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Alexander had landed in the Peloponnese, not at Gytheion as the League had expected, but near the mouth of the Pamisos River in southern Messenia. The Arcadians, in keeping with their stance of neutrality during the Hellenic War, had not contributed their hoplites to Leosthenes' host; when they raised their fighting men in self-defence upon hearing of the Macedonian invasion, they did not mean to find hundreds of Spartans and thousands of helots squatting on the Alpheios' riverbanks, though that was what they witnessed nevertheless. The Arcadian militia's hysterical reports were unanimous in what they saw: the Spartans are coming! Megalopolis at once put aside its differences, the oligarchs submitting to Damis' military expertise and giving Pleistarchus and Adea free range of the city. Befitting of a fine tragedy, Cleomenes has caused his worst fears to come to pass by trying to prevent them.

The son of Polyperchon utilized the same diplomatic tricks Antigonus had pioneered during his brief stint at the Regent of Europe, claiming his intent is not to restore Macedonian rule over the free Greeks, only to fight a common enemy the Hellenes would be well rid of: he was here to aid the Arcadians and Achaeans against their nieghbours' wanton aggression, a line of argument which would have fallen flat were it not for Cleomenes ignoring Cleitus the White's counsel. Alexander presented the Messenians with an easy choice - they could either fight and die on Sparta's behalf whilst their soldiers were far away at the Bosporus Straits...or they could protest their neutrality and let his elite Macedonians march through their lands unmolested. He got the free passage he wanted, and was able to bring his veterans and Silver-Shields to Megalopolis, where he was met by Pleistarchus and Adea, safe and sound.

Although Alexander was disappointed at there being no Greek army besieging Megalopolis for him to defeat when he came before the city, Pleistarchus informing him that the entire Peloponnese bar Sparta was stripped of troops put a predatory smile on his face. Antipater had been too kind with the Laconians after their defeat at the Battle of Megalopolis; Cleomenes had repaid being gently let up by the Regent with another rebellion, so Alexander would forever break Sparta's back over his knee, such that they would never rise again. Incensed at Cleomenes' blatant attempt to monopolize the Alpheios River, the Megalopolitans and Achaeans gladly joined their forces to the Macedonians - accounting for the troop transports sunk at Antikythera, Alexander's army stood at ten thousand three hundred strong, four thousand three hundred of these being local Greeks commanded by Pleistarchus.

For the Lacedaemonians, their vaunted if has become now. Alexander turned his sight to Laconia, deeming the time ripe to take the offensive with none of the Peloponnesian states being in a position to intervene, and personally wishing to vie with Sparta for the legacy of who possessed the most legendary warriors of antiquity. His Argyraspides, gleaming in their resplendent shields, were indomitable across a hundred battles and comes the closest thing the world has seen of invincible men. The same could not be said of his competition; far from popular belief, the Spartans have lost an endless succession of battles from Sphacteria to Leuctra, and were anything except undefeatable. Yet should Alexander triumph over them, the deed would be all the more glorious because of their high reputation: to vanquish Lacedaemon would demonstrate Alexander's arete and add to his kleos like heroes of old in the Iliad.

The time of reckoning is here - Cleomenes did not have plans in place to defend against an invasion, and what efforts he did spend were aimed towards the south, not the north. Facing minimal opposition, the Macedonians broke into Laconia, bringing to bear overwhelming strength compared to the paltry caste of homoioi still crippled from Agis III's losses - most of them being traditional hoplites. The King had begun the laborious process of retraining Spartiates to fight in the fashion of phalangites, yet he had none of Philip II's brilliance, nor was Sparta, impoverished after being deprived of Messenia, capable of the radical reforms Macedon had undergone; what pikemen Cleomenes could raise were few in number, and had cost him dearly in political capital from the perpetually suspicious ephors and gerousia. As days passed without the Agiad moving to confront the invaders, his legitimacy eroded further still.

