A/N: Special thank-you to Crimson Firebreeze for pointing out that Baldwin IV was Sibylla's brother, not her father! Sorry about that, guys.

It was spring again when I left for Damascus. In Europe, the Crusader reinforcements were mobilizing; in Tyre, intrigue brewed as the scattered nobles of the Kingdom of Jerusalem vied for power. But in Masyaf the mountainsides were sunny and calm and blooming with flowers, and up above the eagles soared against the cloudless skies, and on the morning I left a family of pigeons had taken up residence in a chink in the wall beneath my bedroom window; Masyaf had been my home for years and years, and I was a little sorry to be leaving the fortress behind.

But only a little.

I was a lot more sorry, however, when I met my escort.

—

This is Altair: tall and dark and dangerous, knives gleaming from his belt, a sash of red against his robes like a splash of blood; he was waiting for me at the stables, and his cool-eyed disdain when he looked me over indicated that he was not happy about it.

"Al Mualim has ordered me to escort you to Damascus," he informed me by way of introduction. "Let me warn you now: if you slow me down, I will carry you there in a sack."

I stared at him.

Altair tossed me the reins to my mount. "I hope you know how to ride," he said coolly, swinging onto his own horse. "Or else this will be an uncomfortable journey for the both of us."

"Of course I know—"

But he had already spurred his horse into a trot and was disappearing between the city gates.

I decided I wanted to strangle him.

—

I caught up with Altair a few minutes later, when we were out into the countryside proper and I no longer felt quite so strongly about murdering the man, and he cast me a narrow-eyed glance and said, "You dropped your veil."

"I took it off," I snapped back.

"Are you asking for trouble?" he demanded. "Put it back on."

It was a warm day and the roads were empty and I doubted anyone really cared, one way or the other, if there happened to be sunlight in my hair or not. But Altair seemed unimpressed with these points. "I did not ask to play escort to an empty-headed flirt," he said coldly. "Do as I say."

I looked away from him, out toward the horizon and the rising sun, and touched my heels to my mount. She burst forward into a spirited gallop. I smiled to myself and bent low across her neck.

It was two miles before I pulled my horse to a walk and let Altair catch up to me, and when he did he was furious and breathless and looked as though he was considering murder himself. But I didn't give him a chance to speak—or shout, or give orders, or whatever it was he was considering doing when he pulled his horse up alongside mine in a rage.

"Altair ibn La-Ahad," I said, and he looked a little startled that I knew his name. "You are a master assassin, black-and-silver on your sash, seventeen men dead by your hand since you learnt the Creed—but do not presume to tell me what to do. I take my orders from Al Mualim and no other."

His hands had tightened on his reins. "If you do that again—" he began, but I did not hear the rest of it because my horse broke into another gallop and we were dashing off across the dusty road. This time we went only one mile, though the mare tugged at the bit in protest when I pulled back on the reins.

"Don't try threatening me, either," I informed him when Altair caught up again. "I'll go to Damascus by myself if I have to."

I could practically hear his teeth grinding. Even if Altair hadn't been carrying a small armory's worth of weaponry on his back, I was slim and light and weighed considerably less; I could outrun him, if I had to, and he knew it.

And Al Mualim would have his head if he let me go to Damascus alone—doubtless he knew that too.

"You," Altair said through gritted teeth, "are the most infuriating woman I have ever met."

"Then clearly you've never met Rasha," I said wryly.

—

We stayed at village inns the first two nights, but on the third day we encountered an unexpected delay in the form of a contingent of Saladin's troops on patrol outside of An-Nabk. Altair had removed his assassin's sash, but upon closer inspection there was no hiding the fact that he was bristling with weaponry, something the soldiers were sure to find suspicious if they happened to lay eyes upon us.

So we hid behind a rock while the patrol passed. Altair sharpened his knives, and I leaned back against the shrubbery and tracked the position of the patrol by the plume of dust they sent up as they marched down the road. Altair's horse was nibbling on some leaves dangerously close to my ear.

"You have too many knives," I said idly.

"Only ten." His voice was cool. "And I wasn't expecting soldiers."

"Why not?" I demanded. "Guy de Lusignon has been chased away from Tyre twice now, and he is looking for a new base—he might very well head for Tripoli, and then cast about the nearby villages for resources to support his new efforts. Of course Saladin would want to protect his farmlands." The plume of dust was drawing closer. These soldiers were marching exceedingly slowly. "He probably has more men stationed in An-Nabk."

There was the clink of steel against steel as Altair rose to his feet. "We can't stay in the village, then," he said. "We'll go around."

It was the longest, most civil conversation we would have for the entirety of the trip. I still didn't like him

—

It was two more days before we reached Damascus. We rode down a rocky mountainside road, and suddenly spread before us was the city—walls and towers and minarets rising up as we approached, grand and imposing in the afternoon sunlight, and I was secretly pleased with myself that I did not stop to stare at the sight. Altair would only have snapped at me for slowing him down, and besides, it would draw attention to us from the steady trickle of people coming and going from the city gates.

