There he lay, and there he slept and at his side, Hera the Queen, goddess on a golden throne.

Clapping echoed and faint voices rose as Krista slipped out the door into the side yard. Looking up at the moon, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. The carrying roll was slung over one shoulder, and the basket was tight in her hand. The side yard was empty and desolate in the pearly light of the moon. Without a sound she slipped away along the line of outbuildings, her face in shadow.

The rattle of pans in the kitchen woke Maxian. Groaning in pain, he screwed his eyes tight. Bright bars of sunlight were slanting in from the high windows of the sleeping room and falling like hammers on his face. He rolled over, pulling a blanket over his head. Drums rattled and rolled in his head, and he could hear the rush of blood in his ears like a waterfall. A hint of jasmine lay on the pillows.

O brilliant physician, he thought, dreading the hurt of further noise. Heal thyself.

"My lord?" Someone knocked lightly on the wooden frame of the doorway. Maxian flinched at the noise, but threw back the blanket. Gaius Julius was standing in the doorway, his leathery old face hiding a grin. "Did you sleep well?"

Maxian snarled and rolled out of bed. He was wearing a wrinkled tunic and a variety of wine stains. He ran his fingers through his hair, feeling it lie lank and greasy on his scalp. He scratched an itch behind his ear. His eyes felt like they had been used by mollusks for a mating bed.

"Yes, Gaius, what is it?"

"We've unloaded the books and put them in one of the rooms downstairs as a library, but where do you want the thaumaturgic apparatus? Also, will you summon the Engine to us today? There are more things we will need that are stored in its hold."

Maxian put his head in his hands and concentrated. Blue fire seeped from between his fingers and washed over his face for a moment. When he stood up, his stubble was gone and the hangover was a memory. He smiled at the old Roman, his great, good humor of the day before restored. There was a great deal of work to be done, and he was eager to be about it.

"I have an excellent place to put the Engine, my friend."

Deep in discussion with Gaius Julius, the Prince bustled out of the room and clattered down the stairs. A scrap of scraped parchment that had been laid on the pillow by his head was lost in the tangle of blankets.

A carruca with white-painted sides and a cover of faded blue cloth rolled slowly north along the Imperial road that followed the line of the coast. Four oxen plodded along in front of it, their driver nodding in the midday heat on the high seat at the front of the vehicle. He was a grizzled fellow, a slave with a white beard and a balding pate. A conical hat of straw was perched on his head, but his shoulders were bare and burned red by the sun. Beside him, exhausted from the long hike down the western slope of the mountain, dozed a young woman with a red wicker basket in her lap. With the steady, even pace of the oxen, they would reach the coastal town of Herculaneum by lunch time. The slave was in no hurry. His cargo of wine tuns wasn't going to spoil if he was a little late, and bouncing it over the graveled road might even ruin the vintage. The patricians who thronged the streets of the port during the summer liked their wine, and it meant a pretty sesterces to his master for the grape to be delivered in full flavor.

Krista clutched the basket to her chest, her eyes slitted against the sun off the ocean. It was bright and muggy. The headache that had nearly driven her to the ground during her nighttime journey down the mountain had begun to ease, receding slowly like the tide on a shallow shore. The amulet burned against her chest, a hot point on her skin. She dared not take it off yet. I will kill the Prince and his servants, she chanted to herself in the safety of her mind. I will ruin his plan.

With each recitation, the headache eased and the flickering black glow that came and went at the edge of her vision faded a little more. She shivered, feeling cold creeping along her bones. Even the hot sun did not drive it out. Only one thing would.

I will kill the Prince. He will fail. He will be destroyed.

The wagon rolled north, great wooden wheels rattling on the road.

I will kill him.

The Port of Leuke Kome on the Coast of the Hedjaz

Black smoke crawled into the upper air, a curling pillar rising slowly over the town. Mohammed strode down a narrow street, the gravel and stones crunching under his boots. The sun was high, and he was feeling the weariness of the day. The port lay ahead, near the burning buildings that fueled the smoke cloud. The Quryash chieftain turned as the street ended in a dusty plaza. One and two-story buildings built of pale tan lime-and-sandstone blocks surrounded the square. White plaster covered most of the walls. No one was in evidence, though by this hour the streets should have seen some traffic. A squad of the Sahaba trotted along after him, the iron rings of their armor jingling as they moved. Like all the men in his army, they had put aside the colored braid of their tribes, choosing instead the green and white of the Tanukh. About half of the men carried round shields of wood with iron bosses, adorned with a cheap russet paint. The others bore bows and quivers fashioned of boiled leather, packed with black-fletched arrows, on their backs.

A sloping street led off of the plaza, leading down to the harbor. Mohammed walked stiffly- he had spent too much time on a horse in the past week- and the descent made his thighs and ankles complain. From the vantage of the little hill, he could make out the ships tied up to the stone quays in the harbor and the bulk of the warehouses that lined the bay. Leuke Kome stood on a barren shore, a dozen leagues from anything that bore green leaves or a hint of water. The town existed only because it owned the sole harborage along this long stretch of desolate coastline. Despite that, there were still a dozen ships in the harbor. A hundred and eighty miles to the north, along a long, narrow valley, stood the Nabatean capital of Petra and the road to the great cities along the Strata Triana.

Leuke Kome had served as an entrepot for the Petran trade in silk, cotton, perfume, rare spices, steel ingots, poppy paste, and gems for eight hundred years. Its wealth, its whole reason for being, lay in the safe harbor and the stone warehouses that rose two and three stories tall behind the road that ran along the piers. Most of the black smoke was billowing from the windows of one of those warehouses.

Mohammed's face was storm-cloud dark with anger. A faint breeze was blowing up from the sea, carrying a sharp smell and bending the pillars of smoke inland. Ten years spent in the trade, traveling the length and breadth of Arabia and beyond, even to India and the glorious, decadent cities of the Empire, had not been lost on him. He knew many spices, fabrics, and woods by taste and smell.

The Quryash chieftain and his bodyguards reached the bayside road and turned. Other bands of Sahaba soldiers were beginning to gather as they finished their sweep through the town. When the sun had risen, hours ago, the port had still been in Imperial hands. Now it was Mohammed's possession, and he was furious that a quarter or more of its worth to him was being consumed as he watched. One of the Sahaba guardsmen coughed, catching a whiff of the sting in the air. Mohammed raised his riding scarf over his mouth and nose. Burning pepper let off a dangerous humor.

Mohammed had thought to leave Mekkah in secret, accompanied by only a few of his companions. The Tanukh, he knew, had sworn themselves to his service. Those bonds, forged in the battle furnace of Palmyra, would endure until his death or theirs. The men of the city, even his kinsmen, he had not expected to follow. Even after the capture of Yathrib and the extirpation of the Bani-Hashim and their allies, it had not occurred to the Quryash chieftain that he had become the ruler of a people.