Seeing that his opponent refused to take the field against him, Alexander dispersed his men to occupy the countryside estates of the wealthiest landowners in the city, this small group of men and women controlling all the best land in Laconia having been a direct cause of Sparta's decline as a great power. Suddenly, those who clamoured for Cleomenes to use his newfangled army to fight the Macedonian stripling included not just the ephors and gerousia, but a collection of the most influential homoioi in Lacedaemon - though to their credit, they would be risking their lives right by the side of their King. Their united pressure forced Cleomenes' hand, such as it was. Of the six morai Sparta could have fielded in its prime, less than half were available: an eclectic mix of those too young to have fought at Megalopolis and survivors from the rout at that battlefield, eager to avenge either their absence or their defeat.

Altogether, Cleomenes could count just over three thousand homoioi in his army, one thousand of which were phalangites, complemented by two thousand periokoi hoplites, six hundred skiritai skirmishers, and three hundred hippeis elites, the royal bodyguards of the King. In accordance with the finest traditions of Lycurgus the lawgiver, each and every Spartiate wore a flowing cape of crimson into battle, so as to terrify the foe and ensure they never see a single drop of Spartan blood no matter what wounds they received. In their left arms were grasped their hoplons of heavy wood covered in burnished bronze, uniformly imprinted with the Lacedaemonian lambda. Some of the infantry wore the pilos helm, but many stuck with the old-fashioned Corinthian design, whilst their officers sported splendid plumes over their heads. From a distance, Cleomenes' host was a haze of scarlet and gold, a mirage of happier times.

Though they possessed less than two-thirds the numbers of the invading Macedonian army, the Spartans were still who they had always been, men born, raised, and trained to be soldiers from the first moment of their life. Personally led by King Cleomenes despite the Agiad's venerable age, the Lacedaemonians advanced north against Alexander at a blistering pace, leaving the Eurypontid King, Eudamidas I, to defend the city with women and youths in their absence. For the Spartiates accustomed to the hardship of the agoge, war was almost easier than peace, and their periokoi and skiritai allies were equally as invested in preserving Sparta as it currently stood; they swiftly came against Polyperchon's son before he could draw together his scattered forces from the Laconian estates he had occupied, and made their battle a fairer one: roughly six thousand men on both sides, almost all of them fighting on foot.

The Spartans and Macedonians had met on an open plain near the walless city, perfect for an unobstructed confrontation between their armies. Cleomenes set up an orthodox batteline, placing his skiritai on the farthest left flank, followed in sequence by the periokoi, the homoioi, the novel Spartiate phalangites, and at last the hippeis on the furthest right wing, himself included. The Agiad was mirrored by Alexander's deployment, forgoing conventional wisdom to station his strongest troops on the right: the Silver-Shields he divided into two contingents under Antigenes and Teutamus, keeping the latter on the leftmost edge of the Macedonian line opposite the Spartan royal guard, and giving the former the most vital assignment of the day. Then he positioned his pikemen in a line to match the Lacedaemonian phalanxes, and finally Pleistarchus' Achaeans and Megalopolitans facing the light skiritai.

No shouts or battlecries preceded the melee as Cleomenes and Alexander sounded the advance, the opposing armies closing upon each other in absolute silence, marching in a lockstep pattern which pounded against the earth. Everyone had envisaged a brutal and sanguinary struggle to the death, seasoned with spectacular duels between the bravest Macedonians and Spartans, yet the battle was more unworldly than heroic, a testament to the sheer quality of the soldiers throwing themselves into the thickest press of their enemies. Beaten bronze bashed against polished silver, and men bled in droves from wounds opening up in the hundreds across the front ranks with every moment, each thrust of a dory or sarissa drawing blood but unable to land a killing blow. They fought on with mechanical precision, eerily making no sound beyond their heavy breathing and the clashing of their arms and armour.

Although the whole purpose of the othismos - the shoving between opposed phalanxes - was to physically push the enemy formation into breaking apart to be chased down at will, with the result that whichever side yielded ground first was normally at a great disadvantage, the Spartiates and Silver-Shields were so disciplined that they would spontaneously pull back from the fighting, wordlessly attuned to some innate battle rhythm, to reorganize themselves, rest whilst they can, and compensate for a hoplite's inevitable tendency to drift to the right for the protection of their companion's hoplon. Then they plunged right back into the fray, willingly marching towards hell after the rush of adrenaline from their first charge had long worn off, displaying immense courage, steadfastness of heart, and nerves of steel to constantly return to the grapple without their morale and sanity fraying apart under the pressure.

