Bassam sits awake the first time he hears it, the quiet sound of an Englishman's footfall across the hall. He sits quietly because he's expecting it, or expecting the even quieter footfall of Safiyah.

She used to creep past his doorway at night when she was younger and it was never her feet that gave her away but the soft giggling. There would be a slightly stern admonishment from a voice just deeper and no more, with footfalls following that were just heavier and no more. Djaq and Safiyah had been young and hadn't known how to sleep a night all the way through, sneaking down to the bird sanctuary to sit by the fountains and chatter the night away while trying not to wake the birds.

It had been a good year for Bassam, never blessed with a family of his own, for all he never could forget why the twins were with him. They were with him because their own father, a physician by trade, was breaking apart like a cheap cabinet not unlike the one the Englishman had raised an eyebrow at before calmly taking out his tools.

Their mother had been a fine lady in every sense of the word that Bassam knew and a sister to a friend of his. She had had fire and flight and grace; her marriage to their father one of the few and thankfully simple things in their world. They met: with quiet ironies and careful jokes, with demure glances on the edge of desire and being of suitable standing, they married.

Bassam wanted to defend the turn of mind their father had gone through, his change from a mild-mannered and gentle man of learning and compassion to a physician who would rather be a weapon, but he could not. Her death had broken him and Bassam had asked the family's permission to take the twins on an extended holiday to his home in Acre. Bassam had warred within himself the day he had stormed into their father's study, finding him unkempt and bent over a table of documents. Voice throbbing with barely contained fury, Bassam had informed him that he was a pitiful excuse for a father. Safiyah the elder was dead, it was true, and Bassam truly grieved her loss as did many, but a decent man took solace in his children. Not his work, and certainly not to the extent of neglect. Not neglect that sends a servant, apologising profusely and phrasing more carefully than the steps of a most intricate ritual, to Bassam's door pleading for aid.

Bassam had informed Djaq the elder that he would be taking the twins. The man looked up with eyes that would haunt Bassam for years to come and his resolve shook. Djaq was a good man and a good father - just not now. He would bring them back when the man pulled himself together.

The twins were eight and already their childhood had ended. Bassam's house was larger than theirs and it scared them at first. Safiyah didn't know where she could go unveiled and where she could not, the ceiling higher than she'd ever seen. Djaq ran quietly and took months to learn that the clacking noise his weapons practice made did not upset Bassam. More than any other thing, they did not know how to sleep rooms apart. They had never shared a bed, like children of peasants, but they had shared a room since birth and without the quiet sound of the others' steady breathing they did not know how to fall asleep.

And so they had began to meet in the night, slipping from their rooms. Bassam had seen them do so, their still too-thin frames silhoutted against the candlelight beyond the parlour. Quietly, in the bird room, he'd near the doorway and listened to childish voices telling stories about a lost mother and a father he suspected might also be gone from them. And still quietly, he had spoken to his servants and instructed them not to catch them on their way. Slowly, over months, Safiyah took down her veil in the private courtyard and Djaq attacked the guard who found his training an entertainment with less inhibitions. The twins began to resemble healthy children again. Safiyah, veil in place, had entered his study with her hands tightly pressed together and asked if she could continue her education in languages and medicine. Bassam had requested of the Sultan a tutor and it had been granted. The Sultan had little idea why the children captivated his pigeon-keeper but had been brought to the villa by rumours of an expected but unsavoury nature.

Bassam, observing all customs and bowing, had led him to the doorway of the bird sanctuary where Safiyah spent much of her time. The Sultan had questioned him harshly: was it the boy? Was he waiting on the girl growing up? Bassam had instead pointed out Safiyah's natural skill with the birds, the same birds that shied away from unfamiliar hands and even occasionally those hands that they knew. The Sultan had blinked before nodding, slowly smiling at his gentle comment that even the eternal Bassam could not live forever, even if the Sultan himself demanded it.

It would be unusual, the Sultan had protested mildly.

Marry her to a man of suitable rank and pliability, Bassam had suggested. No one ever need know except your most loyal servants.

The Sultan became a regular visitor to the house and a regular observer of Safiyah and Djaq when his location allowed it. At first awed, the children gradually began to simply get on with their chores and lessons as months turned into years. Bassam, as he prayed, hoped that the fierce, ever-smiling lady their mother would be glad of them being tutored by the empire's finest.

Two and a half years, and their father arrived. On the first visit, he appraised their progress and deemed Bassam's house a good place for them to remain. On the second, he had discovered the history of the infidels. His embraces for his children were less warm and he spoke of them as though of experiments yet to yield gains. There was no third visit.

