"It gets better. In India, where pearls have been pursued for thousands of years, both Buddhists and Hindus have a category of G.o.d called nagas. They're snakes that have a human head."

"I think I've met them," Hannah said wryly.

A smile flickered over Archer's mouth. "Nagas are guardian G.o.ds. They guard pearls, drops of rain, and the elixir of immortality."

"Maybe Jung was right about all those archetypes running around in human brains," she said. "Not to mention Freud. He would have a lot to say about snaky phallic symbols and pearly drops and all."

This time Archer's smile stayed on his lips. "I can imagine."

So could she. And what she was imagining made heat slide into her blood. She wanted to hold Archer like that again, only this time she would taste as well as touch the liquid pearls that escaped his restraint.

He saw the small shiver that coursed through her. "Do you want Honor's jacket?"

"What?" she asked, dragging her mind away from the image of him naked and potent as she bent down to him.

"This," he said, holding up the jacket that had been folded over his arm. "You're shivering. You're used to temperatures a lot warmer than the open floors of the Pearl Exchange."

Rather than tell him that the goose b.u.mps coursing over her came from thinking about getting him naked, Hannah let him settle the jacket over her shoulders like a cape. The casual touch set off another shiver.

"Why didn't you tell me you were cold?" he asked, rubbing her arms briskly, careful to keep the jacket as a barrier to direct touch.

"I didn't notice."

He gave her an odd look.

She looked straight ahead and wondered how other women dealt with being ambushed by pa.s.sion in public places. Especially when they were with a man who was doing everything but walk on the ceiling to avoid touching her, skin to skin.

"Angelique Dupres is Coco's half sister," Hannah said in a low voice.

He simply nodded and filed the information away.

Side by side, not touching at all, Archer and Hannah went to every booth in the room. They traded off asking about the special black pearls. Some people had heard of them. No one owned any. Or if they did, they were keeping it secret.

"Here they come again," Hannah said under her breath.

"Our shadows?"

"Um," she agreed. "What would they do if we walked up and introduced ourselves?"

"Chat with us until backup arrived. Then we'd have to go to the trouble of picking the new bureaucrats out of the crowd."

"Better the devil you know, is that it?"

"Sometimes."

"Is this one of those times?"

"So far."

"And when it changes?"

"We'll lose them." He looked at his watch.

"You're really angry underneath all that calm, aren't you?"

Archer looked at her with steel-colored eyes. The realization that she could see so well into him made him even more angry. "Yes."

"Why?"

"Someone told the Changs where we were. When I get my hands on her "

"Her?" Hannah cut in.

Archer thought of April Joy: beautiful, intelligent, and above all, ruthless. "Her. Definitely."

Twenty-one.

Fred and Rebecca Linsky were in their eighty-first year of life and their sixty-second of marriage. Despite, or perhaps because of, that, they were known as the Battling Linskys. Lean, white-haired, childless, no taller than five and a half feet, they ruled their small pearl kingdom with a firm hand and an eye toward their employees' offspring. The l.u.s.trous pearls that had pa.s.sed through the Linskys' hands had paid for many college educations. Their doctor, who lived next door in one of Seattle's many waterfront condominiums, made house calls at least once a week and never charged them a fee; her entire education had been paid for with Linsky pearls.

While Fred and Becky didn't live at the Pearl Exchange, it was their true home. They had built it, nurtured it, and continued to enhance it with the presence of their Third Planet Pearls collection. The huge collection was housed on the top floor of the Exchange.

Hannah barely acknowledged the introductions Archer performed when the Linskys greeted them. She was riveted by the cases of pearl objets d'art, the one-of-a-kind jewelry, and all the rest of the Linskys' eclectic collection, including the sorting tables just visible through a doorway at the end of the huge room.

"Excuse me," she said, turning back to Becky. "What was your question?"

Becky laughed and put her fragile but not frail hand on Hannah's. "I asked if you were interested in pearls. Your eyes tell me you are. Would you like to see the collection?"

"We both would," Archer said, "but I'm afraid we don't have time for the full tour."

Hannah made a soft sound of protest.

Becky smiled. "There are other days, dear."

Because she didn't know how to say she might not live to see those other days, Hannah simply smiled in return.