That might be why the records reported the Lacedaemonians and the Argyraspides looking more automaton than man; they were in absolute control of their own self, and there was only the instinct to stab, to thrust, to lunge. Nor did the Spartan hoplites and Silver-Shield hypaspists take every shred of glory, the homoioi phalangites heartily matched their newly learned skills against the veterans of the Macedonian empire, two forests' worth of pikes clashing and gouging out chunks of flesh and pieces of panoply. In truth, this particular way of war did not do justice to the prowess of a Spartiate, as all that they could do was to push their sarissa forward and aim it best as they can. Still, let it not be said that the Lacedaemonians were ever unable to master a martial talent. Though many were young, the Spartan pikemen fought fiercely, jostling with their weapons and holding their own against grizzled campaigners.

The ashamed survivors of Megalopolis and the Spartan boys raised into men since then gave such an account of themselves that a remark arose after the battle was done: if Antipater's battle with the Spartans had really been one of mice as King Alexander had so contemptuously described, then these were mice which could terrify even elephants. The Lacedaemonians actually had the advantage in mass and body armour as opposed to the Silver-Shields, who were clad in light linothorax and linen corselets; the Argyraspides compensated with their more dexterous spear-work - that the Spartans were able to compete on even footing does honour to their name, for the hypaspists had easily destroyed other hoplite phalanxes before, most recently at the Battle of Akre. Several hours came and went in the blink of an eye, and with the phalanxes pacing themselves, it seemed that the fighting could last for hours more.

This gave King Cleomenes hope that his Spartans might hold on to the battlefield until the setting sun could force the Macedonians to retreat, leaving him with a tenuous, yet passable, claim to victory. It would have been a throw of the dice either way, but Alexander was not a man to gamble: late in the afternoon, hundreds of Arcadian cavalry charged over the horizon straight into the rear of the Lacedaemonian army, their numbers bolstered by Antigenes' nine hundred Silver-Shields interspersed amongst the horsemen as hamippoi - detached by Alexander at the beginning of the battle, they had taken an hours-long detour to round up whatever mounted forces were nearby and available, informing them of their general's desperate need for reinforcements. The fresh Argyraspides went to their coldblooded work, and the Spartan phalanxes, which had taken unbearable punishment to their front, collapsed.

The slaughter which followed was ghastly. Though the showdown had taken place close to the outskirts of Sparta, and by all rights should be named after the city itself, the Hellenes would remember it by another name entirely: in bitter contrast to Archidamus III's "tearless battle" against the Arcadians, Argives, and Messenians forty years ago, Cleomenes II had the misfortune to be in command at the Battle of a Thousand Tears, one for each Spartiate that fell. Coming only a decade after Agis III had already gotten the cream of the Spartan crop killed at Megalopolis, the twin defeats crippled the city - Lacedaemon would not recover for at least a generation, if it does at all. The unfortunate Cleomenes was too old to die fighting as Agis had, and left the field when the situation was no longer in doubt. He would not learn that Antigenes, commander of the Argyraspides, had been slain in his army's death rattles.

Alexander buried the dead in common graves, established a monument to his victory, and resumed the occupation of the Laconian estates with his unchallengeable force. He refrained from advancing to within eyesight of Sparta, keeping the threat posed by his Macedonians implicit; he did not wish to compel the Lacedaemonians into taking proactive measures to defend themsleves and their city, and preferred to let his army speak as its own legal argument. Polyperchon's son did not have long to wait - for the crimes of trespassing against Arcadia and disgracing his Kingship by fleeing from the Battle of a Thousand Tears, as well as a general conservative reaction against his military reforms, Cleomenes was banished by the ephors and gerousia in a trial of very questionable validity. In his place, the Lycurgan institutions installed his baby grandson, Acrotatus I, as the new King of the Agiad Dynasty.

