Merianis rose to her feet and ran from the terrace.

Caesar looked at the amphora of wine, which had been replaced in the stand on the paving stones. He looked at Meto, who stood over the amphora, then at Cleopatra and the dead slave. "What in Hades just happened here?"

Meto looked down at the amphora. "Poisoned!" he muttered. "It must be. Somehow…" He reached down as if to pull out the cork stopper again.

"No!" Caesar shouted. "Don't touch it!" It was understandable that he should speak with alarm, but the look he cast at Meto was tinged with suspicion. He strode toward Cleopatra, but she held up her hand to signal that he should stay back.

"Zoe's ka-what you call the lemur-is still not free from her body. I sense it, still clinging to her flesh. Her death was so unexpected that the ka remains confused, trapped between this world and the next. Be silent. Don't move."

"But I intend to call for my lictors-"

"Silence!" said Cleopatra, gazing up at him with fire in her eyes. I looked on, amazed, as a twenty-one-year-old girl commanded the world's most powerful man to be still, and he obeyed.

And so we stood, motionless like actors on a stage at the final tableau. Surrounded by stillness, I became conscious of the many sounds of the harbor, muted by distance and the gardens enclosing us-shouts of men working on the waterfront, the shriek of gulls, the susurrant voice of the restless water itself. Dappled sunlight danced upon the flagstones. The moment took on a hard-edged clarity that seemed at once dreamlike and more real than real. I felt light-headed, and despite the queen's command that no one should move, I sat on one of the couches and briefly shut my eyes.

At last Merianis came running up the steps. I could see she had been weeping, no doubt shaken by the turn of events. Apollodorus followed behind her, looking grim.

Cleopatra stood. The body of Zoe slipped from her embrace and crumpled, like a cast-off garment, on the paving stones. Presumably the restless ka had been dispatched, for the queen paid no more attention to the corpse.

She raised her arm and pointed at Meto. "I want his person searched."

Meto's face grew long. Caesar stiffened his jaw and nodded. "Of course, Your Majesty. It shall be done. I shall call my lictors and see to it at once."

"No! I summoned Apollodorus for the purpose. Apollodorus shall search him."

Caesar worked his jaw back and forth. "I think, Your Majesty, that in these circumstances, it would be best-"

"This is my home," said Cleopatra. "It's my slave who lies dead. It was my cup that was poisoned-"

"A cup intended for my lips," said Caesar.

"Filled with wine poured by your man-the same glum-looking Roman who carried the wine here. No, Caesar, I must insist that one of my men perform the task of searching Meto's person."

Caesar considered this for a long moment. He turned toward Meto but did not quite look him in the eye, then turned back to Cleopatra. "Very well, Your Majesty. Let Apollodorus search him. Step forward, Meto. Raise your arms and let the fellow do what he must."

Meto looked indignant, but obeyed. His jaw twitched; I knew he wanted badly to cast a scathing look at the queen, but his discipline held firm, and instead he kept his gaze straight ahead.

Apollodorus ran his hands over Meto's shoulders, limbs, and torso, poking his fingers among the leather straps and buckles. Meto grunted and ground his jaw. Cleopatra stepped closer and watched intently. Caesar's gaze shifted apprehensively from Meto to Cleopatra and back again. Merianis, who had withdrawn to another part of the terrace, hid her face and began to weep.

Apollodorus stiffened. "Your Majesty…"

"What is it, Apollodorus? What have you found?"

From between two straps of leather attached to Meto's breastplate, Apollodorus produced a small white object, cylindrical in shape. Caesar leaned forward, as did Cleopatra. I rose from the couch, still light-headed, and moved toward Meto, feeling a sudden premonition of catastrophe.

Apollodorus held the object aloft between his thumb and forefinger. It was a tiny vial made of alabaster.

I could not stop myself; I gasped.

As one, all four turned their gazes on me-Caesar, Cleopatra, Apollodorus, and Meto, whose eyes finally made contact with mine for the first time that day. The look on his face froze my blood.

"Papa!" he whispered hoarsely.

Caesar snatched the vial from Apollodorus. He thrust it under my nose. "What is this, Gordianus?"

I stared at it. The stopper was gone. Though the vial was empty, I caught a faint whiff of the not unpleasant odor I had smelled when I sniffed its contents aboard Pompey's ship. There could be no doubt; this was the vial Cornelia had given me.

Caesar's nose was almost touching mine. "Speak, Finder! I command you! What do you know about this?"

From behind him, I heard the calm, but demanding, voice of Cleopatra. "Yes, Gordianus. Tell us what you know about this alabaster vial that Apollodorus found upon the person of your son."

An hour later, in a kind of stupor, I was back in my room, sifting through the contents of my traveling chest. Roman soldiers dispatched by Caesar stood by, watching my every movement. Rupa stood across the room, and the boys sat on the windowsill. I had not yet told them the details of what had transpired, but they knew that something terrible must have occurred. The boys were calming themselves by stroking Alexander the cat, who sat purring between them, oblivious to the tension in the room.

"It's not here," I muttered. Carefully, methodically, I had removed every item from the trunk and spread them across my bed. Now, just as methodically, I replaced each object into the trunk, shaking tunics to make sure nothing was hidden in the folds, opening Bethesda's little trinket boxes to be certain that no alabaster vial was hidden inside.

The search was fruitless. The vial Cornelia had given me was no longer in my possession; Apollodorus had discovered it upon Meto's person. Nonetheless, I had been praying for some miracle whereby I would find the vial in my chest after all, with its stopper and contents intact. Now there could be no doubt. The poison Cornelia had given me-quick to act, relatively painless-must have been the same poison that killed Cleopatra's taster.

My reaction when I first saw the vial in Apollodorus's hand had been so spontaneous, so damning, that dissembling was futile. No lie fabricated on the spot would have satisfied Caesar. Nor was silence an option; refusing to speak would have pitted my will against his, and against the will of Cleopatra as well. Both of them had long experience in obtaining information from unwilling subjects. I might have withstood a degree of suffering, but there were Rupa and the boys to consider. I would not allow harm to be done to them, even for the sake of protecting Meto.

And there lay the bitter irony: After all my protestations that Meto was no longer my son, that our relationship was over, and that he meant nothing to me, my first instinct had been to protect him. Caesar had seen through me at once. "If Meto truly means nothing to you, Finder, then why do you not speak?" he had demanded. "A woman lies dead. But for the queen's action, it would have been me! What do you know about this alabaster vial? Speak! If I have to force you to talk, I will. Neither of us wishes for that to happen, do we, Finder?"

So I told him where the vial had come from and how it had come to be in my possession. When had I last seen it? I couldn't say for certain. (In fact, my last memory of seeing it was the day that Meto had noticed it, when I gave him a keepsake from Bethesda.) How had it come to be in the possession of Meto? I attempted to dissemble, saying I had no idea; but hearing the threat in Caesar's tone, Meto himself spoke up.