Think how it might feel if your eyelids were to be cemented together with it. Not painful. Well, not very. But the damage would, I fear, be considerable. Irreparable, in fact. Permanent deafness and blindness. And were I to apply some to your nostrils and mouth, sealing them shut with just a tiny hole left between the lips to breathe through — can you see how disagreeable an experience that might be? To be almost incapable of breathing? To feel slow suffocation, and the panic that comes with that? The awful, dizzying sensation of slow death? And I can slit your lips apart with this'' — he held up a scalpel, the type with a replaceable blade; like the glue, something an artist or modeller might use — ''to let the air in, and then reseal them as I please. Slit, reseal. Slit, reseal. After a while it would get messy but I suspect I will have made my point by then. Unlike your subordinates over there, you, Lieutenant Westwynter, have an imagination. For them, crude methods sufficed. For you, the ability to foresee the results of torture may be just as effective as torture itself. Am I not right?''

David tried a last desperate ploy, the only arrow he had left in his quiver. ''Nephthys, Mistress of the House and Castle, Daughter of Earth and Sky, Mother of the Dead, may be married to Set but she is closer to Isis and Osiris than she is to him. We all know that. She helped Isis embalm Osiris's body after her husband slew him. She bore Osiris's child!''

''Indeed,'' said Maradi, smiling, ''and you could likewise remind me that there have long been political and economic ties between her domain and that of her older brother and sister.'' His face hardened. ''But it is all history. Now is now. We are at war. You and I are enemies. This is the only truth that matters. You cannot win me over by trying to appeal to a sense of commonality that I do not feel. I am not the sort to give much thought to the past — not when I have more pressing concerns in the present. So, one very final time, will you help me willingly, or must I summon Yusuf and Amal back in here to hold you down?''