Whether Cleomenes could have staged some sort of comeback became a moot point. As he walked the streets of the city where he used to be King, grimly on his way into exile, he was heckled by his fellow homoioi and had objects of increasing lethality thrown at him for daring to return to Sparta where his army had died to defend it, bringing dishonour to the whole polis. Almost mercifully, a roof tile thrown by an old woman would strike him dead on the spot, just as he was about to the first step out of Sparta proper. The balance of power shifted in favour of the Eurypontids: Eudamidas I is the sole adult King and de facto regent for Acrotatus I, skipping over the babe's father, Prince Cleonymus, as a foreign adventurer tainted by an unpleasant reputation. Eudamidas is content to have Sparta sink into irrelevancy; it has paid too much for a chance at greatness, and he sent envoys to negotiate a peace with Alexander.

In Egypt, Cynane, now heavy with child and confined against her will to her quarters, laughed at the news from over the sea. The vengeance she prayed so ardently for had been wreaked on the hapless boor who blustered at her daughter, and the Princess - abruptly went weak in her knees, felt her dress turning much too damp to be normal, and dropped down to the floor in a boneless tumble. Doctors and nurses swiftly ran in to lift Cynane up and put her to bed, whilst the Argead's Macedonian and Persian women flocked about her, taking out assorted medicines, salves, brews, and other elixirs to help ease a childbirth. The royal handmaidens got to work, some silently swearing at whoever had messed up the labelling on certain drugs and misplaced other concoctions to where they were not supposed to go, even as Cynane started going through her multiple contractions, screaming in excruciable pain.

That the expectant mother's suffering could be heard in Memphis hundreds of stade away was a poetic exaggeration invented by later times, yet what Aristander the Seer prophesised to Craterus was corroborated by multiple sources. Hours before news of Cynane being confined to childbed arrived in the capital of Craterid Egypt, the eccentric diviner would rush upon the Regent in Libya in his personal study, face pale, lips trembling, eyes on the verge of tears, as if he feared to say what fate has compelled him to. At last, he whispered that whether Craterus prayed for Cynane or not would be a matter of life and death, and fled, eluding the guards who tried to hold him for questioning. The general was shaken; he still grieved for his brother, and could not bear to see another who he had grown close to torn away from him so quickly. He did not call it love, since it is not, yet he had come to care for his Princess.

Cynane was his wife, and the mother of their child. Aristander the Seer had never predicted a falsehood before, and if he must pray so that his other half could live, then he would do what is needed of him. Informing his closest officers, including Gorgias, of his intention to beseech divine protection for the Princess during her delivery, he rode with some guards to the Temple of Hephaestion to conduct his sacrifices, the holy place being the newest and hence most likely to please the gods; it had also been built by Cynane, which would surely appeal to the powers that be. Craterus entered the overbearing structure, sniffed his nose at a colossal statue of Hephaestion gazing down at him with its painted eyes, and found the shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. In that moment, he was no longer the Regent in Libya, or the best-loved general of the Macedonians. He was just Craterus, a worried husband.

He knelt in front of the altar, bowing his head and raising arms up in humble supplication. Sacrifices were offered, the religious incantations begun...and a faceless Greek serendipitously sneaked through the Temple's halls, silently creeping forward on padded shoes. Craterus had never expected his life to be in danger, and as a traditionally pious Macedonian, he went into Eileithyia's holy sanctum with neither weapons nor armour, trusting in the protection of the gods and not believing anyone would be so sacriligeous. The Regent was in the midst of devout prayer when he heard something whispered into his ear, and felt cold iron stabbing into his throat a moment later - his eyes snapped open, he spun around to grab his murderer by the cloak, but already his strength is fleeing his body, and his own lifeblood is drowning him alive. His vision is fading, and he could barely make out the contours of the assassin.

The world wobbled and tilted to the side, hurting his head though the marble floor felt remarkably cool against his burning cheeks. Where were his men? The men who had been devoted to him; the men he had devoted himself to in turn? Craterus wracked his mind for who could have had the authority to re-order his guards to go to all the wrong places at all the right times, yet it was getting difficult to think about anything for too long. He coughed, and a spray of bloody foam splashed across two pillars. No, not pillars, legs; ponderously, he rolled onto his back, and he would have giggled if his neck had not been a ruined mess. To die at the feet of Hephaestion - what a cruel joke. Craterus was vaguely aware of someone kneeling close and pressing two fingers deep inside him somewhere below his chin, before deciding that did not matter anymore. He thought of Cynane, then their child, and wished -

