God is a flame, Sheikh Saadi used to say, and each human soul a spark from that flame. When we treat our brother or sister like a thing, we trample God Himself.
They were all slaves in this house of Tilia's. He had sent Rachel here to become a slave.
I, too, was once a slave.
But as a full-fledged Mameluke he was free. These women did not have that way of escape. As long as they could, they must perform the act of love, as it was called, with whoever paid them, or starve.
Baibars had done well to close the brothels of El Kahira. It was the very meaning of love that it was freely given. Love was free submission to another, just as Islam was free submission to God. Daoud had first experienced love when he and Nicetas gave their bodies to each other. And later with Blossoming Reed, even though theirs was an arranged marriage, that, too, was love.
He could not lie with Francesca tonight. It would be too much like lying with Rachel. He could not watch what Orenetta, Caterina, and Maiga would do with Sordello. The thing he was having them do to Sordello was an abomination. Despicable though Sordello was, he, too, had a soul, and tonight Daoud was trampling upon God in the person of Sordello.
And yet he must see that all went as planned tonight. Did he want his homeland destroyed?
But I have to get away from here.
He stood up suddenly. "I must go back to Cardinal Ugolini's." Tilia, Lorenzo, and Francesca stared at him.
Tilia recovered first. "But you were to stay the night here. What about—" She gestured toward the wall.