"After he has experienced what I have prepared for him tonight, he will no longer be a traitor," said Daoud. "His very soul will be mine, and that will be worth—all this."
He watched the two silent black men lug in the naked body of Sordello, and he pointed to a forest-green divan beside the pool. Gently they laid Sordello there.
Tilia Caballo appeared from behind a curtain. At a gesture from her, the two black men bowed to Daoud and left.
Three women followed Tilia into the room.
"Goddesses!" whispered Lorenzo, staring.
Daoud, who had chosen them, agreed. Two of them, Tilia had told him, were sisters whose specialty was working together with one man. They had hair the color of honey, olive skin, and Grecian profiles. Each had a gold fillet in her hair and wore a short tunic of pure white linen. Each tunic left one delicate shoulder and one perfect breast exposed. On Orenetta the uncovered side was the right, and on Caterina the left.
The third woman was tall, taller than most men, and her bare shoulders were broad. But her body, tightly wrapped in a gown of black silk that stopped just above her breasts, was magnificently female. Her long unbound hair was lustrous and black as her gown, her skin pale as snow. A gold collar that appeared to be woven of spiral strands encircled her neck. Maiga, Tilia said, was from Hibernia, an island west of Britain, and she spoke no Italian and did not need to.
Daoud felt a fluttering in his chest as the sight of the three women, and the scent of the simmering wine brought back memories of his own initiation at the hands of the Hashishiyya.
It had been the Tartars, indirectly, who had made it possible for him to take that training. They had besieged and destroyed Alamut, the great Persian fortress of the Sheikh al-Jebal, the Old Man of the Mountain, and kicked him to death after he surrendered. The Old Man's surviving followers scattered across the lands of Islam. It was inevitable that some of the highest adepts came for protection to Sultan Qutuz of El Kahira.
After they were settled, Baibars had gone to them with the proposal that certain Mameluke emirs be initiated into the secrets of the sect. Fayum al-Burz, the new Sheikh al-Jebal, saw an opportunity to infiltrate the highest levels of the Mamelukes and was only too pleased to comply.