When I finally decided to give her freedom, she claimed she knew where her parents lived. She refused an escort, took the money I gave her, and left.

They say Jasmine drifted about the city. They say she went mad all over again. Babylonians, if on your travels through these sinuous streets you chance across a little girl with disheveled hair, walking barefoot and singing and muttering to herself, give her water, give her bread, do not throw stones at her! It is Jasmine, once cherished by Darius, the most powerful of kings, tended for a while by Alexander, the most intrepid warrior. Babylonians, step aside and let this girl pass, this girl who harbors the secret of her loves in her breast.

Giant sailing ships unfurled their sails and plied up and down the Euphrates. Smaller boats laden with goods, like fish teeming round marine monsters, tossed and jostled in their wake. Persia was the country of excess.

Every quarter of the city had its own libraries, vast palaces with rooms in which the erudite from all lands could come to eat, sleep, and work. A royal annuity allowed them to lead an intellectual life with no concern for the contingencies of their day-to-day existence. This decree attracted the wise from all over the world, and the Achemenides opened the gates of the City of the King to all, offering them positions in their countless ministries. Compared to the number of Persian officials, the Ecclesia in Athens and the Macedonian council were mere child's play, but the Persians had the intelligence to simplify complexity.

The Great Kings made no decisions without consulting the academies of arithmetics and of astrologers.

The Academy of Manners oversaw good relations between different peoples.

The Academy of Architects designed towns and palaces.

The Academy of Sports organized horse races.

The Academy of Agriculture sent its inspectors and specialists to the very limits of the empire.

The Academy of Water was responsible for wells, irrigation, and waterborne trade.

The Academy of Industry built roads and dams.

There were academies of painting, perfumes, lamps, ceramics, slave management, weaving, royal animals, and medicine, each gathering, classifying, devising, and making official its respective specialty.

The Academy of Poets was associated exclusively with royal life. Poets followed the king and, in beautiful calligraphy, had to write poems inspired by every situation: audiences, receptions, banquets, journeys. When men are long gone… poetry remains. It transforms everyday moments into historical fragments. The Great Kings of Persia knew how to make themselves immortal.

The Academy of Music inventoried fashionable tunes and composed official melodies. Wherever the king went, he heard music appropriate to the place and his activities.

Poetry and music are man's most beautiful adornments.

The center of Babylon was occupied by dignitaries and the rich; the poor lived around the outskirts of the city, in low-slung houses made of wood and beaten earth. They all had favorite taverns, be they luxurious or tumbledown, where men could meet and talk.

They drank infusions of leaves from the lands around the Indus, and they circulated a long pipe connected to a flask of water.

"Beyond Persian territories lie the lands of the Indus," announced the head of the Order of Merchants, who had invited me into a sumptuous tavern reserved for his personal use.

The merchants were not common stall keepers, I gathered from Mazee, Darius's former general who had become my most fervent servant. Throughout Persian lands, merchants were respected and stall keepers despised. The Persians considered that merchants transported the wonders of this world from one country to another, while stall keepers robbed their own neighbors in the market square.

I drank the infusion and pretended to enjoy his pipe. The smoke made me nauseous, and my head spun, but I decided to please Oibares, the most influential man in Babylon.

In this empire so avid for wealth and exoticism, merchants governed from behind the scenes, and extended their invisible power to the very limits of the earth. The richest of them owned as many as ten caravans, which came and went in rotation to ensure a constant stream of new goods. Supplying kings and satraps, selling weapons and working as spies, with an intimate knowledge of distant inaccessible lands, they knew how to manipulate tribal chiefs and corrupt armies. They brought messages of peace or delivered declarations of war. In order to protect their own best interests, they were affiliated with the Order of Merchants, which controlled the trading routes, set out the laws, and settled disagreements. Every ten lunar years the merchants held a great nocturnal ceremony during which they threw straws into a vase to elect a new leader.

Oibares was forty-five, with shining blue eyes, a fine proud nose, and thin lips. Like all rich Babylonians obsessed with their appearance, he wore a scarlet turban on his shaven head, and had a long beard in which his own hair was blended with extensions. He created magnificent arrangements with it, dying it chestnut brown, curling it with hot irons, and perfuming it with rosewater. Disappointed with such a weak, extravagant king, Oibares had plotted against Darius, who constantly raised taxes and closed his eyes when his troops plagued trading caravans.

The elegance of Oibares' appearance was a perfect camouflage for his thoughts. As it was impossible to guess what his intentions were, I disarmed him with my submissive-woman behavior. I let him talk without interrupting: encouraged by my complicit silence, intoxicated by my loving gaze, he took long drags on his pipe and exhaled lightheartedly. The smoke scrolled around us like drunken bacchantes dancing languidly to the rhythm of his voice.

"Have you heard tell, Great Alexander, of the lands of the Indus, lands of deepest valleys and darkest forests?" he asked. "The men who live there are wild and cruel. Their swamps are full of slithering snakes and birds that spit fetid venom. No one has conquered those kingdoms since time immemorial. But you, Alexander of Macedonia, son of Apollo, invincible warrior who was granted Ammon's benediction, you shall conquer the nine-headed monsters with tiger's teeth and serpent's tails. You, the man whom all the gods love, shall take the treasure defended by those tribes of men and apes."

Oibares clapped his hands, and a slave appeared, carrying a tray of raw gold, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls. He put the tray down on a low table and left us. Oibares picked up a piece of emerald, rubbed it on his sleeve, and looked at it. He gave a sigh.

"Oka, Great Alexander, master of Babylon and Memphis! You alone deserve all the jewels of the Orient! Do you know that in the days when the earth was covered with snow and frost, there was an ocean where the Indus is now, in the land where the sun rises? There were dragons, huge aquatic snakes covered in scales, living in the eternal darkness of those abyssal depths. Every three moons they uncoiled their monstrous heavy bodies and came to the surface to wait for dawn. When the sun rose, they squirmed and writhed together, throwing themselves out of the water to draw in the light, their celestial sustenance. But time passed, and the land emerged from the depths. The dragons died, and their gigantic bodies turned into mines of precious stones in which the incandescent sun still burned. The seed borne by the females became a seam of diamonds holding the vital force of that long-gone world in its very heart."

Oibares stroked his beard, his eyes lost in thought, as if gazing at that distant land so dangerous it gave its riches a sensual glamour. All of a sudden he flipped the tray over with a disdainful swipe of his hand. The precious stones scattered and rolled across the carpet.