Hamit the Quartz of Damascus is reckoned the foremost assassin in the service of Kavalan of Egypt — a master of potions and a gunman without rival, who goes abroad hung about with pistols and revolvers, hand-crossbows and tüfeqs (the long Turkish musket). At his side rides an enchanted scimitar, Thorn of the Dune, barbed along its length. So swift is he of hand that he seems warded as though by a mage's craft, and he is an uncommonly hard man to bring down; few can match him at tumbling, at the picking of pockets, or at going unseen. Nor does he ever want for draughts — a belt of potions against every occasion, from invisibility and speed to flight, fire-breath, and a hill-giant's strength.
He laid a plan to murder Vizier-i Aezam at midnight, and so to wreck the peace talks between the Ottoman and the Egyptian. In the assault upon Yedikule Fortress he and his crew came on by night, satisfied themselves that the walls without lay quiet, and entered by the main gate; there Hamit fell to close work alongside his men — Ziya and Hamza among them — and pressed toward the Royal Cell to reach the Vizier, who was in truth a decoy set for him. Taken in the end, he had his memory of ever meeting the agents of the Sublime Porte wiped clean by Bergüzar's memory-scroll.
More lately an unnamed operative, sent by Kavalan Pasha, was charged to mark out Hamit's disposition, for the agents of the Sublime Porte wished the assassin taken in the very act. That agent, a man known by his moustache, met Jean-Zera Mongé within The Pearl to sketch a decoy plot — the leaking of a threat against Mustafa Pasha at Topkapi Palace, the business to be done before Kavalan of Egypt's audience two days hence. Afterward the company put a Memory-Wipe Scroll to Hamit and struck the conversation from his recollection. At a diplomatic meeting he met his end at Kavalan's own hand, for Kavalan, suspecting the man's memory had been tampered with, chose to put his questions to him through death rather than in life.