"A short tour, then," Becky said, pinning Archer with her faded blue eyes.

"A short tour," he agreed. Becky's eyes might be faded, but her will wasn't. Displaying their collection to an appreciative audience was one of the Linskys' greatest pleasures. He wouldn't deprive them of it.

Smiling, Becky walked eagerly toward a smooth cherry wood cabinet that was four feet high and divided into drawers that were wide and shallow. The top of the cabinet was clear, beveled gla.s.s, giving a view into the contents of the first drawer.

"Pearls were the first and most perfect of all the gems men used to make themselves and the things they prized more beautiful," Becky said to Hannah. "The oldest pearl fishery we know of started off in Sri Lanka more than two thousand years ago. Others contend that the honor belongs to Persians, who have been bringing up sh.e.l.l in an organized manner for at least that long."

Hannah looked down into the cabinet and saw what appeared to be irregular gold links forming a chain perhaps sixteen inches long. Small pearls, impaled on thin strands of gold, hung from some of the links.

"Forty-three hundred years ago," Becky said, "pearls are mentioned as tribute in China. Mother-of-pearl has been found in Babylonian ruins that are more than four thousand years old. Where there is mother-of-pearl, there is, inevitably, pearl itself."

"Is that how old this necklace is?" Hannah asked, startled.

"Four thousand years?"

"No. Unfortunately, pearls are fragile. Buried in places that are either too damp or too dry, pearls die. The necklace you're looking at has the oldest pearls in our collection. It graced the neck of a Persian aristocrat probably a priest or priestess before Christ was born."

Archer had seen the necklace many times, but the history of it still fascinated him, as did the bottomless orient of the natural pearls themselves. White, ethereal, the l.u.s.ter of the pearls was like a sigh whispered through the ages.

"Why do you say a religious figure wore this necklace?" Hannah asked. It looked more decorative than symbolic to her. "Odds," Fred said before his wife could answer. "Throughout recorded history, whether in this hemisphere or the next, pearls were objects of veneration. Priests of both s.e.xes had first call on pearls, except for the supreme ruler who was likely a priest as well. It doesn't take a great feat of imagination to see pearls and think of the moon, which was worshiped along with the sun. What is part of a G.o.d is also holy. If you own those pieces, you're holy, too."

"That's the fascinating thing about pearls," Archer said. "They're symbols of both chast.i.ty and carnality, depending on the time and place."

"A gem for all occasions," Hannah said with a sideways look at him.

"A gem for all cultures," Becky corrected. "Once pearl fisheries were established, pearls became the ultimate status symbol around the world. Whether in India, China, or Persia, the more pearls you wore, the higher you were in the pecking order. Romans wallowed in them. Caligula was mad for them."

"Caligula was mad, period," Archer said dryly.

"Just because he gave his horse a high appointment and hung a pearl necklace around the equine neck?" Fred asked. "Can't say I blame Caligula. Most men haven't the sense of a horse's b.u.t.t, much less the whole horse."

"Cleopatra won a bet with pearls," Becky said.

"Who had enough nerve to bet against her?" Hannah asked.

"Marc Antony. To prove to him how powerful and wealthy Egypt was, Cleopatra bet him that she could serve a feast that was more expensive than any in history. She sat him down with an empty plate and a goblet of wine. She probably smiled like her pet cat to see him watching her skeptically. Then she took off one of her earrings a single huge pearl smashed it dissolved it in wine, and drank it. When she was finished, she handed the other earring to Antony and dared him to do the same. He conceded on the spot, for the earring she had drunk was worth almost two million ounces of silver."

"Legend has it that he financed an entire military campaign with the proceeds of the second pearl," Fred said.

"That was the general Vitellius and it was his mother's pearl earring, not Cleopatra's."

"No, it was Antony, and it was Cleopatra's pearl!"

Squaring off face-to-face, Becky and Fred started quoting sources, talking louder and louder, and generally having a great time. The higher the volume of the argument rose, the brighter their eyes got and the quicker their minds.

"Which was it, Antony or Vitellius?" Hannah asked Archer quietly.

"Vitellius. Antony took his to Rome, cut it in half, and made earrings for a statue of Venus."

