Sordello's face, looking as if hewn from granite by an indifferent sculptor, was gray with fatigue. His arms bound behind his back, he knelt before Daoud, wearing a tattered brown frieze robe Tilia had somewhere found for him.
Daoud sat once again on the former papal throne. Dressed in black cassocks and hoods that covered their faces, Lorenzo and five of Tilia's black servants stood along the walls of the room. Every so often Sordello's eyes flickered to the implements of torture around the room and quickly away again.
Yet the night's assault on his mind had not altogether broken his spirit. "If you think to frighten me with this clowning, think again, Messer David. I have stood undaunted before the Inquisition in my day, and they are a good deal more fearsome than you and your henchmen."
Leave him his shred of dignity, Daoud thought. A man who has lost that is too dangerous.
"We are beyond fear now, Sordello, are we not?"
Sordello's eyes glowed in the torchlight like a trapped animal's. "What kind of devil are you?"
Daoud tried to smile kindly. "You call me a devil after I have sent you to paradise?"
The old bravo sighed, and his eyes closed. "I did not know that my body was capable of feeling so much pleasure. Even when I was twenty and at my best, I never knew such delight. It shook me to the very root of my soul."
"I know," said Daoud. He was thinking back to his own initiation. Given sanctuary in Egypt, the Hashishiyya had built a tent-palace of wood and silk west of El Kahira, at the foot of the pyramids. Over a series of moonlit nights, Daoud had drunk the Old Man of the Mountain's brew. He had entered hell in the bowels of the Great Pyramid and then had ascended into paradise, where the houris promised by the Prophet had ministered to him for what seemed an eternity. Yes, he knew very well what spirit-freezing delights Sordello had experienced.
"What are you, then?" Sordello growled, his eyes flashing open. "Some kind of stregone? What was that witches' potion you made me drink?"