Anastasius looked as if she had struck him, his face an odd mixture of ashen pale and red spots on his cheeks, like weals.

The room was beginning to swim around Zoe. She was growing delirious with fever. He forced her to drink something that was even more vile than the last time, but when she awoke at midday she was much improved.

Anastasius was smiling at her. “Better?” he inquired with some satisfaction.

“Much better.” She sat up slowly, and he offered her something to drink that was pleasant. “Thank you.”

He eased her back down again. He was stronger than she had expected. Or perhaps she was weaker.

“It’s morning,” Anastasius observed.

“I can see that!” Zoe snapped.

A smile flickered in Anastasius’s eyes. “Then you will tell me why Justinian was a fool not to trust you?” he said with an edge to his voice. “Or was I the fool to believe it?”

Memory rushed back. “What was that you just gave me?”

Anastasius smiled. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“Justinian knew Bessarion was useless,” Zoe said quietly. “He would have been a disaster on the throne. But the others wouldn’t believe Justinian. They’d put everything into it and the plans had gone too far. The only way to stop it was to kill Bessarion. Antoninus believed Justinian. He helped.” She almost laughed when she thought of it, except that it was so futile. “Fool. I would have stopped it. They could have done nothing without me. But Justinian didn’t trust me. What was it I just drank?”

Anastasius stared at her as if mesmerized.

“What was it I just drank?” Zoe repeated, her voice more angry and frightened than she had wanted to betray.

“Infusion of camomile,” Anastasius answered. “It’s good for the digestion. Just camomile leaves in hot water, nothing else. It’s bitter because you’ve been ill. That alters your taste.”

She did not want to admire Anastasius, and it was a curious feeling to trust him. Yet at least as far as medicine was concerned, she did. She lay back at last, for the time being content.

After three days, she began to regain strength and the wound was less red and the swelling subsided. After a week, he pronounced it satisfactory and said he would leave and return at the end of another three days.

She thanked him, paid him generously, and also gave him the gift of a small enameled box made of silver and inlaid with aquamarine. He touched it gently, looking first at its beauty, then up at her. His appreciation of it was clear in his face, and she was satisfied. She told him to leave.

Zoe was glad Anastasius had liked it. He had ministered to her not only with skill, but with gentleness. It had given her a serious fright to be so vulnerable. It could not go on like this.

An idea was beginning to take shape in her mind. She would make Gregory’s death count. She would contrive a means to have Giuliano Dandolo blamed for it. That way, she could bear to kill Gregory. She could even do it herself.

WITH GREGORY, ZOE WOULD HAVE NO SECOND CHANCE.

In a perverse way, this last battle between them was another kind of bond. She thought of him during the day. She lay awake at night and remembered how it was to be with him.

Another piece of the plan fell into her hands. It was the street attacks upon Bessarion and then upon herself that gave her the idea.

The first thing was to plant the seeds in people’s minds that there was a quarrel between Gregory and Giuliano Dandolo. It must be just a superficial word, so slight that the meaning was recalled only afterward and understood then.

The second thing was to go to Bardas, a maker of daggers whom she knew and had trusted in the past. She put on her heaviest dalmatica and went out into the windy street and the light rain. Walking quickly, she left Sabas far behind her as he was used to being, discreet, seeing and hearing nothing. The pain in her leg was barely there anymore.

“Yes, mistress,” the swordsmith said immediately, pleased to see her again. Only a fool forgot a benefactress or broke his word to a woman who never forgot or forgave. “What can I make for you this time?”

“I want a good dagger,” she replied. “It doesn’t have to be the best, but I want a family crest on the hilt, and I want you to be discreet about it. It is a gift, and it will be spoiled if anyone else hears of it.”

“Your business is no one else’s, lady. Whose crest would that be?”

“Dandolo,” she answered.

As soon as she had the dagger, which was beautiful-Bardas was even better than his word-she sent a letter to Giuliano Dandolo, who was still lodging in the Venetian Quarter. The message was simple: She had learned more about his dead mother.

Giuliano came, as she had known he would. She looked at him standing in her magnificent room. Although he was ill at ease, trying to hide the eagerness to learn what she had to say burning inside him, he still moved with grace, and grudgingly she admitted to herself he was better than handsome: He had a vitality of mind that she could not ignore. If she had been younger, she would have wanted to lie with him. But he was a Dandolo, and the dream in the eyes, the shape of a cheekbone, the width of his shoulders, or the way he walked could not pardon that.

He made all the usual polite remarks, not rushing into asking for the new information, and she played the game, uncertain whether she enjoyed it or not.

“I have heard more of your mother,” she said as soon as the greetings were over and the casual remarks that courtesy required. “She was beautiful, but perhaps you knew that already.” She saw the flicker of emotion in his face, the sharp hurt too deep to camouflage. “Perhaps you did not know that Maddalena had a sister, Eudoxia, also beautiful, but regrettably there is considerable scandal about her name.” Again she saw the emotion raw in him. A pity she could not be young again. “What I did not know before is that Eudoxia is said by some to have repented deeply in her old age, and to have joined some holy order. I do not know which, but I may be able to learn. It is possible that she is still alive.”

“Alive?” His eyes opened wide.

“Please, leave it to me. I have ways which are not open to you, and I can do it discreetly. I will let you know as soon as I have something that is certain.”

“Thank you.” He smiled at her, a handsome, self-assured man with a charm that came without effort.

“I was three when my mother died,” she said to Giuliano, aware that her voice was shaking but unable to control it.

“I’m sorry,” he responded with sudden shock, his eyes tender.

She did not wish his sympathy. “She was raped and murdered.” Then she wished she had not told him. It was a weakness and a tactical error. He might work out the year, and the circumstances, and then know he could never trust her. “I have something for you,” she said hastily, trying to cover it. “I came by it almost by chance, so please feel no obligation.” She moved away from him over to the table on which lay the dagger with the Dandolo crest. She unwrapped the blue silk cloth around it and held it out, hilt toward him, crest upward. Bardas had done a perfect job: It looked old and well used, yet every detail of it was clear.

Giuliano stared at it, then looked up at her.

“Take it,” she urged. “It should be yours. Anyway, what on earth would I do with a dagger that carried a Venetian crest on it?”

He was not clumsy enough to offer to pay for it. He would give her a gift of appropriate value, a little more than he judged the dagger to be worth.

He weighed it in his hands. “The balance is perfect,” he observed. “Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “But if I find out, I shall tell you.”