The Wadjet Eye Read Free

overpowered him. Artemas would topple like a column at the temple of Karnak if he came into the room now.
    When they had prepared the sleeping chamber, Artemas had kept up a constant babble. They'd brought a table from the medical school and jars for draining the bodily fluids and scalpels for removing the organs. Artemas had talked rapidly about nothing while Damon sharpened the blades—anything to keep his mind off the task at hand. It had wearied Damon. He'd wanted quiet.
    There was enough natron to dry two corpses, but Damon needed to keep Artemas busy until he removed the brain through the nostrils with the picks he had hidden from Artemas in the folds of his kilt. Artemas would have gone down for sure if he had known the purpose of those tools.

    "Another sack, I think, and some powder of myrrh as well," Damon shouted at the closed door. His eyes stung and watered, and he fought the urge to gag.
    "I'll be back shortly"
    Not too shortly,
Damon thought. Powder of myrrh would be hard to come by this time of year. Ships were not traveling yet, though winter was nearly over.
    "Damon?"
    "Yes?" Damon struggled to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
    "Are you all right?"
    Would Artemas just leave? Damon didn't want to think about whether he was all right or not. "Just go. I'm going to be fine." He had no choice. He didn't want to be fine. But he had no choice.

FIVE
    "We didn't need the natron after all," Damon said.

    Artemas swung the amphora from his shoulder and positioned it near Damon, who sat on the bench overlooking the garden.
    "She's surrounded with it," Damon said. "Now we must wait—the drying will take time."
    "Was it difficult?"
    What did Artemas think? Of course it was difficult. He shrugged.
    The two sat staring into the garden. The bust of Caesar, a gift from Damon's father, seemed to look down on them from the pedestal rising out of the roses.
    Damon felt irritable; even the statues annoyed him. "This courtyard looks just like Alexandria—less and less Egyptian."
    "Since when has Alexandria been anything like the rest of Egypt?"
    Damon grunted. How could he argue? Alexandria and Rome had more in common than Alexandria and the rest of her country. He, like most Alexandrians, had never felt the heat of the desert, nor seen the Nile overflow its banks during the inundation. But he felt like arguing. "Alexandria attracts nothing but pirates."

    Artemas fingered Damon's silk tunic. "It seems their trade goods aren't beneath you."
    "It wasn't the debtors and criminals who wove this fabric. They're all in your blessed army." Damon knew it rankled Artemas that Alexandria took in any outlaw at its gate who would enlist. Maybe now Artemas would fight with him. He felt like shouting at someone.
    "It's a challenge to lead men unaccustomed to following orders. Cleopatra's officers must be true leaders."
    "What is it with you today?" Damon threw up his hands. "Have you no fight in you?"
    "I know what you're trying to do." Artemas sniffed. "It's not me that angers you. Why don't we talk about what really bothers you?"
    "I miss the old days." Damon wanted to say,
when my mother lived.
But it was more than that. He missed boyhood, when his cares were few. "I miss the old market."
    "When it was safe for crawling babies to explore and, if the gods smiled, maybe even find a friend?"

    Damon felt his anger dissolve. He could never stay angry with Artemas. With his bare foot he covered the design of the spider woven into the thick Persian carpet his father had sent from Zela. The battle there had been so swift and crushing that Caesar had announced to the world, "
Veni, vidi, via.
" Everyone knew what those words meant. Even Damon, who knew no Latin, could translate them:
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Damon had felt proud that his father had been there with Caesar, but he would not admit it to anyone. Not even to Artemas, who had carved the words into a crocodile hide and stretched it across a frame to hang his sleeping