Murad is a hard-handed captain of Constantinople, a soldier by trade with a following of warriors at his back, whose name is spoken in certain quarters as that of the strong leader the times are held to want. He came up through the military, and he carries out of it a settled and unconcealed enmity toward the working of magic and toward the non-human — a creed that sets him squarely against the pluralist currents stirring beneath the city, and against those who would broaden the Empire's defence to admit the fuller variety of humankind.
His name reached the company by way of Hano 'the Widow', the bounty-broker, who esteems him above the reigning house: she reckons the Padishah acceptable but too much a man of his own head, wanting the decisiveness of a man of action, and finds in Murad the harder metal she prefers. What Hano's regard for him portends — whether he is a rival raised up in the mind of a discontented broker, or a gathering power in his own right — the company has yet to learn; but a captain with warriors, a grievance against magic, and a patron among the underworld's chief figures is not a man they can afford to leave unwatched.