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prisoners at Acre. These two were poor recompense, but they were a beginning.
    When he could trust his knees not to buckle, he rose. His face was turned toward the camp. If he was caught, he would die as the Franks had. He cared—a great deal. But he could not seem to do anything about it.
    Curiosity was his besetting fault, and would be the death of him—but not tonight. He walked calmly, without stealth, among the lines and curves of tents.
    There was no wine in this camp, unless it was very well concealed, and no carousing. The men slept in comfort, well fed and well supplied with water. Those who were awake were praying in a murmur of holy words.
    The sultan was awake, and with him the fire of magic that was his brother. They held a late council with a handful of emirs who had come in to complete the army. The flap of the tent was up, the only wall the curtain of gauze that kept out the night insects. Lamplight glowed like a pearl behind it.
    Mustafa crept so close that he lay against the tent’s wall, deep in shadow but almost within reach of the light. The sultan’s guards watched the front, where the light was, but never thought to circle round into the dark.
    The gathering was nearly finished. The cups of sherbet were empty, the emirs shifting, clearing their throats, hinting at dismissal. The sultan took pity on their weakness: he said, “Go, sleep. It will be an early dawn, and God willing, a victorious day.”
    They took their leave with barely concealed relief, but the lord Saphadin lingered in the glow of the lamplight. “This isn’t Hattin,” he said. “There’s no dithering fool leading the Franks now. The Lionheart is a general, and he’ll be ready for whatever we can fling at him.”
    “Thirty thousand of us?” The sultan sighed and stretched, wincing as his bones creaked. He was not a young man; he hadlived a life of war. He was wise with his years, but tired, too. “We’ll take him in Arsuf, and put an end to his Crusade.”
    “I do hope so,” said Saphadin.
    The sultan shot him a glance. “What is it? Have you had a foreseeing?”
    Saphadin did not answer directly. “You’re well guarded as always. I’ll set wards when I go. By your leave, of course.”
    His brother frowned. “Is it that one again?”
    “Not tonight,” said Saphadin.
    That was all the sultan was going to get: Mustafa could see that he knew it. He was not happy, but he yielded to the inevitable. “Don’t forget to protect yourself while you protect me,” he said.
    Saphadin bowed, but promised nothing. Saladin sighed with a touch of temper, and let him go.
     
    Mustafa should have left while the sultan and his brother were speaking. There would have been time to slip away, to melt into the dark. But he was too greedy to hear it all. The lord Saphadin came out of the light, murmuring words that raised the circle of protection about the sultan’s tent. Mustafa was caught before he could move, held in bonds that would not yield.
    He would die. The Franks had been victims of the sultan’s revenge, but a deserter who had thrown himself at the Lionheart’s feet . . . his death would not be either easy or slow.
    He did his best to still his hammering heart, and gave himself up to his God. Skeins of prayer drifted through his head: bits of the Koran, scraps of the daily devotions, fragments from his childhood in one of the lesser Berber dialects. The memory of the words comforted him, spoken in his mother’s soft voice, with the lilt that was all her own.
    She was long gone, cut to pieces in a raid, and the rest of his family with her. The pain was old, like the scars of battle and then of slavery. He was whole now, as whole as he could be; though that would not last much longer.
    The lord Saphadin stood over him, looking down at him with eyes that saw clearly in the dark. To Mustafa’s sight he was a shape of shadow limned in a faint silver shimmer, as if he had bathed in moonlight. Mustafa was not afraid. He was