Sayf al-Din Ghazi I

That is the province of the midwives and the women of the household.

And so he waits instead in the hall below, where a fire has been built up against the night air, and where his brother sits across from him with the particular stillness of a man who has learned through long practice to make patience look like ease.

That brother is Asad ad-Din Shirkuh, and even seated, even doing nothing more than waiting for news of a nephew or niece not yet born, he carries himself like a blade left resting against a wall: present, plain, and entirely capable of being picked up and put to use without a moment's warning.

He is younger than Ayyub, broader through the shoulder, missing an eye from some encounter in his past that he does not speak of at length, and he has the restless energy of a man who has spent more of his life on horseback than off it.

The two brothers do not much resemble each other in temperament.

Ayyub is the elder, the more measured, the one who reads a room before he speaks in it.

Shirkuh is the one who has never much cared what the room thought.

And so the judgment, when it comes, is swift and uncompromising.