When Djaq turned fifteen the Sultan asked him to join his guard, an honourable position far from the front of any war that would prepare him for an eventual command. The Sultan began to speak more seriously of taking Safiyah into his palace, to introduce her to the men he had no doubt been looking at with an interest for her. Bassam asked him to delay, to allow her a few more months to adjust to Djaq's new status before another change in her life and to allow for her court manners to be suitably tested.

The Sultan assented, distracted by rumours of movement on his borders. Bassam began to sit in the parlour until the last of the day's candles had burned down low and Safiyah had sat up with him in the absence of Djaq, reading books sent by the Sultan and ones she had read many times before from Bassam's own library.

The day the news came, Safiyah and Bassam were in the bird sanctuary and the servant was covered in dust. The dust came from the fast turn Djaq, magnificent in his uniform, had forced the horse to make in the courtyard. Forces of habit made Safiyah raise her veil as she ran past the fountain. The twins stood two feet from another. Only one such as Bassam, who knew Safiyah and Djaq so well, would have seen the acute distress in the slight changes of tone and slight raise of her shoulders.

Djaq was leaving, further than the palace: going to their father. He was to bring him from the borders to the Sultan's palace, the physician who was discovering ever new ways to kill. Bassam again grieved for the gentle friend he had known, and wondered if he had been blessed to be without the kind of love that killed when it was lost.

He saw Safiyah's shoulders lift and her head tilt back, knew her chin to be exactly in the place it rose to at her most stubborn. He attempted to forbid her the voyage but failed before he spoke the words. He was master of his house and would not make a ruling that he knew she could not abide. Either she would disobey and he would be forced to act as his culture demanded of him, or he would watch her crumble before him slowly over the weeks of uncertainty. He knew all the arguments in favour; Djaq and the assigned guards could protect her, their father was a valuable war asset and it would take both of his children to convince him to leave that house. And he knew Safiyah, if necessary, could protect herself - Djaq would not allow her to be less able, in the same way as she insisted he know how to sew his own cuts without pain relief. More than any other practical reason, Bassam's weakness was her father's before the elder Safiyah's death; he never could deny her what her soul required.

The day he heard the impact of horseshoes on his cobbles again, he ran at an unseemly pace to the courtyard for one of his stature, position and age. He saw the messenger at the centre of the dust and stopped, retreating behind all the prestige his imperial patronage gave him, and demanded an explanation. Had they not been expected back the week before he would have given him water first. The messenger told him in as few gasps as he could: there had been an attack. There had been a battle. Djaq the elder's death he heard of as he heard the market traders' calls in the distance when not quite awake. The twins caused his ears to roar and his hand to smack the messenger in reflex. He regained his senses in the frozen courtyard seconds later, looking around at the petrified and pale staff struggling to meet his eyes. He shook his head and swallowed, numbly ordering water and a physician for the possibly concussed man.

In the coming days the servants avoided him and he any trace of reality. He tried to do his duties and take comfort in the birds that had been enough before there had been the twins but could not: they flew from him as if sensing his distress.

One of them was in slavery - the boy, taken across distant seas. Bassam hoped - hoped so fiercely it took his breath like a desert storm - but could not bring himself to believe. They were both such principled individuals. He'd once thought them identical but learned to know better: Safiyah was more intelligent, Djaq more headstrong. Safiyah was practical where Djaq would die for honour. They both had some of the other, but it came to the surface in different ratios. Djaq did not know how to survive at the expense of higher truths or decency. He thought it with a ragged, broken kind of frustrated affection. And he could not imagine Djaq allowing himself to die before seeing his sister safe. Still, he hoped.

Sitting by the fire a week later, he ran rough fingertips across the text Safiyah had been halfway through when she had left for the border.

He did not sleep but spent the night in prayer for the family whose life intertwined with his own, kneeling in the bird room where so often he had watched them sit. He was not a good Muslim and often did less than his religion required of him. He admitted freely to being a man of vices - good food and good company being among them. He liked to think he did the important things for the service of his country and Allah, not least among them taking care of the twins.

It would have been easier if he could have blamed himself for sending her but Djaq - rest his stubborn soul - would never have come otherwise. She knew that and served her country with the same fervour as her brother, her father and Bassam. And if he had stopped her, the Sultan's representative would have insisted.

Walking around his house, a strange and empty home in waiting again, he mourned them as men mourned familiar stars when they faded from view halfway across a sea. Their things - Djaq's old wooden swords with worn handles, Safiyah's books and physician's kit, those birds they had both loved - were everywhere in his home. He'd never wanted to be a father, Bassam had told himself over and over again on the return journey with the scrawny little eight-year-olds in tow. Children were messy. They complicated life and they were loud. And yet somehow he mourned as a father would.

