"If I had had all these jewels at the inn, I would have left you for that crowd to kill. How could you be so stupid as to involve us in a tavern quarrel?"
"I am no man's slave," Celino growled. "Not Manfred's, and surely not yours."
But I am a slave. That is what the very word Mameluke means, and I am proud to be a Mameluke.
"Do you think, Celino," Daoud said softly, "that you are a better man than I?"
"I think myself better than no man, and no man better than me."
Daoud looked away. Madman's talk.
Gazing up the river, he noticed a huge round shape bulking against the horizon, a fortress of some kind. There might be danger from that direction.
"Celino, you and Sophia and I are a little army in the land of our enemies. An army can have only one leader."
Celino nodded. "I know that. But you must understand that if I accept you as our leader, it is of my own free will. I am still my own master."
Daoud felt a strange mixture of admiration and uneasiness at this. He was painfully aware that among Mamelukes a warrior of Celino's age would be treated with great respect. Indeed, King Manfred clearly held Lorenzo in high esteem. His effort to save the old man had been noble in its way. But an impulse at the wrong time, even a noble impulse, could mean death for all of them.