Her eyes clouded over. "The cardinal will send for you when he has heard my report."
"Great God, woman!" Daoud's voice rasped in his anger. "Do you expect me to wait out here until the Tartars come to Orvieto? I am sent by the sultan, I bring great wealth to you and your master, I am fighting for my faith, and I will not wait!"
Tilia patted his arm placatingly. "Look here, Daoud, in all honesty, Cardinal Ugolini is terrified. When he first got Baibars's message about you, he wept for hours, cursing himself over and over for a fool. Imagine the outrage if the Christians were to discover that a Muslim agent has come so close to their pope. The cardinal would never have taken the first denaro picciolo from your sultan if he had ever known that it would lead to this—a Turk at his door demanding his help in a plot against the pope."
"I am not at his door," said Daoud pointedly.
"No, and before you arrive there, you must give me time to assure him that you know what you are doing, that you do not look anything like a Turk, and above all that you bring him such great wealth as to make the risk worthwhile. If you just appear at his palace when he has insisted that you wait here, it might throw him into a panic. He might do something very foolish."
Anger flared up in him. She was obstructing him and threatening him, and he had had enough.
She means he might expose me. Or order his men-at-arms to kill me. This is Manfred's indecision all over again.
He seized Tilia's arm, his fingers sinking into soft flesh under her silk sleeve. "I am going to the cardinal, with my party. And you will equip me with a message for him, telling him you feel assured it is safe for him to admit us."
She stared up at him, expressionless, for a long time. He sensed that she was trying to see into his heart, to weigh his will.
"No," she said. "You are not going now. First—"