"Cut it in half..." Hannah repeated faintly. "For a statue."

"It was an act of piety as much as arrogance. Romans were completely in thrall to pearls. The more they got through conquest, the more they wanted. They were insatiable and quite happy to bankrupt themselves for pearls."

"You sound wistful."

"I am," Archer admitted, smiling a pirate's kind of smile. "It would have been a great time to be a pearl trader."

"Now isn't so bad," she said, looking around. "To see pearls like this at any other time, you would have to have been an emperor or a G.o.d."

A gleam from another display case caught her eye. She looked at the Battling Linskys no sign of a truce and sidled closer to the new case. Sealed within its gla.s.s walls was a rectangle perhaps eighteen inches by fourteen inches. Its surface was gold. Countless pearls set in the gold depicted the clothes of a saint: headdress, robes, girdle, all glowed with the ethereal inner light of pearls. Rubies, emeralds, and sapphires were scattered about, but it was pearls which dominated, pearls which were the true measure of piety and wealth.

"Where on earth....?" she whispered.

"Either a monastery or the library of a very wealthy man," Archer said quietly. "It's medieval, Russian, and one of the finest ma.n.u.script covers ever made by man. It fairly vibrates with awe and reverence, with hope for immortal life laced with fear of h.e.l.l everlasting."

For a moment all Hannah could think of was Len's fingers digging into her arm as he screamed at her that the Black Trinity wasn't finished, couldn't be finished, or he would be whole. The image of his rage and fear was so vivid that she said his name in a low, husky voice.

"Don't think about it," Archer said. "He wasn't the first man to go crazy and equate the temporal and temporary with the divine and eternal. There is something shimmering just beneath the surface of pearls that brings peace or madness, depending on the man."

"I know. It's just... sometimes it's so fresh, as though it happened two seconds ago and the screams are still backed up in my throat."

Archer reached for her before he remembered that all she wanted from him was protection and s.e.x. Comfort wasn't part of their deal. He put his hands in his pockets and turned toward the next display case. "Give it time. It will get better."

He walked to a new case. "Here's another piece of pearl history. Strings of pearls that could have graced the royal treasury of India or Persia any time in the last two thousand years. Probably did, if I know Fred. The traders know that he'll pay more than anyone else for pearls with history attached to them."

Hannah turned and focused on the case. There was indeed a mound of natural pearl strands, enough to make a maharajah or a prince weep. "Beautiful," she said.

And they were, but not to her. Not at the moment. The ugliness of man still overwhelmed her.

"Iran has chests overflowing with strands like this. Priceless, even in the age of cultured pearls."

Without touching Hannah, Archer led her down a row of cabinets, pointing out some of the highlights within. Pearl-encrusted necklaces from medieval Russia and England. Persian slippers smaller than his hand that were completely covered with seed pearls. A necklace of pearls, diamonds, rubies, and amethysts that had once belonged to a Mogul princess. A tiny gold box completely framed with pearls; it was reputed to have belonged to a mistress of Henry VIII.

"Hardly a recommendation for exclusivity," Archer added. "He had mistresses the way some men had cups of wine."

Hannah didn't say a word. She was still working hard just to cope with the present.

"The interesting thing is that we only a.s.sociate valuable pearls with salt water," he continued, pointing to another case, "but modern appraisers of centuries-old jewelry find freshwater pearls again and again. Even today, the best of the freshwater pearls are sold as salt.w.a.ter gems. We have an enduring prejudice in favor of the sea's mystery."

"Exactly," Fred said as though he and his wife hadn't spent the past five minutes arguing with each other. "I've always said that freshwater pearls beat salt.w.a.ter gems any day."

"Ha!" Becky said. "That's foolishness and you know it. No freshwater pearl on earth can stand against a good South Seas gold."

"Bull," Fred roared. "What about that natural pink pearl I bought last year from Tennessee?"

"What about it?"

Archer hid a smile. The Battling Linskys were off and running.

Hannah looked at the old couple and smiled despite the turmoil of her own emotions. Their enthusiasm for an argument was matched only by their enthusiasm for each other; their love was as transparent as tears.

"Becky handles the salt.w.a.ter end of their business," Archer said.

"I never would have guessed," Hannah said dryly.