His killer did something horrendous with the viscera he had swabbed from Craterus' neck, then vanished forever, never to be found. By the time the Regent in Libya's disturbed troops finally broke into the sealed temple room, profusely apologizing for the intrusion, they were traumatized into immobility at the sight of their general's uncovered corpse, and above him the grotesque graffiti sprawled across Eileithyia's shrine in dripping letters. Craterus is dead. The most popular man in the empire, overflowing with promise, possessed of so much potential, favoured to win by any cautious and sensible bettor, thought to be able to forge his own empire sooner or later, and predicted to accomplish a great deal of great things, was gone. The general was forty five years old, and had been predeceased by his immediate family. Amphoterus left no issue; the entire Craterid family hung on by a thread called Cynane.

News of her consort's tragic death would never make it into her birthing chamber, though the moment Craterus' fate became known to the inhabitants of Pelusium, Cynane's condition deteriorated at an alarming rate. Up until now, the childbirth had faced all the regular complications of a late pregnancy; afterwards, everything that could go wrong, did. The frantic efforts of the midwives to get the Princess to push her babe out were futile, and their prescribed medicines might as well not work at all. And then Cynane began to hemorrhage, blood pooling on the floor and soaking through the sheets; she spasmed uncontrollably, a sickly pallor taking over her face and spreading across her body. After days of torment, the child in her belly stopped kicking; poisoned in the womb, her handmaidens venomously spat, the women neither willing nor caring to hide their concern and outrage on behalf of their mistress.

Wallowing in her bed, the Princess was reduced to a pale imitation of herself, trembling weakly and unable to do so much as drink water without aid. Cynane's hair had lost its lustre, her lips were dried and chapped, and her figure is emaciated despite the weight she had put on for nine months. It wasn't living so much as a wakeful death beyond the power of doctors to heal. Ultimately, they could only help the Princess stave off the pain before the end; perhaps knowing her daughter was safe gave her the will to let go. In her final moments, there was only the Argead herself and a servant hired by a Susa Wife. The latter was all tender words and worrying frowns until Cynane's very last heartbeat - then her features evened out into benign contempt. She bent down, murmuring into Cynane's ear the same phrase her husband had heard, and which his soldiers had seen written in blood on the walls of a holy temple.

"The Queen sends her regards."

Nemesis had done as Cynane asked, and took the life she gladly offered in her prayers in return for another. She left behind a Craterid faction reeling and deprived of its leaders; the entire Libyan Regency would have fallen into turmoil if Seleucus' border forces had not reacted with alacrity, swiftly moving in to secure all of Egypt and calm its populace in the wake of the awful disaster. The chiliarch said to anyone who would listen that he had discovered Perdiccid treachery most foul, and when he was told that he had come too late, he beat his chest into a bloody pulp with his own fists. The next day, Seleucus addressed the grief-stricken Macedonians, wearing a hair suit and rent clothes as he mourned for the Princess and his friend: he refused to allow their assassinations - yes, their assassinations - to be the end of the Craterids, and cursed the rebel Greeks for robbing them of Polyperchon at a time like this.

Seleucus promised the Craterid soldiers that they would bring Cynane's little girl back to the safety of Egypt, and bade them to be stalwart for the trials which laid ahead of them. The Macedonians dispersed without cheers, many still being in shock and unable to comprehend that Craterus is truly gone forever. From up on his elevated platform, Seleucus saw that the men were agitated, having been stirred into restlessness at the question he had intentionally left unanswered after confirming that the simultaneous deaths of Craterus and Cynane were too perfect to be natural: in which Queen's name had they been killed? There were few plausible candidates, both of whom were equally guilty given the available evidence - Olympias could have easily sent a Greek knave, and the incompetence of the eastern midwives had Roxane's soft hands printed all over it. Who was it? The Queen Mother, or the Queen Dowager?

