"Last night I suspected it, but this morning I talked to Anjou, and now I am certain. There will never be an alliance of Christians and Tartars. Anjou never wanted it, and he will do everything in his power to prevent it. It would interfere with his own ambitions." Her amber eyes looked into his, and he felt the pain she was holding rigidly at bay within herself. Oh, God, those eyes! How he had dreamed of spending the rest of his life in their gaze. Now, after today, he would never look into them again. She said, "Does it disappoint you that there will be no alliance?" "Once it would have. After all, I gave everything I had to trying to make the alliance succeed. But I did that for King Louis and for my own honor more than because I believed the alliance was a good thing. Indeed, I often had doubts. I pray my people will never take part in such horrors as the Tartars have committed." Sophia shook her head. "If you are right, then I only wish Daoud could have known before he died that his purpose was accomplished." The thought came to Simon that Daoud might be aware of that, in the next world, but it seemed a childish fancy in the face of her sorrow, and he said nothing. Even now, she thought only of Daoud. Oh, why could not everything be different? Why could she not be the cardinal's niece, the lovely woman he had fallen in love with? Why must she be a stranger with a Greek name he had already forgotten because he had heard it only once, a plotter, a spy, an enemy? He looked at the jagged blue mountains, mostly bare rock, that rose behind Sophia, and in despair thought of climbing up there and throwing himself off a cliff. The road she would be taking led into those mountains. Celino, mounted on a sturdy brown mare, held Sophia's chestnut horse for her. Ugolini and Tilia Caballo, dressed in dark peasants' clothes, sat together on the driver's seat of Celino's cart, Tilia holding the reins. Where were those two going, Simon wondered. When he said good-bye to them he had not thought to ask. No place in Sicily would be safe for them. Well, they probably would not have wanted to tell him. Rachel, sitting on a powerful-looking black mule, gave Simon a little smile and a nod when he glanced her way. He smiled back. _May you find a good man, Celino's son or another. And may the rest of your life be entirely happy._ "You are going back to Constantinople, then?" he said to Sophia. He had to drag the words out of himself. She nodded. "I can get a ship from Palermo. Rachel has kindly offered to pay my passage. Lorenzo found the chest full of gold she got from the Tartar, right where he buried it out in the woods. So Rachel is still rich. As for me, I am quite destitute." _God's mantle! That never occurred to me. What an idiot I am._ "Would you--" She raised a hand to silence him and shook her head. "I would not."