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time?” her adviser asked. He was a stout man, her Dio, with a bald pate ringed by a few dogged curls that refused to admit defeat. He had the look of a soldier gone to seed, the sort of man who enjoyed indulging in life’s finer offerings as he worked his way through middle age. There must have been a powerful frame somewhere beneath that barrel of a belly, but only traces of it remained. She trusted him, more fully than she did any other man. After all, he’d been the first of the Alexandrian nobles to defy her father and sow discontent in the city streets.
    “This moment suits me as well as any other,” she told him as they passed along the public colonnades. Here and there, she’d catch sight of a servant shrinking from her sight. But perhaps she’d only imagined it. “Tell me, Dio: what is it that troubles you?” She slowed her pace, and looked him in the eye. “Your Alexandrians can’t be displeased with me—not yet. The diadem’s scarcely been knotted on my head.”
    “Oh, no, my queen. I assure you that my men are all quite content on this happy occasion. It’s the culmination of all our prayers.” His smile strained; his pate burned red. With Dio, that was the telltale sign of nerves.
    “And yet?”
    “And yet…your mother is proving difficult. It’s been heard, my queen, that she intends to purge all those who were once loyal to Ptolemy the Piper. I don’t need to tell you what damage that might do—”
    “Then you have friends who support my father,” she answered. It didn’t surprise her.
    “I might have friends who supported your father. But my friendships matter little. What matters is that nearly every man in this city has, at one point or another, tied himself to every Ptolemy who has sat the throne. It would be cruel indeed to cut off heads for such casual affiliations.”
    So he looked to her for assurances. Dio worried too much; she wasn’t bloodthirsty. She could afford to be generous in victory. “Tell your friends that I don’t intend to kill men who merely nodded in support of my father’s reign.”
    “I knew you didn’t, my queen, but it will soothe many hearts to hear the words all the same.” He pressed her hand gently. As she watched him shuffle away, she wondered if there was some deeper root of his affections. She felt her face flush.
    Upstairs, she returned to the Piper’s— her chambers, the chambers of the king. The gold-framed mirrors, set at angles along each wall, blinded her, fracturing the finely wrought furniture into countless iterations. Everywhere she looked, a dozen sets of eyes stared back at her. The writing table, with its inlaid pearls blinking against its ebony slab, was the only surface unsheathed in gold. The Piper sleeps in gilded chains . And Berenice had thought her mother had exaggerated.
    “I imagined I’d find you here.” Pieton startled her as he often did. The eunuch had an uncanny way of entering rooms unnoticed.
    “And I imagined my guards would block uninvited guests and leave me a few minutes of peace to enjoy my chambers.” Despite herself, Berenice took comfort in his familiar presence. With him, at least, she knew what to expect. Teasing aside, he cared for her. And his regard couldn’t be muddied.
    “Your chambers? How quickly you appropriate your father’s things. The diadem becomes you. No wonder you spend your hours in this hall of mirrors.”
    She smiled at the eunuch’s mocking tone.
    “These rooms must satisfy for a time,” she answered.
    “Meanwhile,” Pieton trundled on, “Egypt accrues countless costs: your guards, your coins, your emissaries. And word from Memphis is that the Nile doesn’t rise.”
    “Nor should it. Thoth doesn’t start for another ten days. The Season of Inundation hasn’t even begun.”
    “But it nears. And the priests of that city fret over the river’s low measure.”
    “No doubt Psenptais stands first among the fretters.” Her father had vanished across the sea, but his