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i'm safe up high ][ narrative
It had always been Alexander’s hope that his ascension to the throne could be handled peaceably, no matter the constant building evidence that his hopes were childish dreams. It’s with a sense of resigned irony that he now watches over one of Philip’s many wakes: in the murder of his father, he has found the most peaceful path.
There is still an ache, of course, for the loss and for the conspiracy. He had seen the hints and hoped that they were only deluded aspirations, threads of obsession, fruitless. He was wrong, and yet he is not suffering for it - prospering, by contrast.
Would he have saved his father, if he knew?
That thought lingers, abstract, and he considers it at length, in this space above the din of the party. It would not be his first occasion to save Philip’s life; no, that had been years ago (it feels like minutes) in Pernithus, and maybe a hundred times since then - Alexander, always before the king in battle, Alexander at the front lines. How many would-be assassins has he stopped with his sword, or with his victories in Thrace and the rest of Greece?
Alexander before the king. He smiles at the thought, wry and private, and he watches the light play on the wine in his glass, running his fingers around the gold rim. Beside him, a woman with hair like fire watches him with her snake-eyes.
“What are you thinking of, Alexander?” Olympias asks him, and he raises his gaze to meet hers, which always melts to humanity, for him. He wonders if it’s a spell, some magic woven about her, to make her seem frightening and deadly to everyone but him.
“My father,” he tells her, feeling a laugh coming on. What else can he think of, now, when this is only the second moon they’ve seen since Philip’s blood was spilled on the stage of Aegae’s theater?
Olympias makes a noise like an angry lion, huffing, edging about her prey. “How can you call him father,” she hisses, and he thinks of her as Medusa, fondly. “He disowned you when he married Eurydice. Your only thoughts of him should be designs to spit on his grave.”
It’s an old argument, one that Alexander has grown too tired of hearing to respond to legitimately. Philip didn’t mean it, he’d say. Philip raised him, loved him, stood by him in battle. He would have taken it back, just as he did Alexander’s exile. Another time, he might have teased Olympias - her fire and passion being what inspired Philip’s rage so often, anyway. But not now, he just sighs a little and turns to look at his mother, a brief, tricky smile on his lips. “But you tell me so often that Zeus is my father, should it matter what a mortal man declared?”
She’s angry again, as she is so often, and Alexander tunes out her vengeful ranting. He knows her part in this, though speaking it aloud would make it too real - let her have her show, like carrying on even now and not appearing too smug will hide the truth. He knows her heart, and he knows her design, because he has been given them both, by blood. He watches the floor, the people drinking and pouring flower petals and trinkets into the fires scattered across - it’s not the religious rites that the dead king will get, and it’s not a mourner’s party. No, there is very little mourning happening tonight, except perhaps deep in the palace, from the wife who surely cannot sleep, waiting in paranoid silence for the attack that Olympias will send.
He has no sympathy for the wife Philip took to depose himself and his mother, because she threw her hand into the political turmoil on her own, and thought that she could contend with the witch-queen of Epirus. Needless death weighs on him, but not when it’s earned. He watches his fellow soldiers - officers, generals, his generals, now - and feels the heady rush of satisfied power that ebbs up every time he has the solid thought, I am King.
Lysimachus, contending in conversation with the still-somber Cleitus, and his brothers in exile - Ptolemy, Nearchus, Erigyius - he can’t see Laemedon, but his eyes fall on Hephaestion speaking to Antipater, and conducting himself with far more grace than most men do. Antipater is loyal, fierce, brilliant - but deeply annoying in conversation for thinking so damned highly of himself, and Alexander feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Hephaestion raises his eyes to his, as if he could feel his gaze on him, and Alexander raises his glass to his lips to drink before moving on, casting about the rest of the room. It’s not that he’s dismissive, just moody, in his own way, and trusting Hephaestion with acceptance of the flighty way he sometimes acts is so sure that it’s become an afterthought.
Someday, beyond the edges of his life, he will understand how much he’s taken for granted, and be ashamed - but now he is king, and though he is a devout man with awe-inspiring marks of hubris, he thinks nothing of tampering things like entitlement and ego. He is king of all of Greece, son of Zeus, those words do not exist for him.
His pause does not go unnoticed, however, and Olympias speaks again - she must have stopped ranting, at some point, but Alexander has missed it. “Him, still?”
The disdain in her voice makes him feel ancient and sore, exhausted of this argument most of all. He does not respond, so she goes on: “Him always, of course. Now, now of all times, you must see the truth in the things I tell you. Take a wife, daughter of someone loyal to Philip and Attalus - shame them into submission if you won’t kill them.”
“Haven’t you had enough?” he asks, his interjection abrupt but quiet. The look he gives her is bruised and exasperated - enough bloodshed, enough of badgering him into things that he just doesn’t want. He knows he should take a wife, he knows he must produce an heir, but gods, the thought of it breeds the sort of cold discomfort in him that he remembers only otherwise from being intimidated as a child.
“Someday you will come to your senses,” she spits, “And see that I know better.”
Alexander sighs, turning from her and setting his cup on a pedestal, having lost all taste for drink. Someday he will - but not in this life, not under this sun. He should have married when she told him, but his selfishness, like so much else, remains displaced.
