It is Spring 1496. For nearly thirteen years Sultan's Kul Hasan, using the name "Hosé", has followed Sultan Bayezit's renegade brother, Prince Cem, in France and Italy. When the Prince's death finally brings that dangerous mission to an end, Hasan hopes to continue his service to the Sultan under his own name, back in the Dar al-Islam. However, although Hasan has been allowed to marry, the Sultan needs his particular skills and experience as much as ever and each new mission must take Hasan away from his wife and son. It is, curiously, on the island of Midlini that he meets again someone from his western boyhood. Even more curious is why Aegean pirates should go to such extraordinary lengths to take captive a minor member of the Urbino da Montefeltro family. Hasan's new challenges, straddling opposite ends of the Middle Sea as Urbino straddles its two hills, involve both familiar and new characters, the historical at least as colourful as the fictional.