The captured Fatimid court knelt in chains before Salahuddin's makeshift throne, their silk robes torn and stained with dust. Caliph Al-Adid, barely sixteen, his soft cheeks still untouched by a beard, trembled between two of his viziers. The boy's eyes darted between the conquerors, fingers clutching at the hem of his oversized robe.
Salahuddin rose from his seat, his gaze sweeping across the assembled war council. Flickering torchlight carved deep shadows into the faces of his commanders—hard men who had followed him through blood and sand.
"The viziers will face justice at dawn," Salahuddin declared, his voice echoing through the marble hall. "Their crimes are written in the suffering of this land. Let the people see their end."
A murmur of approval rippled through the commanders. The Fatimid viziers had bled Egypt dry—taxing peasants into starvation while their palaces overflowed with gold. Their deaths would be a celebration.
Then came the harder question.
"And the boy?" growled General Barsbay, his scarred hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Silence fell over the council.
Salahuddin exhaled slowly. "He is a child who never held real power. There is no honor in killing children."
Barsbay slammed his fist onto the table. "Honor? This is war! That 'child' is the symbol of Fatimid rule. Leave him alive, and every rebel in Egypt will rally to him!"
Other commanders joined the argument, voices rising like a storm. Some cited historical precedents—kings who had spared rivals only to face rebellion years later. Others warned of assassins slipping poison into Salahuddin's cup in the boy's name.
Taimur waited until the tempest subsided before speaking.
"There is another way."
All eyes turned to him.
Two hours before dawn, the Muezzin's Daughter slipped into the chamber where Al-Adid was kept under guard. The boy flinched when she entered, expecting violence. Instead, she placed a tray of honeyed dates and spiced milk before him.
"Eat," she said. "It's not poisoned."
(It really wasn't. The sleeping drug was in the rosewater she offered afterward.)
As the boy slept, the Sand Foxes worked swiftly.
In the palace's deepest cellar, the Leper prepared the centerpiece of Taimur's plan—a corpse stolen from the battlefield, its face battered beyond recognition. They dressed it in the caliph's robes, even staining the fabric with pig's blood to mimic mortal wounds.
"The resemblance is… approximate," the Scholar's Disgrace admitted, adjusting the corpse's wig.
Taimur activated his System Scan, the biometric overlay confirming the deception. "Close enough for a mob."
Meanwhile, the real Al-Adid was bundled into a merchant's wagon, his mouth gagged, his limbs bound in soft linen to prevent bruising. The Merchant himself oversaw the operation, his network of traders ensuring the boy would board a Genoese ship bound for Al-Andalus by morning.
Cairo awoke to the tolling of funeral bells.
The 'caliph's corpse' was paraded through the streets atop a broken shield, his face covered by a bloodstained shroud. The Muezzin's Daughter moved through the crowd, whispering the official story—how the young ruler had died fighting to his last breath, a martyr for his fallen dynasty.
Some wept. Most cheered.
From a hidden alcove, Salahuddin watched the spectacle with grim satisfaction. "And the real boy?"
"Already at the docks," Taimur confirmed. "The ship's captain believes he's escorting a mad noble's bastard to Spain."
The sun stood high overhead as the people of Cairo gathered in the great square before the ruined palace. The air hung heavy with the scent of roasting meat from nearby vendors and the metallic tang of freshly sharpened blades. A wooden platform had been erected overnight, its planks still sticky with resin. Upon it stood seven figures in soiled white robes, their hands bound behind their backs with rough hemp—the last viziers of the Fatimid Caliphate.
Salahuddin sat atop a black stallion at the edge of the square, his face unreadable beneath the shadow of his turban. Beside him, Taimur observed the crowd through the System's biometric scan, watching pulses spike in a tide of anticipation and long-nursed rage.
The Muezzin's Daughter stepped onto the platform, small but commanding. The crowd hushed as her voice rang clear.
"People of Egypt! You know these men by the scars they left upon your lives. Today, you shall know their crimes in full."
One by one, the viziers were dragged forward.
First came Shawar's successor—the fat eunuch who had taxed Nile fishermen into starvation. The Muezzin's Daughter unrolled a scroll, recounting how he'd demanded half their catch as "royal tribute," then sold it back at ten times the price. The crowd erupted. Rotten fruit rained down, splattering across his tear-streaked face.
Next was the master of the granaries, who had hoarded wheat during the great famine. The System showed his heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird as the Daughter described how he'd let children starve while his storerooms overflowed with molding grain. A woman in the front row screamed—she'd buried three sons that winter.
Then the treasurer, exposed by his own books, which proved he had sold military secrets to Crusaders. The spymaster who'd strangled dissenters in their baths. The tax collector who'd taken peasant girls as "payment." Each accusation drew louder roars from the crowd until even the stones of Cairo seemed to shake with fury.
No clean beheadings awaited these men.
Salahuddin had decreed they would die as they had lived—by the methods they'd used on others.
The granary master choked on a dry loaf shoved down his throat until his face turned purple. The tax collector screamed as red-hot coins were pressed to his skin—one for every virgin he had claimed. The spymaster died with a silk garrote around his neck—the same kind used on a dozen murdered scholars.
