"How can you stand the cold?" Sophia said.
Daoud shrugged. "I have to." He did not want to talk now. He wanted to empty his mind for prayer. He tied the drawstring of his braies. Then he pulled on red silk trousers, flaring below the knee and tight at the ankles, and drew a cotton shirt over his head.
He went to the balcony again to check his directions. There was Venus. That was east, then. He took a small rolled-up carpet out of his traveling chest and laid it over the rug on the bedroom floor. He oriented the prayer carpet toward the southeast and stood at the end of it.
He began the salat, bringing his hands up to the sides of his head and saying, "Allahu akbar, God is great."
He repeated his prayers, the bowing, the kneeling, the prostrations, with great care and full attention. With his forehead pressed to the rug, he submitted himself and this day utterly to the will of God.
Finished, he looked over at Sophia. She was still sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him silently. He looked long at her, drinking her in. It weighed heavily on his heart that he had to leave her, and even more heavily that she would be terribly frightened for him until he came back.
As he feared for her.
Compassionate God, Cherisher of Worlds, protect her.
He began to dress for battle.
Husain had spread out his armor and weapons on top of his traveling chest. Daoud's breastplate was made of many rectangular pieces of steel laced together with leather thongs and overlapping each other. Two larger plates, side by side, were attached over his heart, inlaid with the spiraling gold design that marked him a member of the halkha, the sultan's personal guard. Worked into the design were verses from the Koran. On the left plate, "He succeeds who purifies the soul," and on the right, "And he fails who corrupts it." The breastplate was divided at the sides, where it could be strapped together. Baibars himself, after Daoud returned to Manfred, had arranged for a bribed Genoese sea captain to smuggle it to him. Daoud was proud of it, and the men of the Sons of the Falcon would be proud to see their leader wearing it.