"But you must help me," she said with the satisfied feeling that she was now closing the trap. "You must teach me what to say to my uncle. As I said, it would be easy for you to come to me without anyone knowing. Will you visit me when I send for you?"
"Oh, Madonna! Command me." His eyes were huge now, and his smile was like a full moon shining into the atrium.
"I command you to come over here with me," she said.
She took him by the hand, and, as a light rain began to fall, led him into a shadowy corner of the open gallery that surrounded the garden. He pressed her back against a column. She lifted her veil and let him kiss her fiercely as the rain pattered down on the lemon trees.
She became entirely Sophia Orfali and tasted his kisses hungrily, dizzy with joy at having won the love of a splendid young nobleman.
"Of course I fought in Russia and Poland," Ana said, speaking for John Chagan, while the old Tartar threw out his arms in a sweeping gesture. "Everyone went."
Daoud smiled and nodded, leaning back in the chair someone had brought for him, his right leg crossed over the left. He tried to look relaxed, though his heart was beating fast. He felt like a man climbing a cliff, whose slightest misstep might bring a disastrous fall.
He was feeling the effects of the al-koahl—a hissing sound in his ears, a numbness in his face, a difficulty focusing his eyes, an urge, difficult to suppress, to splash the contents of his wine cup in John's ugly face. But his mind was untouched, he knew, and that meant he was under better control than these two savages whom he had drawn into telling stories of their wars.
"Was that your first campaign?" he asked.