armor and trappings ready for the foot soldiers and the mounted knights that would mass in Sicily. They would storm Constantinople, then ride in triumph into Jerusalem, with Charles of Anjou at their head. Anyone in their path would be trampled. A road stained with blood had never troubled crusaders.
Also of great concern to Zoe was the change in Helena. It dated since soon after Eirene's death-so soon, in fact, that it was hard to believe they were unconnected. The conclusion was unpleasantly clear. Somehow Helena had found out who her father was.
Zoe stood warming herself by the fire. The thought of Helena kept returning to her mind, so sharp that it was as if someone had left a window open, letting in a knife cut of ice-laden air from outside.
Helena would not stand on the walls with her mother and pour fire on the invaders, then die in her own funeral pyre. She was a survivor, not a martyr. She would find a way to escape and start again somewhere else. And she would certainly escape with money.
Michael would never yield. He would die before he accommodated Charles. Not that Charles would leave him alive anyway. He would destroy all royal claimants, and if Helena did not know that, then she was a fool. Her birth would be her death sentence. Charles would leave his puppet emperor without a rival of any sort.
The answer came to Zoe with the scorching heat of the Greek fire she planned to use. If Charles wanted to hold Byzantium with a hand of peace, to free his armies to go on to Jerusalem, what better than to marry his puppet emperor to a legitimate heir of the Palaeologi? Murder Michael and Andronicus, and who was left? Helena!
Zoe's mind raced, horrified. It was betrayal beyond imagining.
She sat with her arms around herself, shivering in spite of the fire. Before it came anywhere near that, she must raise the money Palombara had suggested, buy all the trouble, anger, and rebellion she could. And she knew now exactly where that money was coming from.
Her power had always lain in knowledge of other people's secrets and the proof that could ruin them. The man to help her now was Philotheos Makrembolites. She had heard only last week that he was on his deathbed. Perfect! In pain, frightened, and with nothing to lose.
Zoe went to her herb room and prepared various mixtures for the relief of different kinds of pain. She also collected sleeping powders, sweet-smelling oils, and restoratives that would give a short-lived clarity to the mind, even if after that there was only the slipping away into the last silence.
She bathed and dressed, perfuming herself but wearing rich, sober colors, as befitted one going to visit the dying. She did not worry that Philotheos would not receive her. He had a withered arm from the fires of 1204 and a bitter heart. He would want to relive old wrongs and would not be unwilling to help her exact a vengeance that was beyond his own reach. Secrets were worth nothing in the grave.
He received her in his dim, overhot room with as much curiosity as she had hoped. He hoisted himself onto his elbows, wincing with pain and screwing up his face into a snarl, drawing his lips back from stained teeth. "Come to gloat at my death, Zoe Chrysaphes?" he said, his breath wheezing out of his lungs with a sound like tearing cloth. "Make the most of it. Your turn will come, and you'll likely see the city put to blood and fire again before that happens."
She put down the leather satchel in which she had brought the herbs and ointments. They knew each other far too well for pretenses. She would not have come except for good reasons of her own.
"What's in there?" he asked, eyeing it suspiciously.
"Relief from pain," she answered. "Temporarily, of course. It will all be finished when God wishes it."
"You are little younger than I am, for all your paint and perfume. You smell like an alchemist's parlor," he responded.
She wrinkled her nose. "You don't. Rather more like a charnel house. Do you wish a little ease or not?"
"What's the price?" His eyes were yellowing, as if his kidneys were failing him. "Have you spent all your money? No more charms to get men to give it to you?"
"Keep your money. You can bury it with you, for all I care," she replied. "Better that than let it fall