The Crown of Sargon is an object of no small power, first spoken of by a faceless ghost who set its resting place "below the Maiden Tower." The same ghost let fall that certain cats sought the crown, a sign of its weight in their affairs; and its very name binds it to Sargon, and so to the ancient royalty of Mesopotamia.
In talk at the Spectral Hippodrome a Blue rider confirmed the crown's whereabouts to Sidra al-Najjar. He owned to a wish for the death of Emperor Justinian, and held that once Justinian was dead there was no further need to know where the crown lay; his abrupt quitting of the races upon this revelation hints at the crown's power to turn the course of events about the ghost and the quest alike.
The party at length recovered the Crown of Sargon from the summit of the Maiden Tower: a heavy golden band worked with a crude serpent motif, resting upon a crowned skeleton at the peak of a cloud-wreathed ziggurat and guarded by a black dragon. It is strongly magical, granting its attuned bearer the authority to command creatures and to read minds, and to sense and command hidden doors — yet attunement courts dangerous rebounds. When Sidra al-Najjar first set it upon her brow, it cost her thirteen hours of memory and then wrenched her djinn from her altogether. She used it thereafter to bid the guardian dragon flee, to open the tower's exit, and to read the thoughts of Aziz Sefa Bey's ambushers upon the road to Mira.