The city gates. There were guards posted there, warily watching over the crowd. I glanced at Altair. "How are we getting in?" I asked.

"You'll see soon enough," he said shortly, which was not a satisfactory answer in the least. But I had no choice but to follow as he maneuvered his horse around a slow-moving wagon and turned off the main road; he was my escort, after all, and I supposed that he had done this sort of thing before.

We left our horses at a stable outside the walls. Altair slung our packs over his shoulder and went stalking off without a word. I had to hurry to keep up. If he had did not have knives strapped to his boots and a longsword swinging from his hip, he might have looked like a scholar in his flowing white robes, but surely the guards would stop us—

They didn't.

Now I stared. Altair reached back, seized my arm, and hauled me past the guards. Two of them glanced at me, bored, then away again, and then we were through the gates and into the city, a broad avenue lined with palm trees stretching out before us, people crowding everywhere, and I realized suddenly how much larger than Masyaf was Damascus. "Why didn't they stop you?" I demanded, trying vainly to wrest my arm away. "You certainly look like a threat—"

"This is Damascus, not some provincial farming village," Altair said. "One more man with a sword will not make much of a difference. Hurry up."

He was high-handed and disdainful and arrogant, and I would have stormed off on my own if I had the faintest idea where the Damascus bureau was. Unfortunately, I was lost.

I followed him, fuming.

—

All men desire something, Al Mualim had said. What did Altair want? Wealth, or glory, or an afterlife in Paradise—

No, nothing so lofty as that. Altair merely wished to be rid of me.

—

The rafik welcomed us with open arms when we came dropping in through the bureau roof—or at least, he welcomed me with open arms, because Altair merely shoved me at him and went stalking off into the back rooms. "Isra," the rafik said, smiling. "I have heard much about you from Al Mualim. I hope you have had a good journey?"

"Altair was insufferable," I said, and the rafik laughed.

"He can be arrogant, yes," he said. "But come, you are here now—have some dinner, rest a while, and in a few hours you will be off to your father's house and Altair will never trouble you again."

The sentiment was cheering enough to make me smile.

Later I would sneak through the Damascus streets under cover of night, a novice as my guide, and meet Omar ar-Rashida who was my father; in the morning I would acquaint myself with my new wardrobe, meet my new maid, and introduce myself to the world as a merchant's secluded daughter; in a week, I would marry Tamir and begin to spin out the web that would ensnare him for the Hashshashin. It would be a grand adventure.

But I should have learned something from my five days on the road with Altair. Adventures tended to be long, uncomfortable, and filled with people I didn't like.

A/N: So I found myself writing Rasha/Kaddar, and it didn't really belong here but I wanted to post it, so I've started 'Appendices,' which is a collection of side stories that don't belong in the main storyline but which I thought were interesting anyway. Check it out from my profile page. The Rasha/Kaddar is 'Appendix B: And Pearls Rained Down.'

Notes: The opening paragraph was to set up the timeframe. In late spring of 1189, reinforcements for the Third Crusade were coming in from Europe, so, uh, this chapter takes place in early spring, before they've arrived. The maneuvering in Tyre ties in to the troops encountered at An-Nabk, which I will explain below.

So one of the Crusader states was the County of Tripoli, in current day Lebanon, and the capitol was—you guessed it—Tripoli. It was technically a vassal of the Kingdom of Jerusalem at this point, which makes it technically possible that Guy de Lusignon would go there and demand sanctuary, though all of that is pure speculation on my part. As to why he would do that: well, King Guy didn't do too well at the Battle of Hattin, which was a crushing loss for the Crusaders and an epic win for Saladin, and Guy lost Jerusalem and a lot of the kingdom. He wanted someplace to launch a counterattack from, so tried to go to Tyre afterward, which was still Crusader-held, but Conrad of Montferrat (who had done most of the work of holding Tyre against Saladin) wouldn't let him in because technically Guy was only king-by-marriage. So Guy went and dragged his wife along, but Conrad still wouldn't let him in, probably because he was still upset about Guy screwing up so badly at Hattin. At this point, Guy pretty much threw up his hands and went, "Fine, be like that, I'll find a base somewhere else." Historically he went and laid siege to Acre, though again—pure speculation!—he could've gone to Tripoli, at which point he would have started looking around for food and such for his troops. And, well, An-Nabk is a village with lots and lots of arable land around it, and I'm pretty sure it was in the Emirate of Damascus (Saladin-controlled), and it was relatively close to Tripoli, so it would've made sense to have troops around for protection.

Oh, and Conrad of Montferrat is the son of the William of Montferrat that Altair kills. His dad even mentions him, in-game.