"Yes, Maestro." Daoud went back to the throne and sat down. He slipped the locket's chain over his head and dropped the silver disk back inside his tunic. Sordello slumped in his kneeling posture like a figure of wax that had been placed too close to a fire. Daoud waited patiently, and in a few moments Sordello raised his head, his eyes bloodshot but alert. "Will you let me visit paradise again soon?" His memory had gone back to the moment before he drank the drug. "Not _very_ soon," said Daoud. "But serve me well, and it will happen again." He could not make Sordello wait a year, as the Hashishiyya usually did with their initiates. But it must be a wait of some months, or the experience would lose its magic. And in months his work in Orvieto might be done. _And then again, I might still be here ten years from now._ "Tell me what I have to do, Maestro." "Serve me faithfully, and from time to time, when it pleases me, you will visit paradise. Disobey me or betray me--we will know instantly if you do--and when you least expect it you will find yourself in hell. Not the one we created for you last night. The real one." "You don't need to threaten me," said Sordello with a flash of his old rebelliousness. "Just tell me what you want." "Simply go on doing what you have been doing. You will give the Count de Gobignon information about us--but from now on we will tell you what to tell him. And you will keep me informed about the young count. Hardly any work at all, you see." Sordello grunted. "I doubt it will be that easy. But as long as you offer a reward so great, I am your man." _My slave_, thought Daoud, hoping that his pity for this creature did not show in his face. But he must remember that there were hidden places in this man's soul. And he had never before tried to enslave a man as the Hashishiyya did it. He could not be sure that he had succeeded fully, and so he had made a creature potentially as dangerous to himself as to anyone else. The flesh on the back of his neck crawled. * * * * * She was sitting by the window, staring out at the spot on the street where the young man's body had lain. She heard the door open behind her. She turned, and there was David. Golden-haired, lean, tall, with those light-filled eyes. She forgot herself and felt a leap of love, and then her heart clenched like a fist with anger. _Wait, let him tell it before I judge him._ He closed the door slowly, a strange expression on his face. She looked from him to the image of the saint. Yes. The look around the eyes was the same. They had accepted pain and sorrow, did not struggle against it as ordinary people did, and they knew _something_. Except that David's eyes were not the bright blue of the saint's. David's eyes seemed to reflect whatever color was about him. How could it be that the icon she had painted could remind her of two such different men as Simon de Gobignon and David of Trebizond?