Xerxes cursed and spun away, thrusting fingers through his hair. He pivoted back. “How bad?”
“It has been completely destroyed.” The man dropped to his knees again, shoulders rolled forward in supplication.
“No.” Four years of planning could not be obliterated in a single storm. He tasted the fear emanating off the messengers and spun away to keep from breaking his word and
tossing them off the wall and down the rocky embankment of the mountain. They were not the ones to blame.
But someone was, and fury with them settled like blood on his tongue. He marched to the palace, knowing the rest would follow. “Unacceptable!” Perhaps he bellowed—he did
not care. If his wrath could match nature’s, then perhaps all would obey him instead of her. “What fools designed a bridge that could not withstand the storms the
Hellespont is famous for? I will have their heads!”
“Master, the engineers are to blame for this. They—”
“Quiet, Mardonius.” He sliced a hand through the air, tempted to ram it into his cousin’s stomach. “Given that you are the one who had this brilliant idea to march
against Greece, I ought to hold you accountable for this failure.”
Mardonius scuttled to the rear of the group.
Masistes cleared his throat. “We will rebuild, my lord—”
“Of course we will rebuild.” As he strode into the cavernous hall, Xerxes grabbed a towering golden pillar and sent it clanging across the floor. The ashes of burnt
incense blew through the room. “But I do not have another four years to dedicate to this! How long before the men drink the river dry and descend on the land like a
pestilence? We must be out of here by spring, or both the army and the country will suffer famine and drought.”
“Surely a plan can be devised that will allow for quick rebuilding.”
Xerxes spun on Otanes. Usually the man had more brains than his fool of a daughter, but apparently not today. “Do you not think we would have chosen such a plan to begin
with, were there one?” He grabbed up a bowl of fruit and sent it flying. It made a satisfying twang when the metal struck stone.“I will give them three months. Three. We
cannot afford more.”
A cacophony of arguments sprang up from the men, which only made his vision haze. “If you must squawk like a bunch of birds, do it where I cannot hear you!”
Growling, he turned his back on them and fumed his way to a window. He would have his bridge in three months. He needed to get through Greece and burn Athens to the ground
so that he might be in Susa again next year. They could not get stuck in Europe through a winter.
One year. He had one year to teach the arrogant collection of city-states who ruled the world, and he would not be stopped by an overblown rainstorm and the incompetence of
slaves.
A cool touch kissed the burning on the back of his neck, and all the fury inside bunched into a knot. Then small, familiar hands rested on his elbows, and the knot unraveled
into a mess of limp strands.
Kasia rested her forehead on his back. “What has happened, my love?”
He had no choice but to be soothed by the sweep of her hands up and then down his arms. “My bridge is destroyed. A storm. It is that blasted Hellespont, Kasia, it is set
against me.”
“The river?” He could hear the smile in her voice. “Yes, surely the river hates you, the spiteful thing. It must be offended that you would dare to bridge it. You ought
to give it a few lashes to teach it a lesson.”
Why could his mouth not keep from twitching up when she was near? “Scribe! Take down a message for those at the Hellespont. Their king orders them to give the river three-
hundred lashes with a whip in punishment for its impudence.”
“Xerxes!” Her whisper was both outraged and amused as she jumped around to face him. “You cannot—everyone will think you mad!”
He grinned and took her hands. “It will be cathartic. Besides, most of these nations think the river a god—they will only assume me supremely arrogant, not mad.”
Her eyes sparkled with the amusement he so loved. “You are supremely arrogant. You are rearranging the face of the earth for this war—bridging rivers, digging canals,
cleaving mountains in two. Already you claim every person in the empire as your slave—will you subjugate creation too?”
He chuckled and turned his face toward the scribe busily taking down his order. “Add that a pair of manacles should be thrown into the waters.”
His name came out on a laughing groan this time, and she fell against his chest. Xerxes ran a hand up her back and into her mass of midnight hair.
Behind him, a throat cleared. “What of the engineers, master?”
He saw no reason to look at Mardonius or invite him any closer. “They will have to be executed.”