aoud answered his summons. His blue
eye glittered out of deep shadows cast on his face by a small oil lamp
that hung in the center of the tent. With his own hand Baibars served
Daoud kaviyeh from a pot on a brazier, and the two men sat side by side,
turned toward each other.

"Again he refused me," Baibars said. "I have given him every chance,
Daoud."

Baibars's face was calm, but Daoud knew that the fury of a Tartar was
boiling within him.

A reddish haze obscured the tent for Daoud as he fought back his own
rage at the injustice to Baibars.

"He thinks I want to be governor of Aleppo merely out of ambition,"
Baibars said.

"The sultan is a fool," said Daoud.

The single sighted eye transfixed him. "No, not a fool. He played the
game of power well enough when he made himself sultan. No one could
blame him for the murders of Ai Beg and Spray of Pearls. He restored
order to El Kahira. His mistake now is in not trusting me. And that is
an understandable mistake." Baibars stretched his thin lips in a sudden
grin.

"Understandable how?" Daoud experienced that unsettling sense he often
had that the one-eyed emir was always two or three jumps ahead of him.

"It comes of too much cleverness," said Baibars. "He does not believe me
when I say I want to be governor of Aleppo because it is the first city
Hulagu Khan will attack. He suspects me of a hidden motive. He thinks
that if he gives me Aleppo I will break with El Kahira and claim all of
Syria for my own, because that is what _he_ would do. But Hulagu Khan,
seeking vengeance for the Well of Goliath, is coming from Persia with
all his power. May God send to the eternal fire a commander wicked
enough to divide the kingdom at such a time."

The kaviyeh Daoud held had cooled. He drained the glazed earthenware cup
and put it down beside him.

"The sultan himself divides the kingdom," said Daoud, "by dishonoring
you."

"It is more than dishonor. It is war. If he thinks me too dangerous to
be ruler of Aleppo, it means that he thinks me too dangerous to live."

Daoud felt as if his heart had dropped into the cold, black bottom of a
well. If Qutuz destroyed Baibars, he would destroy Islam and El Kahira
and all of them. Daoud's whole world.

"What will you do?" said Daoud.

"I do not know what I will do," said Baibars, fixing his one eye on
Daoud. "But you know that if he kills me, he will kill all close to me.
What will _you_ do?"

Daoud felt the edge of the head