YASHIM walked quickly away to the Pera quay on the Golden Horn and crossed by caïque to the Istanbul side. A jogging donkey cart blocked his progress as he walked back to his lodgings. The driver looked around and raised the handle of his whip in acknowledgment, but the alleys were too narrow to let him by, and Yashim was forced to drag his feet, smoldering with impatience. At last the cart turned into his own alley, and at that moment Yashim saw a man loitering, about halfway down. His outfit of scarlet and white indicated that he served as a page of the interior service of the palace. He was looking up the other way, and Yashim slipped back into the alley he’d come from.
He leaned against the wall and considered his position. The seraskier had given him ten days before the great review that would show the sultan at the head of an efficient, modern army that could match anything the empire’s enemies could put into the field against it. Four days had gone. It was already Sunday, and time seemed to be running out: there was the question of the upcoming murder, Palewski’s well-founded observation that he needed to get his hands on a good map, and the problem of the Russian attaché, Potemkin. But there was the strangling at the palace, too, and the valide’s lightly couched threat that he had better find her jewels if he ever wanted another French novel. Well, he did want another, but Yashim wasn’t naïve. Novels were the least of it. Favor. Protection. A powerful friend. He might need that any day.
He wasn’t ungrateful, either. The palace had discovered—and then allowed him to exercise—his particular talents, the same way that for hundreds of years the palace had selected and trained its functionaries to exploit their natural gifts.
And when the palace turned to him for help, it was his duty to oblige.
But that put him in a difficult position. He was engaged by the seraskier: the seraskier had called him in first.
A killing in the harem was bad. But what he was dealing with outside looked worse.
For the fourth cadet, time was running out.
He took a deep breath, pulled back his shoulders, and walked around the corner into his street.