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who rode in the midst of them was a deceptively simple personage, a slender man in good but unostentatious scale armor, mounted on a mare whose plainness of face was no doubt more than matched by the quality of her spirit.
    Mustafa did not need to see the banner to recognize one of the sultan’s brothers, the lord al-Adil, whom the Franks called Saphadin. He had shown himself often enough in the army of Islam, commanding strong forces in the sultan’s name. But Saladin had numerous kinsmen and a good number of generals. What he had much fewer of were men of magic—and this brother of his was a rioting fire of it. If he was here, then Saladin had something momentous in mind. Mustafa still did not think that it was a treaty of peace.
    The lord Saphadin paused on the edge of the camp. Either Richard had been waiting, or some signal passed that Mustafa was not aware of: he came out with a few of his lords and squires, and welcomed the sultan’s brother with open arms. Saphadin’s smile was wide and apparently sincere; he closed the embrace with no sign of reluctance.
    As Mustafa moved in closer, he caught another doing much the same. What the Lady Sioned was doing so far from the physicians’ tents, he did not know, but she was there in the crush of men, in her veil and surcoat. She was indistinguishable from any number of young pullani , the half-blood whelps of the nobles of Outremer, but Mustafa would always know her by the magic that was in her.
    Maybe that had called her out. Magic called to magic, and she seemed transfixed by the sight of the sultan’s brother. As his escort pitched a small camp of his own outside the Frankish camp, with a pavilion of saffron silk in the midst of it, Sioned edged closer and ever closer. The color of her magic waschanging, brightening; Mustafa almost could not keep his eyes on her.
    The council of king and prince was mortal enough on the face of it. Neither called out sorcerers, or even a priest or an imam to invoke the powers of heaven. Lord Humphrey served as interpreter—ably, Mustafa conceded; his Arabic was fluent and nearly without accent. With his fine dark features and his wide-set dark eyes, he could have been a man of Islam himself.
    He was quite beautiful, for a shaven Frank, but Sioned had no eyes for him at all. Mustafa doubted that she saw anyone in that place but the man who sat opposite Richard, drinking sherbet made with peaches and mountain snow, and making it clear soon and unambiguously that he had not come to sue for peace. “If you turn back toward Acre,” he said, “we will offer no resistance; we will even provide such aid as you need, to return to your ships and sail back to your own country.”
    Richard burst out laughing. Saphadin was neither startled nor visibly offended, which was well, for the king seemed unable to stop once he had begun. At length, wiping tears from his cheeks, he said, “My lord, you have a wicked sense of humor. What in God’s name makes you think we’re likely to turn back?”
    “The weather,” Saphadin said. “The road. The armies that infest it. The inevitable truth: that this is our land. Even if you win as far as Jerusalem, how will you hold it? As soon as you sail away again, we’ll take it back. You are this Crusade, King of the English. Without you, it has no one strong enough to lead it.”
    “There are a fair few lords of Outremer who might beg to differ,” Richard said with remarkable lack of temper. “You speak hard words, lord. But they say I’m a hard man. I’ve sworn oaths; I intend to keep them. I won’t stop until the Holy Sepulcher is back in Christian hands.”
    Saphadin rose. He was smiling, but very faintly. “And we will do everything in our power to stop you.”
    “You can try,” Richard said, as exquisitely polite as his mother could have been. “I’ll even give you peace—if you will go back to your own country. Do that, and swear never to wage war against us again, and I’ll honor my