Only when the last vizier's twitching body was dragged away did Salahuddin ride forward. The crowd parted like the Red Sea.
"Justice is done," he declared. "Now begins the reckoning."
The people roared in approval. Taimur watched the System's loyalty metrics spike across Cairo. The city had been cleansed in blood—and would remember who delivered it.
Three months later, a letter arrived in Cairo—unsigned, written in clumsy Arabic:
The orange trees here bloom year-round. The groundskeeper says I may tend the herb garden if I promise not to prick myself on the rosemary. No one speaks of Egypt. No one cares.
Taimur burned the parchment after reading it. Some ghosts were better left buried.
Taimur entered the dimly lit chamber beneath Cairo's palace to find the Falcon slumped in her chains, breathing raggedly. The Muezzin's Daughter stood over her, an empty truth serum vial rolling between her fingers. Her young face was unreadable as she turned to Taimur.
"She's not what we thought," the child said simply.
The Falcon's real name was Amina. Vizier Shawar's bastard daughter.
The same Shawar whose throat Salahuddin had slit upon entering Cairo. He had sired Amina during his early years as a provincial governor. Her mother—a Nubian concubine gifted by Sudanese traders—was cast aside once Shawar clawed his way to power.
"Mother told me never to reveal my blood," Amina rasped, chains clinking as she shifted. "But when Shawar returned to Cairo as vizier... I thought, if I made myself indispensable..." She laughed bitterly. "Instead, he used my network while pretending not to know me."
At dawn, Taimur brought her before Salahuddin—her wrists unbound.
"A spy who built her network from nothing," he said, tossing Shawar's severed head at her feet. "Trained by the man who denied her. I'd be a fool not to use that."
Salahuddin's scimitar hovered at her throat. "And if she betrays us?"
The Muezzin's Daughter piped up from behind, idly cleaning her nails with a dagger. "Then I'll skin her alive. Slowly."
The stench of burnt parchment still clung to the palace archives when Amina led them to the hidden vault.
"Here," she said, pressing her palm to an unremarkable section of wall in the treasury's basement. With a click, a stone block slid back, revealing a dark passage. The Falcon's lips curled in bitter satisfaction. "Shawar always thought I didn't know about this."
Taimur's torchlight swept across the vault's interior—stacks of gold dinars taller than a man, chests overflowing with unminted silver, and most striking of all: row upon row of pristine Milanese breastplates. Their polished surfaces gleamed like a steel forest in the flickering light.
The torchlight reflected off the curved metal, catching the hunger in Salahuddin's eyes. Enough steel to forge another legion of Asad al-Harb. Another storm to break upon the Crusaders.
Taimur stepped forward, brushing his fingers over a cuirass. The metal was cold, untouched by battle, yet thrumming with potential. The System's overlay blinked to life, scanning the cache.
[Inventory Detected: 2,340 Milanese Breastplates]
[Quality: Superior Craftsmanship]
[Compatibility: 98% Match to Current Heavy Cavalry Specifications]
Amina watched him, arms crossed. "Shawar stockpiled these for years. He planned to bribe the Crusaders into backing him—against you."
Salahuddin's knuckles whitened around his scimitar. "And instead, they will shatter them."
The Muezzin's Daughter, perched atop a chest of silver like a crow on a carcass, tilted her head. "What do we do with the rest?"
Gold. Jewels. Silks fine enough to blind a sultan. Enough wealth to buy half the Levant.
Taimur turned to Salahuddin. "We let Cairo see it."
By noon, the treasures had been dragged into the sunlight and piled high in the city square. The people of Cairo gathered, murmurs rising to a roar as chests were cracked open and the stolen wealth of Egypt spilled forth.
Salahuddin stood before them, a single dinar held between his fingers. "This coin was pressed from the sweat of your backs. These silks were woven by your children's hunger." He cast the gold into the crowd. "Take what is yours."
The square erupted.
Peasants who had never held a dirham now clutched fistfuls of coins. Widows draped themselves in fabrics worth a decade's wages. The Asad al-Harb stood guard—not to suppress, but to ensure no blood was spilled. This was no riot. This was reckoning.
And in the shadows, the Sand Foxes moved.
The Merchant quietly secured the most valuable artifacts for Salahuddin's war chest. The Leper slipped poison into the pockets of three Fatimid loyalists who reached too greedily. The Muezzin's Daughter whispered to imams, seeding the legend that would echo through minarets and streets:
Salahuddin Al-Muʿīd—Salahuddin, the Restorer.
Taimur watched the System's loyalty metrics climb.
[Cairo Stability: 89%]
[Public Approval: 94%]
[Objective Achieved: Raise Salahuddin's Public Approval Rate]
[+500 Merit Points]
[Total Merit Points: 15,300 / 100,000]
A hand gripped his arm.
Amina. Her face unreadable.
"You're not celebrating."
He glanced at her. "Are you?"
Her lips thinned. "I've seen how this ends. Gold today. Famine tomorrow."
Taimur activated his scan. Her biometrics flickered: anger, yes—but beneath it, something sharper. Fear.
"You're wrong," he said. "This isn't an ending. It's bait."