Throughout the Middle Ages crusading was justified by religious ideology, but the resulting military campaigns were fueled by concrete objectives: land, resources, power, reputation. Crusaders amassed possessions of all sorts, from castles to reliquaries. Campaigns required material funds and equipment, while conquests produced bureaucracies, taxation, economic exploitation, and commercial regulation. Wealth sustained the Crusades while material objects,...

Siblings Maria and Nico Borg are separated when Nico is kidnapped from their island home of Malta during a corsair's raid. Maria, rebuffed by the ancient Order of the Knights of St. John in her quest to rescue her brother, comes to despise the knights and their religious counterparts. Nico must decide where his loyalties lie--with the Christian West of the Ottoman East.