the world._

It was wide and flowed fast, judging by the ripples, and looked deep.
Looking upriver, he saw that it followed a winding course leading toward
black bulks, lit with yellow lights here and there, that must be great
buildings. Rome.

They laid the old man's body down on a cracked marble platform beside
the river. Celino had long since pulled the dagger out of the old man's
flesh, and now he handed it to Daoud. The dagger was a well-balanced
throwing knife of good steel, stained with a film of dried blood. Daoud
knelt, washed it in the Tiber, and wiped it with the hem of his cloak.
He held it out to the boy.

"I do not want it." The boy's face was still wrapped in a blue scarf,
but Daoud could see tears glittering on his cheek.

"It is a good knife. You may have need of it now that you have no
father."

"It is the knife that killed him." The boy hesitated. "All right, give
it to me."

Daoud handed it to him, and the boy turned and hurled the knife out over
the river. It flew a short distance, and the splash threw off light like
a handful of pearls.

"Well," Daoud said, "no one had a better right to do that than you." He
smiled to himself. He could understand quite well the lad's feelings.

But there was something odd about the way the boy's arm had moved when
he threw the knife. Daoud recalled a phrase that he had heard in memory
while they were riding toward the river.

_You throw like a girl._

That had not been true of Nicetas, but it was true of this boy.

And his voice, though high, was not as light and clear as the voice of a
child. Moved by a sudden suspicion, Daoud reached out too quickly for
the boy to draw away and pulled loose the scarf.

He leaned closer for a good look. He heard Celino, standing behind him,
grunt with surprise. Revealed in the moonlight was, not a lad whose
voice had not yet changed, but a girl. Her eyelids were puffy from her
weeping, but the eyelashes were long and thick, her nose delicate, her
lips full. The eyes that looked back at him with a mixture of fear and
defiance were, in this light, black as obsidian. Her hair was coiled in
a thick braid at the back of her head, where the scarf had hidden it.

He did not have to ask the reason for the pretense. Traveling with only
an aged father to protect her, she was far safer as a boy.

Sophia pushed past Daoud and put her arms around the girl, who began to
cry again. "You poor child, are you all alone now? There,