Day after day I perfected my rapport with them, to the degree that I could sit on the floor of my cell and go with them through the cracks between the cell walls, into their nests, along the tunnels that honeycombed the palace’s cellars. Through the eyes of the pack’s leader I visited the guard room and saw the giant humans lounging carelessly, dropping crumbs of bread and scraps of meat onto the floor—a feast for the pack, once the humans had left the chamber.
I even listened to the guards’ conversations, although their voices sounded strangely deep and booming in the ears of my rats. It took some while for me to learn how to transduce the tones they were capable of hearing into words of understandable human language.
Another royal wedding was drawing near, I learned. But the more they spoke, the more bawdy jokes they made about the impending nuptials, the more confused I became. Alexandros was marrying Kleopatra, they said. Those were two of the most common names among the Macedonians. Did they mean Alexandros, the king’s son? The Little King himself? And Kleopatra was the name of Philip’s most recent wife, although he called her Eurydice.
It was Pausanias who cleared up the puzzle for me.
He came to visit me in my cell. One day I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and recognized that there was someone accompanying the shuffle-footed old man who brought me my food. Someone wearing boots. One of the rats happened to be near a crack in the corridor wall and I looked up through its eyes. Pausanias loomed like a moving mountain, shaking the rat’s sensitive whiskers with each booted step.
The guard pulled the door open on its squeaking hinges and Pausanias ducked through the doorway into my cell. He carried a sputtering torch in his right hand. He had left his sword at the guard room, I saw.
“Leave us,” he told the old man. “I’ll call when I’m finished here.”
The old man wordlessly closed the door and shot its bolt home.
“You’ve lost weight,” Pausanias said, looking me over.
I saw his nose wrinkle. “And I must smell pretty bad, too,” I said.
“That can’t be helped.”
“Why am I here?” I asked. “Why haven’t I been allowed to see the king? Or to have a trial, at least.”
“It will be over soon,” he said. His face was grim, his eyes evasive.
“What do you mean?”
“After the wedding we can let you go.”
“The wedding?”
Pausanias’ lips turned down into a frown. “The king is giving his daughter to his brother-in-law.”
“His daughter Kleopatra? Olympias’ daughter?”
“She is to marry Alexandros, King of Epeiros.”
“Olympias’ brother?” I felt shocked.
He nodded sourly. “It smacks of incest, doesn’t it? Marrying off his fourteen-year-old daughter to her own uncle.”
“I thought that Olympias was living in Epeiros with her brother.”
“She was. She has been returned to Pella.”
Philip’s statecraft, I realized. He was binding the king of Epeiros to Macedonia by marrying his daughter to him. Alexandros of Epeiros would no longer side with Olympias in their marital squabbles because he was marrying a Macedonian princess. Olympias no longer had a brother to take her side, to give her shelter, to possibly go to war against Philip for her sake.
“The One-Eyed Fox has outsmarted her,” I muttered.
“Has he?” Pausanias made a bitter smile. “We’ll see.”
“And what of our Alexandros, the Little King? How is he reacting to all this?”
“He ran off to Epeiros with his mother when Philip married Eurydice. But the king called him back to Pella and he came, obedient to Philip’s command.”
“He’s chosen his father over his mother’s wishes,” I said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions, Orion,” said Pausanias. “Alexandros will be king one day. That’s why he returned to Pella, to reinforce his claim to the throne. You know that Eurydice has born Philip a son.”
“I heard.”
“The babe will never become king of Macedonia. Alexandros is determined to succeed his father, no matter what.”
I nodded my agreement. Then I asked again, “But what has this to do with me? Why am I being kept locked in this cell?”