uil a chance to eat me alive. And I must
get Friar Mathieu to help me._

"Send someone to the Palazzo Monaldeschi for my horse," he said to the
innkeeper, standing suddenly.

"As you wish, Your Signory." The innkeeper hurried off.

Simon swept the crowd with his gaze. "Remember, all of you. Anyone who
saw anything, heard anything. You will be paid. Come to the Palazzo
Monaldeschi."

Simon sat down on the stone street to wait for the horse. Silently the
crowd that had gathered waited with him.

When the innkeeper's servant brought the horse, Simon lifted Alain's
body with the help of two other men and lashed it securely facedown over
his horse's back with the rope he had used to climb to Sophia's room.

_Sophia._ He had been so happy just moments ago because she said she
loved him as they parted. Was she looking down now, seeing this pitiful
sight?

Fresh sobs forced their way into his throat, and he leaned against his
horse, covering his face with his arms.

_I have to get away from here quickly._

He forced himself to stop crying and took hold of the reins. The
Orvietans fell back as he led the horse up the street leading northward
to the Monaldeschi palace. He felt warmth on his neck and looked up to
see the sun through a break in the clouds.

Alain would never see the sun again.

_Whoever did this to you, Alain, I will not rest until I have killed him
with my own hands._

XXXIV

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 o