The war continued and progressed to Acre, the city passing between the sides like a hollowed out trophy they knew not what to do with but insisted upon winning. Before the first occupation, Bassam ordered their possesions (he could think of them in no other way) packed and stored away.

Walking into his house when they regained the town again, he stood in the courtyard by the fountain as the birds flew back through the arches to the bird room. He would be covered in excrement and dust, he knew, but he stood in the middle of the flock without caring. He lifted his arm with his fingers spread wide and felt the mild breeze from the passing birds, hearing not the roar in his ears but a quiet, fluttering hush.

He'd heard men at the Sultan's court describe religious experiences day in, day out, and had usually called for another dish of the spiciest food the cook could manage at that point. It was one way to stay awake. Pinching the soft flesh at his wrist was another while they described raptures untold and divine revelations.

What he found in that flock was something tangible and it was faith. It was also a pigeon called Lardner that he had never hoped to see again, a favourite tiny bird of Safiyah's back when it was small enough to fit in the palm of a hand even as elegant as hers.

Like the breeze through his open palm, like the town given over to them again; the winds were changing. Bassam had ordered the books, the wooden swords, even the clothes and bowls unpacked. He was not so delusional as to believe the dead could rise but he found the reminders soothing and peace a hope not so far beyond sense.

It was the middle of night when he heard soft footfalls on his cobbles, having retired early to bed and leaving the candles burning so the servants could finish the unpacking. Footfalls and giggles, and still the thought in his barely awake mind was that the twins were awake again. He focused on the sound and somewhere, he registered that the voices were unfamiliar.

He had gone to the inner courtyard and heard the fountain. He had turned the corner and the fountain's gurgle had turned into a roar in his ears. It was Safiyah. Or Djaq. Or some strange combination of them both. Staring, moving, he realised it was Safiyah. With his heart hammering in his chest and a laugh in his throat he moved to embrace her, taking in the shortened hair and the pink scarf and the men of the West only dimly. Somewhere, he registered that she had raised her scarf by the fountain as she had always done - occasionally correcting herself, but never remembering not to bother.

Only later, when he had agreed to help her - he, after all, could never deny her what her soul required - would he struggle to piece the things together. The hair, the scarf, the English attire and her seemingly easy application of skills he'd known her to possess in theory. It spoke of a story he had to stop himself from demanding, more from worry and relief than a patriarchal duty. He was also very interested in the quiet, tall one who moved around her with an ease that made him bristle in a way that he hoped Djaq (all of the Djaqs) would appreciate.

But he knew her heart and knew it to be hers to give, settling for asking in the most oblique of ways if this was her choice. Her friends, eager to be moving on into the distance and into the battle, would likely never know the years and pain in that flippant question - or in Bassam letting her go. The pale one did, however, watching Bassam and Safiyah on the sands and waiting as if to take up guardianship where he left them and only this stilled the worries in his gut.

Waiting was as agonising as before, more so. They were a good, solid and decent bunch for Englishmen, that much he saw, but throwing Safiyah back to the enemy was still a stab deep somewhere in his ribs. She had chosen this as she had the right to, by way of surviving to do so, but that was small comfort.

He prayed, for her survival again and for Djaq's peace in paradise. He waited.

And she returned. The sound of horses on the stones of the courtyard were slow and heavy. They slipped from the horses without meeting each others' eyes. The shifty one approached Safiyah's horse, helping her down. Bassam's heart sped a little and he looked around the group hurriedly. Surely the pale one- but no. They had lost someone - the signs of costly victory were written upon them as clear as day - but it was not the one Safiyah cared for. Will Scarlet (he was not dead, therefore Bassam thought he should try to learn his name) walked in a few strides to the side of the shorter, other shifty one who claimed to be a man of peace.

Safiyah pulled up her scarf and inclined her head, a smile tugging at her lips but eyes downcast.

"Peace?"

She raised her eyes to his. "We will have peace."

"At what cost?" Bassam asked in a low voice and another language, before remembering that Robin (he was also not dead, and had kept his word it appeared) could understand it.

Safiyah raised her eyes to his, and they were bright.

Days later, he heard the Englishman's feet on the stone, making their way to the bird sanctuary. It was not how he had ever expected the missing twin to return - and his house seemed to have acquired another son he would say he did not want - but Bassam was glad of it, and glad to know Safiyah again had someone to ease her always troubled sleep.