what is at stake
here?"

Her full lower lip pushed out. "I do not understand why you had to send
a pious simpleton to a horrible death."

Guilt twisted in Daoud's guts like a Hashishiyya dagger. Yet he could
not admit to Sophia that he regretted what happened to the heretic. She
might approve his feeling, but she would also lose confidence in him.

"I will use any weapon I can find," he said. "Even if it breaks in my
hand."

Sophia sat down on the marble lip of the fish pond. After a moment's
hesitation Daoud sat beside her, smoothing his red cloak under him.

"Where is Lorenzo?" she asked. "I have not seen him since the day the
Tartars arrived."

"He visits Spoleto, to find a few bold men for me." Lorenzo would bring
back two or three men from Spoleto. Later he would gather more men in
Viterbo, Chiusi, and other nearby cities. Imperceptibly over the coming
months, bands of armed men--the Italians called them "bravos"--would
gather in Orvieto to do Daoud's bidding.

Acting as a go-between for Daoud and the bravos was a mission at which
Lorenzo should do well.

"The men Lorenzo brings here will not know my name or my face," he went
on. "In a few days Cardinal Ugolini will take me before the pope, and I
will warn him against the Tartars from my own true experience of them.
I must not be connected with other things done against the Tartars,
disturbances among the people, armed attacks. That is why Rachel is such
a danger."

She had been looking thoughtfully at the pebbled path. When he spoke
Rachel's name, she lifted her head to stare at him.

"Are you going to make me give up Rachel?"

That annoyed him. "You agreed. Have you forgotten?"

"No, but I thought now that she has been with us awhile and there has
been no trouble, you might change your mind."

"I do not change my mind so easily." By God, working with this woman was
an ordeal. She argued and complained far too much. He wondered whether
showing their faces in public made Christian women overbold.

"But where can she go? You would not really cast her out to starve."

"Tilia Caballo will take her in."

"You will force her into that horrible fat woman's brothel? And she only
a child?"

"She is nearly thirteen. Many women are married by then."

"She has not even started bleeding yet."

"How do you know that?" Daoud felt somewhat embarrassed.

"She told me, of course."

"She need only be a serving girl at Tilia's."

"No doubt Tilia would fi