"She need only be a serving girl at Tilia's."
"No doubt Tilia would find her too precious a commodity not to be sold. There are old men who would give that woman her own weight in gold to get their hands on an intact virgin child. And these high churchmen can afford it."
Daoud remembered the rough hands of the first Turks who captured him and shuddered inside himself. "She does not have to lie with men unless she chooses that life."
"Do you really think you and Tilia would be giving her a choice?" said Sophia angrily.
Again Daoud's feelings struggled against each other. He liked the way she spoke up fiercely for the child. Yet it angered him that she was making it harder for him to deal with the painful problem of Rachel.
"How much choice is anyone in this world given?" he demanded.
"Are you not here by choice, David?"
"I am the slave of my sultan," he said. "That is what the word Mameluke means—slave. He sent me here. But I am also here by choice."
"To save Islam from the Tartars." She reached her fingertips into the water and dabbed the droplets on her forehead.
He caught the note of skepticism in her voice. "Yes. Do you not believe that?"