He steps away from his mother and into the sea of friends and tentative allies, finding solace in the way Ptolemy raises his glass to cheer his name, and the familiar fingers that wrap around his, without even needing to look.
There is still an ache, of course, for the loss and for the conspiracy. He had seen the hints and hoped that they were only deluded aspirations, threads of obsession, fruitless. He was wrong, and yet he is not suffering for it - prospering, by contrast.
Would he have saved his father, if he knew?
That thought lingers, abstract, and he considers it at length, in this space above the din of the party. It would not be his first occasion to save Philip’s life; no, that had been years ago (it feels like minutes) in Pernithus, and maybe a hundred times since then - Alexander, always before the king in battle, Alexander at the front lines. How many would-be assassins has he stopped with his sword, or with his victories in Thrace and the rest of Greece?
Alexander before the king. He smiles at the thought, wry and private, and he watches the light play on the wine in his glass, running his fingers around the gold rim. Beside him, a woman with hair like fire watches him with her snake-eyes.
“What are you thinking of, Alexander?” Olympias asks him, and he raises his gaze to meet hers, which always melts to humanity, for him. He wonders if it’s a spell, some magic woven about her, to make her seem frightening and deadly to everyone but him.
“My father,” he tells her, feeling a laugh coming on. What else can he think of, now, when this is only the second moon they’ve seen since Philip’s blood was spilled on the stage of Aegae’s theater?
Olympias makes a noise like an angry lion, huffing, edging about her prey. “How can you call him father,” she hisses, and he thinks of her as Medusa, fondly. “He disowned you when he married Eurydice. Your only thoughts of him should be designs to spit on his grave.”
It’s an old argument, one that Alexander has grown too tired of hearing to respond to legitimately. Philip didn’t mean it, he’d say. Philip raised him, loved him, stood by him in battle. He would have taken it back, just as he did Alexander’s exile. Another time, he might have teased Olympias - her fire and passion being what inspired Philip’s rage so often, anyway. But not now, he just sighs a little and turns to look at his mother, a brief, tricky smile on his lips. “But you tell me so often that Zeus is my father, should it matter what a mortal man declared?”
She’s angry again, as she is so often, and Alexander tunes out her vengeful ranting. He knows her part in this, though speaking it aloud would make it too real - let her have her show, like carrying on even now and not appearing too smug will hide the truth. He knows her heart, and he knows her design, because he has been given them both, by blood. He watches the floor, the people drinking and pouring flower petals and trinkets into the fires scattered across - it’s not the religious rites that the dead king will get, and it’s not a mourner’s party. No, there is very little mourning happening tonight, except perhaps deep in the palace, from the wife who surely cannot sleep, waiting in paranoid silence for the attack that Olympias will send.
He has no sympathy for the wife Philip took to depose himself and his mother, because she threw her hand into the political turmoil on her own, and thought that she could contend with the witch-queen of Epirus. Needless death weighs on him, but not when it’s earned. He watches his fellow soldiers - officers, generals, his generals, now - and feels the heady rush of satisfied power that ebbs up every time he has the solid thought, I am King.
Lysimachus, contending in conversation with the still-somber Cleitus, and his brothers in exile - Ptolemy, Nearchus, Erigyius - he can’t see Laemedon, but his eyes fall on Hephaestion speaking to Antipater, and conducting himself with far more grace than most men do. Antipater is loyal, fierce, brilliant - but deeply annoying in conversation for thinking so damned highly of himself, and Alexander feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. Hephaestion raises his eyes to his, as if he could feel his gaze on him, and Alexander raises his glass to his lips to drink before moving on, casting about the rest of the room. It’s not that he’s dismissive, just moody, in his own way, and trusting Hephaestion with acceptance of the flighty way he sometimes acts is so sure that it’s become an afterthought.
Someday, beyond the edges of his life, he will understand how much he’s taken for granted, and be ashamed - but now he is king, and though he is a devout man with awe-inspiring marks of hubris, he thinks nothing of tampering things like entitlement and ego. He is king of all of Greece, son of Zeus, those words do not exist for him.
His pause does not go unnoticed, however, and Olympias speaks again - she must have stopped ranting, at some point, but Alexander has missed it. “Him, still?”
The disdain in her voice makes him feel ancient and sore, exhausted of this argument most of all. He does not respond, so she goes on: “Him always, of course. Now, now of all times, you must see the truth in the things I tell you. Take a wife, daughter of someone loyal to Philip and Attalus - shame them into submission if you won’t kill them.”
“Haven’t you had enough?” he asks, his interjection abrupt but quiet. The look he gives her is bruised and exasperated - enough bloodshed, enough of badgering him into things that he just doesn’t want. He knows he should take a wife, he knows he must produce an heir, but gods, the thought of it breeds the sort of cold discomfort in him that he remembers only otherwise from being intimidated as a child.
“Someday you will come to your senses,” she spits, “And see that I know better.”
Alexander sighs, turning from her and setting his cup on a pedestal, having lost all taste for drink. Someday he will - but not in this life, not under this sun. He should have married when she told him, but his selfishness, like so much else, remains displaced.
He steps away from his mother and into the sea of friends and tentative allies, finding solace in the way Ptolemy raises his glass to cheer his name, and the familiar fingers that wrap around his, without even needing to look.