Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [115]
She stood motionless, watching.
He turned and looked at her, studying her face, the rigidity of her body, the power of emotion in her, savoring it. This was what he wanted—her fear.
She started to speak and then stopped.
He smiled slowly and turned back to the icon. “It’s exquisite,” he said, his voice filled with awe in spite of himself. “But it is rather similar to one I already have.”
It did not matter. She had no intention of giving it to him, but she tried to appear crushed and, even more than that, afraid. Again she started to speak and stopped. She looked at him, imagining his cousin Gregory, perhaps the only man she had loved for himself, years ago, and made her eyes plead with him.
Arsenios fingered the front of the icon, picked it up, and examined the back, his heavy-lidded eyes flicking up at her and down at the frame. He saw the small tack she had left projecting, and his smile widened.
Deliberately, she shuddered. She would have gone pale were it within her power.
“Careless,” he whispered. “Not up to your usual standard, Zoe.” His voice was a hiss, anger flaring in his eyes.
“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, reaching into the folds of her tunic for the dagger in its jeweled sheath, crystals blazing in the light. She pulled it forward enough for him to see it.
He saw it and lunged forward, his fingers grasping her wrist like a vise. She did not need to pretend in order to cry out in pain. She was a tall woman, his height, but she was no match for him in strength. He wrenched the sheath from her easily, bruising the slender bones of her wrist and bending the arm back until it was twisted, bringing tears to her eyes.
He was close to her; she could smell the sweat of anger on him and see the pores of his skin.
“Just a little scratch,” he said between his teeth. “An accident with a careless tack, and I would have been dead. Why, Zoe? Because Gregory would not marry you? You fool! Eirene was a Doukas. Do you imagine he would have given that up for you? Why bother? You lay with him whenever he wanted anyway. One doesn’t marry a whore.”
She did not have to pretend anger, or pain. She let it blaze up in her eyes and tried to snatch back the dagger, but deliberately aiming to the left, as if misjudging.
He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound, and grasped the handle to yank it free. It did not come, and he pulled harder. “You tried to stab me,” he said jubilantly. “That’s what you came for, to murder me. We struggled, and tragically, in spite of all I could do, you slipped and the knife turned on you—fatally.” His lips drew back from his teeth in triumph; he pulled again on the knife hilt, his other hand on the sheath to free it, and felt the tiny needle in his flesh.
It was seconds before he knew what it was; then, as the pain flooded through him, his eyes widened and he stared at her in sudden, terrible understanding.
She stood straight now, shoulders back, head high, but far enough away from him that even if he fell forward, he could not reach her. She smiled, a slow, sweet taste of victory.
“It was nothing to do with Gregory,” she told him as he fell forward onto his knees, his face purple, his hands clutching at his stomach. “I had all I wanted from him.” That was almost true. “It was your father’s theft of the icons when the city was burning. You took our family relics, and you kept them. You betrayed Byzantium, and for that you must pay with your life.” She stepped backward as he crawled a few inches toward her. His throat was closing and his eyes bulged in his head. Saliva dribbled from his mouth and there was a terrible hacking, rasping sound in his chest, then he vomited blood in a scarlet tide. He screamed and almost instantly choked as more blood spewed out. His eyes rolled in terror, and he gagged and choked, swallowing, drowning.
She