Her Pirate Master Read Online Free

Cleopatra, the present queen, had with Caesar’s help fought off the claims of her own brother and sister and ascended to the throne amid a storm of controversy. Her siblings wanted to rule the United Lands and drive Rome out, and there were many Egyptians who liked the sound of that. The brother and sister had managed to raise an army, but the brother was killed fighting Caesar’s legionnaires and the rebellion collapsed. Caesar sent the sister to Rome, a captive. Eventually, she was freed and left the city, but where was she now?
    Seleucus racked his brain trying to remember any snippet he might have heard about the mutinous princess. He didn’t think Cleopatra had allowed her back into Egypt. The people of Alexandria had rallied behind Arsinoe before. Cleopatra would not risk their doing so again. That meant that, if she was alive, Arsinoe was a princess in exile and, thus, a princess in need of friends. And where better to look for those than in the East? At Ephesus, where his lovely captive wanted him to take her. He remembered then that Ptolemy, Arsinoe’s father, had also sought sanctuary in that beautiful city during his troubles. Arsinoe might have thought she could find supporters there. Friends of her father’s who hadn’t returned when he did, enemies of Cleopatra, and plain old troublemakers who would ally themselves with her. Seleucus turned on his side to stare at Imi’s beautiful ivory box, but any answers it contained were not revealed to him. The questions, however, continued to race through his mind until, finally, he fell asleep from exhaustion.
    *****
     
    Imi clambered up on the deck of the small galley. She staggered over to the railing, hoping she’d find her sea legs long before the ship left the Roman coast behind. Looking out over the waves, she took a couple deep breaths. She needed to steady her nerves and gather her thoughts.
    Why had the Great Mother not come to her aid? Did she not realize they faced the failure of all their plans? Did she not care? But Imi could not face that thought, would not allow herself to even imagine that perhaps the Great Mother had deserted Arsinoe’s cause. That could not be. Arsinoe was the chosen one of Egypt’s gods. The Prophet of Amun in Memphis had declared it when she was still a child, long, long before the Great Mother’s Ephesian servants had seen her and said the same thing. Yet it was Cleopatra, Arsinoe’s sister, who sat on the throne; a woman who saw nothing wrong with prostituting herself and the country to the Romans. To help Arsinoe gain the throne, Imi had to get back to Ephesus with the icons. The princess had trusted her with the task, her and no one else. Who would suspect her, they had reasoned? A young woman, alone? And now she teetered on the brink of failure. Imi winked back tears and turned to survey the deck. She had to think, to come up with a plan. This was no time for tears.
    A small knot of men and women huddled to the side of the deck farthest from her. They were roped together by their necks. Imi stifled a horrified gasp as she stared at them. Slaves! Bound for the market at Delos! As she was unless she could change the pirate captain’s mind.
    Stripped of much of the treasures that were hers by right as a king’s daughter, Arsinoe had barely enough to feed herself and those loyal to her. Imi had been sent to Rome with just what she needed to get her there and back. She had nothing with which to bargain for her freedom. In Rome she had depended on the kindness of the Great Mother’s priests and on the friendship of those who supported the princess’s cause. The talents she’d promised to the pirate were what she thought Arsinoe could raise once the sacred articles were in her hands. Surely, rich and powerful men would rally to her then, knowing that investing in her cause would pay off in the future when she was queen of Egypt, with the riches of that land at her disposal. That was what Imi had counted on when she