He leaned forward, less than a yard from her now. “I need this man of yours,” he said quietly. “Not to strike yet, but in a while. And I need someone else in Rome also, a second voice.”

“I can find someone,” she promised. “What do you wish to know?”

He smiled. He had no intention of telling her. “Someone close to the pope,” he said. “And to the king of the Two Sicilies.”

“Someone with courage?” Hope flared inside her that after all, he meant to fight. Perhaps Michael would even assassinate the pope? After all, the pope was the enemy of Byzantium, and this was war.

He read her instantly. “Not that kind of courage, Zoe. Those days are past. Popes can be replaced easily enough.” There was anger in his eyes and something that might have been fear. “The king of the Two Sicilies is the real danger, and the pope is the only one who can hold him back. If we are to survive, we must compromise.”

“You cannot compromise the faith,” she retorted.

Temper burned the skin under his heavy beard. She saw the flush across his cheekbones. He leaned even closer to her. “We need skill, Zoe, not bravado. We must use one against the other, in the way we always have. But I will not lose Constantinople again, to pay for anything on earth. I’ll bow the knee to Rome, or let them think I do, but the crusaders will not break one stone of my city, nor tax the smallest coin of tribute from my people.” His black eyes bored into hers. “Sicily may starve, and may even turn to bite the hand that robs it, and if it does, so much the better for us. Until then, I will trade in words and symbols with the pope, or the devil, or King Charles of Anjou and the Two Sicilies, if I have to. Are you with me or against me?”

“I am with you,” she said softly, aware now of a subtle and disturbing irony. “I will defend Byzantium against anyone, within or without. Are you with me?”

He looked straight back at her, unblinking. “Oh yes, Zoe Chrysaphes. You may trust me to choose what I see, and what I don’t.”

“I have my spies by the neck. I shall see they do as you wish,” she promised, smiling also and stepping back. Her mind was busy already. Sicily rising against their king? There was a thought.

ZOE DID AS MICHAEL HAD REQUESTED, THEN SHE TURNED her mind to revenge. She had not forgotten the bitter lesson of her own brush with death. There was no time to wait.

The eunuch Anastasius was exactly the tool she needed. He had intelligence and the kind of honesty to his profession that made people trust him. She was quite aware that he did not trust her, and there was also this hunger in him to know about Bessarion’s death. One day Zoe would take time to find out exactly why that was.

In the meantime, there was a delicate balance of irony in using him to trick and ruin Cosmas Kantakouzenos, whose family’s greed had robbed Byzantium of some of its greatest art.

Zoe was dressed in a tunic the color of dark wine in shadow and an even darker dalmatica, burgundy warp shot with a black weft, which caught the warmth of reds in the firelight as she passed through the glow of the torches.

She crossed herself and stepped out into the night, Sabas following behind her, for safety in the shadows of twilight and for their return in the dark.

She stood for a moment in the street, reciting the Ave Maria to herself, hands folded. Then she started to walk again.

She drew a deep breath into her lungs. This was her vengeance at last. By tomorrow, the first of those whose emblems were on the back of her crucifix would be dead.

She left Sabas outside as the servant showed her in to Cosmas’s house. Even the entrance hall was magnificent, especially the marble bust of a Roman senator on a plinth, his elderly face lined with the emotion and experience of a lifetime. Blue Venetian glasses stood on a table, the light making them look like jewels. An Egyptian alabaster dog with huge ears took pride of place on a carved wooden table.

When she was shown into his room, Cosmas was sitting in a wide chair, staring at an inlaid table on which stood a jug of Sicilian wine, which was now more than half-empty. Beside it was a dish of dates and honeyed fruits. He was a short man with a curved nose and heavy-lidded eyes, red-rimmed in shadowed sockets.

“I don’t owe you anything,” he said sourly. “So I assume you have come to see what you can plunder.”

She wanted to do more than gloat; she needed a quarrel, one that could be escalated into violence.

“You are a wretched judge of character,” she replied, still standing. He did not rise. “I have not come to make financial profit out of you. I will buy icons to give to the church so all may worship them there and be blessed. I will pay you a fair price.”

His shoulders straightened and his head lifted a little.

“But I will see them first,” she added with a slight smile.

“Of course. Wine?”

“With pleasure.” She had no intention of drinking anything in his house, but she wanted the glass. A pity to break it-it was exquisite.

He rose stiffly, knees creaking, and fetched another glass from a cupboard. He poured it half-full for her and set it within her reach. “Let us talk money. The icons are on the wall in there.” He indicated an archway leading to a dimly lit room beyond.

She accepted the invitation and walked through. Then she stopped, her heart pounding. There were still half a dozen icons left, images of St. Peter and St. Paul, of Christ. One icon of the Virgin was in gold leaf and green-and-azure enamel, and blue so dark as to be almost black. She was somber-faced, with a tenderness that held the viewer in amazement.

Others had jewels encrusted on the clothes of the figures or were inlaid with ivory. There was such beauty in them that momentarily she forgot why she was here or why the hatred scorched inside her.

There was a sound behind her, and she froze. Very slowly she turned. He was there in the doorway, fat and soft, full of good living and the savor of profit.

“I would rather destroy them than be robbed,” he said between his teeth. “I know you, Zoe Chrysaphes. You do nothing without a reason. Why are you really here?”

“The icons are beautiful,” she said, as if that were a reply.

“Worth a great deal of money.” His merchant’s heart was in his face.

“Then let us haggle,” she said, unable to keep the contempt out of her voice as she brushed past him, accidentally touching the protrusion of his belly as he stood in the middle of the archway. “Let us argue how many byzants the face of Mary is worth.”

“It is an icon,” he said with a sneer. “The creation of man’s hands, made of wood and paint.”

“And of gold leaf, Cosmas; never forget the gold leaf or the gems,” she responded.

He frowned at her. “Do you want to buy one of them or not?” he snapped.

“How many pieces of silver, Cosmas, for the Mother of God? Forty seems an appropriate number.” She took a small purse of silver solidi out of her robe and placed the coins on the table.

Temper flared up his face. “It is an icon, you stupid woman! An artist’s work, no more. It is not Christ I sell!”

“Blasphemy!” she shrieked at him, her fury only in part pretense. She lunged for one of the glasses, her hand sweeping high, making clear her intention to smash it and use it as a weapon.

He darted forward first and seized it, dashing off the lovely golden rim of it and leaving jagged ends bristling from the stem. He held it out like a dagger, his eyes wide, flickering with fear, his lips parted.

She hesitated. She had borne pain before, and she hated it. Body’s ecstasy and agony were equally deep for her, right on the cliff edge of the unbearable. But this was revenge-what she had lived for over the long, arid years. She pushed forward again, using the end of her cloak to dull some of the cutting edge when he struck her.