feeds a flood. The city could not function without the tribes’ stewardship. Even distant Rome can’t change that fact. But of all the tribes, the Amlaqi has always been the best—the noblest, the strongest, the most loyal and fair—as any Amlaqi will tell you.

  A cynical Palmyrene—or one who hasn’t a drop of Amlaqi in his veins—will tell you that there is nothing intrinsically better about this most influential tribe; it’s simply a matter of politics. When it comes to playing games of power, games of quick maneuvers—Roman games—the Amlaqi have a certain taste for it that other tribes lack.

  But whether taste or nature is to blame, only a fool would deny that the Amlaqi tribe holds Palmyra almost as tightly as Rome does. Their fondness for politics has made them the proudest and richest of the tribes.

  An outsider might find Zabbai an unlikely leader for such a grand and influential clan. His origins were humble. He built his trading empire from the dust beneath his feet, grappling his way up from the outskirts of the tribe, winning allies and supporters by dealing fairly with everyone. As a young man, he worked as a guard in a caravan, protecting other men’s goods—and soon his reputation for honesty and hard work earned him a caravan of his own. Zabbai grew his string of camels year by year and found work for any man who showed a desire for it. He even invented occupations for the street urchins who came knocking at his door, setting them to sweeping up dung in the animal yards or pulling burrs and thorns from the camels’ tails—anything to give them a sense of utility and pride in their own accomplishments. He never cheated in trade, never rigged the scales to skim a few coins or an extra pinch of spice. When the wife of one of his caravan guards fell ill, Zabbai himself paid the physician’s fee and sent she-goats to the family so the little ones would have plenty of milk. When a caravan went missing—led by a young shepherd who was not much more than a boy—Zabbai rode out into the desert to find the train himself, arriving in time to rescue it from a raider’s ambush. When the goods were safe, Zabbai, who might have berated the boy for his carelessness, instead embraced him like a father, weeping in relief that his life was spared.

  Such things matter to Palmyra’s tribesmen. Is it any wonder, then, that support for Zabbai grew? Before his first daughter was weaned, the kindly, brave merchant found himself borne up on a tide of popularity, pushed from one civic office to the next. In each new office, he had shown the same fairness and wisdom that had won the hearts of the Amlaqi tribe, until at last he was adopted by the aging Ras, whose sons had all been killed. When the gods took the old Ras, Zabbai became the Amlaqi chief, and never had the tribe felt more fortunate.

  With his full beard and long-sleeved tunic, Zabbai appears Arab to any eye that looks upon him. However, his adopted father, the Ras, traced his descent not only through the desert nomads, but also the Seleucids—and he will tell any man willing to listen of his glorious heritage. The grandfather of Zabbai’s grandfather was Antiochus IV Epiphanes, companion to Alexander the Great and founder of the noble family of Seleucids. Over the generations, Zabbai’s noble line decreased in glory, as all bloodlines do sooner or later. But the fact that he grew up a simple merchant did not prevent him from honoring his heritage, from preserving his ancestors’ noble Hellenistic ideals. The Seleucids were the guardians of all that was Greek and good; if not for their memory to inspire the soul, one might think the entire world had always existed under Rome’s harsh sway. The memory of the Seleucids certainly inspires Zabbai. His ancestor Epiphanes fought at Alexander’s side and aided him in founding Alexandria—which is, as all men know, a city of limitless knowledge. Zabbai has great respect for learning and good works, and so he bears the standard of his Seleucid blood with unapologetic pride.

  Zenobia breathes deeply as the other women giggle. She feels the bite of spice on the wind and knows that danger is not far off. She was born to know its scent. Although she has seen only seventeen years and has no husband, as a daughter of such noble parents, her veins flow with the blood of desert warriors, Greek heroes, and Egyptian queens. How can she help but know when war is coming? War is her heritage. She does not shudder; she does not fear. No Amlaqi has ever feared a sword. Zenobia plies her needle and lifts her face to the wind. She narrows her black eyes at the smell of blood.

  In the ruddy shade of a canopy made of red-dyed linen, the aunts and cousins gather around a game board, while Nafsha smiles coolly in their midst. The women are arrayed like the petals of a jasmine, delicate and bright. They laugh quietly as they make their pawns skip across the polished stone squares, click, click, a sound like beads of turquoise falling one by one along a ribbon of silk.