Or maybe the Queen-to-Be, the son of Antiochus thought, turning to look fondly at Apama, who had stood at her husband's side whilst he spoke to the leaderless army. Because it had been them, together, who pulled off the magnificent coup d’etat, accomplishing what had seemed impossible merely a year ago: the clandestine murder of Craterus, Princess Cynane's innocuous death in childbed, both Polyperchon and Eudamus unwittingly trapped in the Peloponnese and Cyprus - it had all been Seleucus and Apama's doing. He had come a long way since his days as Perdiccas' chiliarch, going from the Regent's favourite to his despised prisoner on death row, escaping to Egypt a desperate refugee who lived by Craterus' will, only to become the death of his host and usurp his place as ruler of the land he had entered as a pauper. From the inside out, the Craterids have been eaten alive by an insidious parasite.

Which left the question of why. Unbeknownst to his saviours, Seleucus had resolved to betray them the moment the Craterid council decided to liquidate the Perdiccid garrisons in Syria - not now, but in a future war, meaning the matter was not so pressing that action needed to be taken this instant. And emphasis again on Seleucus himself being the first to suggest the ruthless scheme; yet in an abhorrent display of backwards thinking, he drew the line at slaughtering Persians when he would have flippantly ordered the same for thousands of his own countrymen. Ptolemaic pragmatism drove Seleucus' twisted logic: the entirety of his too-limited power was built on his bond with the Susa Wives, who he had carefully protected from abandonment in return for their loyalty and excellent services. If he alienates the women by consenting to the massacre of their friends and relations, he would be reduced to nothing.

At the end of the day, one simply did not turn their back on family. Justifying to himself that he owed his life to the Susa Wives even more than he did to Craterus, and that he was carrying out Megas Alexandros' vision of melding the eastern and western races of the world into one koinon, Seleucus fell down the slippery slope of who he needed to kill to save the Epigoni in Syria. As the King had done, he needed to remove Craterus, the most shortsighted and hateful of the Macedonians; and since he wished to have a smooth transition of power, Cynane must go as well. It was easy enough to devise the culprits responsible - Olympias and Craterus were known to have been on acrimonious terms, whilst Roxane was a barbarian and allowed for an alliance with the Queen Mother. Seleucus decided to be vague, and let the bereaved troops chose whoever they found it most convenient to take their anger out on.

His conniving was inadvertently aided by Polyperchon volunteering to invade Europe or die in the attempt; Seleucus had been genuinely ecstatic at the offer, and he meant his words when he said he loved the idea - because it eliminated the one other Craterid who wielded the prestige and influence to dispute his seizure of power. Whilst Polyperchon had wanted Craterus and Cynane to stay in Egypt for their safety, the chiliarch was just looking for a convenient excuse to keep the royal couple ensnared in his net of intrigues. Everything was poised to fall into place: Eudamus is a nonentity, and had made his opposition to violently terminating the Perdiccid garrisons clear; at the same time, Amphoterus could not be allowed to escape his brother's doom and claim to be his heir - so Seleucus arranged to deposit Polyperchon's detailed plans straight from the war council into the hands of certain Phoenicians.

Seleucus had deliberately thrown to the wolves no less than seven thousand veterans, a hundred precious warships, and three famed generals of Alexander the Great, selling out their whereabouts to the Greeks in order to reap their destruction. If the truth ever got out, his punishment would be so horrific as to give even Sisyphus, Tantalus, and Ixion relief from their tortures. Indeed, the gods had repeatedly tried to save Craterus from the fault of trusting his friend: had he listened to Perdiccas, who gleaned the compromised plans from sources of his own in the League, and kept Polyperchon in Egypt, or attended Philip III's wedding at Babylon, as Barsine had requested and he should have done to begin with as a full-blooded Macedonian, he would have survived. As it was, neither Craterus nor Cynane thought they had any real reason to doubt Seleucus; after all, they were natural allies against Perdiccas.

None of the Craterid subordinates suspected Seleucus either, and the whole empire with them - except for one lone woman who scraped through his purge. The chiliarch's training exercise on the Syrian border had deceived everyone by providing him with a rock-solid alibi from the murders in Pelusium and Memphis, disguising the fact that it was Apama's Susa Wives who delivered the lethal blows; yet Cratesipolis, Polyperchon's daughter-in-law, was uniquely situated by dint of her marriage and her womanhood to see through both lies. She had been slated to be the royal wetnurse for Cynane's babe as the highest-ranking Macedonian noblewoman in Egypt after the Princess herself, whilst her husband had told her Seleucus would be taking up Polyperchon's post in Phoenicia: that the chiliarch did not do so was the first of many discrepancies she noticed, though alone it was hardly evidence for anything.

