No one spoke. The corpse-faced man crept nearer to Zoë, his dull eyes fixed on her features. Beyond the wall and far off the unseen horse neighed again. It was growing darker, but all around the scarlet tunics of the guards were as red as blood.
Then the answer came. The twisted lips of the tormentor moved slowly, and words came from them in a thin, harsh voice, like the creaking of the rack.
'She is Michael Rhangabé's daughter.'
'The Protosparthos?' The Emperor's voice shook again.
The corpse-faced man nodded twice in assent, and his thin lips writhed hideously when Zoë's eyes fell on him.
'I saw her at the prison when I took him out to die,' he said.
His bony hand, all knotty and stained from his horrid work, took the girl's delicate chin, forcing her to turn her full face to him; and she quivered from head to foot at his touch. He knew well the convulsive shiver that ran through the victim he touched for the first time; he could feel it in his fingers as the musician feels the strings; he was familiar with it, as the fisherman's hand is with the tremor and tension of his rod when a fish strikes; and he smiled in a ghastly way.
'Yes,' he said, 'it is she.' And he laughed.
He held her by the chin and wagged her beautiful head to right and left.
Since the Emperor had spoken no sound had been heard but the torturer's discordant voice; but now the outraged girl's shriek of fury split the air.