  Nafsha’s voice rises above the murmurs of idle gossip. “But of course, some of us are still unmarried.” She cuts her sharp eyes toward Zenobia.

  The younger sister lays her embroidery in her lap and stares back at Nafsha. Zenobia’s eyes are faintly mocking. Having lived as the daughter of Zabbai, Zenobia wonders, why should she so lower herself to wed a mere merchant?

  There was a time when you, too, stood high as a Ras’s daughter, Sister, Zenobia says silently, gazing into Nafsha’s thin face. But now you are only a wife.

  Nafsha frowns. She glances away, as if she has heard Zenobia’s thoughts. Nafsha has long since married Antiochus, a distant cousin of tenuous Amlaqi descent. She is now more the wife of her husband than the daughter of the Ras, and her marriage has meant a certain loss of status. It is a small and temporary loss, to be sure—but Nafsha feels any slight keenly. She will not cease to prod Zenobia until her youngest sister gives in and marries—and once more stands below Nafsha in the family hierarchy. For in the chief’s family, as in all of Palmyra, a woman is only as powerful as the man who keeps her, and although Antiochus has a list of fine traits long enough to make any woman swoon, he is not Zabbai.

  Antiochus is strong, kindly to his wife, and fair to his servants. He is even quite handsome, with fine Seleucid blood evident in gray-green eyes and a beard the color of new bronze. He is a rich man, the owner of several dozen camels and the head of a small army of traders who travel year-round to the most exotic lands to bring back a continuous stream of quality goods. Antiochus possesses a lovely, well-shaded estate near the amphitheater that any Palmyrene who has not grown up in the palace of the chief would covet. But he is not Zabbai, in spite of all the gods have blessed him with.

  Nafsha may have stepped only one small and temporary rung down the ladder of life, but any step that does not take her higher gnaws away at her soul.

  The other women of the household titter at the air of sudden tension between the sisters. Their hands freeze over the game board; bracelets tremble on poised wrists. They are waiting for the spat to come, as eager as kittens begging for a dish of cream. A confrontation b
etween Nafsha and Zenobia always promises a good time.

  Nafsha arches her kohl-black brows and turns her face coolly away from Zenobia. “But then, some of us don’t know when it’s time to put away a child’s life and take on the duties of womanhood.”

  Berenikë looks up from her book of poems with a rebuke on her lips, but the wind sends the book’s pages fluttering. They are of the thinnest papyrus and rattle together in a dry chorus until Berenikë’s finger halts their frantic movement. She pins the pages down with the same air of natural calm command she uses to maintain the smooth flow of her household. The pages will not flutter because her fingers hold them; her daughters will not quarrel because her eyes silence them.

  “Be quiet, Nafsha,” Berenikë says softly. She has no need to raise her voice—her Cleopatra voice. “Zenobia, remove the look of impudence from your face and be humble as suits a virgin girl. Your sister is a married woman, and deserving of your respect.”

  Zenobia continues to stare at Nafsha, who has already turned back to her game, hiding her flush behind the drape of her veil.

  “Zenobia,” Berenikë says, only slightly sharper now.

  Berenikë knows that her daughters have laughed together over her claim that she is descended from the great Egyptian queen—never daring to laugh when Berenikë might hear them, of course. She does not blame them for their incredulity. She knows that the famed beauty who outwitted Rome and ruled Egypt as a goddess on earth seems a thousand leagues from her—small, dark-haired Berenikë with her firm jaw and her Roman nose, who wedded a mere nomad many years older than she and lived in a mud-brick hut on the outskirts of Palmyra in the days before Zabbai’s caravan—and his good reputation—made him rich. But such is Berenikë’s confidence in her own blood that she has never felt the need to defend the veracity of her claims—even when she lived with a dirt floor and dust between her toes, when the shit of goats and camels was her carpet. In truth, Berenikë can trace her line back further still—to Dido, in fact, the legendary queen who founded Carthage, the city that has ever been a thorn in Rome’s side. And on her father’s side, her roots reach back to Julia Domna, the jewel of the desert whose rise as the emperor’s wife soured many a Roman lady’s wine not so long ago. Berenikë knows that when she speaks this way, her voice low and fierce and full of a certainty that she will be obeyed, even Zenobia will flinch.