It was after Cynane's death, during the despondent days where everything blended together in a grey mass and Cratesipolis sleeplessly stayed awake into the dead of night, that the rest of the case began to take shape. In the midwives' frenzied rush to save the lives of the Princess and her child, none of them were in the right state of mind to connect the dots; she had expected poisoned wetnurses, but from Roxane, not Apama! Even if they often confused what medicines were needed, she had seen the Susa Wives frantically doing what they could to help...or obfuscate the doctors. Cratesipolis could not believe it then, and dismissed it with the Persians not knowing how to read Greek, yet she also remembered hearing servants invoking the mysterious Queen they worked for: servants hired by the Susa Wives. Though this was as planned to misdirect attention away from Seleucus, he has outsmarted himself.

Who else could have said the words Seleucus wanted them to except for agents connected to his operatives, who Cratesipolis personally knew from working alongside them for months? It was inconceivable to her mind that the Susa Wives would have been in the employ of anyone except Apama's husband; the mention of their names were on Seleucus' lips in every other sentence he spoke, and the Persian women, when they talked about Macedonians at all, had a similar fixation on the chiliarch. She first reasoned out that the Wives wanted the world to think either Olympias or Roxane were murderers, most likely at Seleucus' instruction; after he so efficiently asserted his authority over Egypt, as if he had been prepared the entire time, everything came together. Seleucus was Craterus' chiliarch, at least in an unofficial capacity; it would be child's play for him to manipulate the faction as necessary to carry out his coup.

Cratesipolis has realized the enormity of what happened. In a stroke of luck, Seleucus forgot about taking precautions against Polyperchon's daughter-in-law, as he had forgotten her husband Alexander; and whilst the Susa Wives were savvy enough to outwit any conspiracy Cratesipolis could patch together on short notice, she did not play along with their games of silk and poison. Under no other circumstances would Cratespolis have had the chance to prove she possessed the qualities needed to make a fine strategos, yet she seized the day, rising to the occasion and rallying to her banner the few thousand soldiers stationed at Pelusium as part of Cynane's efforts to fortify the region. The families and baggage of the Silver-Shields, which Seleucus did not think to secure and Polyperchon had sworn to safeguard, went to join Cratesipolis at her stronghold, in open defiance of Seleucus' authority as Craterus' heir.

Polyperchon returned from Babylon to an Egypt that has fallen into the utmost confusion. He heard everything his daughter-in-law had to say in stony silence, receiving a blow-by-blow account for everything Seleucus had done, and withered away inside. Polyperchon's smile and optimism was gone - it would have been better for he and Craterus to die in Cilicia to Ariarathes' betrayal, then to suffer seeing everything they worked towards be destroyed in a single moment. What was supposed to have been a bastion of Argead strength to restore the empire is succumbed to perfidy from within; the Craterids had neither the Princess to prove that their cause is righteous, nor the starlet general to lead the charge, only a tired old man without a title to his name. Then Cratesipolis unslung her baby son Philip from her chest, and Polyperchon felt a string of faint hope tugging at his heart. If Craterus son still lives...

The finale of the year's events would occur in Syria. With Polyperchon and Seleucus gone from the satrapy, no Craterid was actually in position to counter the second task entrusted to Alcetas by his brother: to install committed Perdiccids across the Phoenician fleet as its trierarchs, navigators, and marines. Here, Attalus' confiscation of Eumenes' transports and the consolidation of his naval command immensely aided his brother-in-law's efforts; in spite of his reputation, Attalus has proven himself dependable and competent. And just as well - with the Egyptian fleet sunk and the burnt Cilician shipyards not yet restored, he is now in de facto command of the most vital naval asset in the empire, a force of two hundred and forty warships, including quinquiremes and quadriremes, enough to threaten the Greeks at sea. It seemed to be a matter of time until the Hellespontine War returns to its namesake location.