gh she was, Sophia knew that to try to
lie down in the dark would mean nothing but hours of suffering. She
would sleep only when she fainted from exhaustion. And she dreaded the
agony she would feel when she woke again and remembered what had
happened this day.

Tilia cleared her throat politely. "Your Signory, it will be hard to
sleep in the same room with dead bodies."

Simon frowned. "Dead bodies?"

"Well--I hope you will not hold it against myself and the cardinal--but
besides Sordello here, there are two of his henchmen in the room we have
been occupying."

"Also dead?"

"Also dead. They were trying to rob us."

Now Sophia remembered that Sordello had brought two Venetians with him,
and she remembered the barks and growls that had come up through the
floorboards while she was alone with Sordello. What had happened down
there between Ugolini and Tilia and Sordello's men? And Scipio?

Sophia looked at Tilia and noticed that she wore a small smile of
satisfaction and was fingering her jeweled pectoral cross.

_I need not worry about Tilia_, she thought grimly.

Simon sighed. "There must be a basement in this house, a root cellar,
something of the kind. Lorenzo, you and I will find a place to take the
bodies."

The room grew cold with Sophia and Rachel alone in it, and Sophia put
more logs on the fire, thankful that the merchant who had hurriedly
vacated this place had left plenty of wood. She lay down in the big bed
beside Rachel.

Hesitantly, Rachel told Sophia that she, with Friar Mathieu, had been
present at Daoud's death. She showed Sophia the little leather capsule,
and Sophia, remembering the many times she had seen it around Daoud's
neck, broke into a fresh storm of weeping.

Rachel held it out to her. "I think perhaps you should be the one to
have it."

"No. He gave it to you." Sophia wiped her eyes, drew out the locket and
opened it, looked sadly at the meaningless tracery of lines on its
rock-crystal surface, barely visible in the light from the low fire.

"This locket is what he gave me. It seems the magic in it died with him,
but it is a precious keepsake." She remembered that she had been looking
at the locket when Sordello tried to kill Simon. Why had he tried to do
that? It made no sense, but because of it she had killed Sordello, and
of that she was glad. She had avenged Daoud.

Desperately needing to know every detail of Daoud's death, Sophia
questioned Rachel until, in the middle