same mystic verses that had been puzzling him all week.
They had been pinned to the peeling bark. This was how the Greeks advertised their dead, Yashim thought, with a piece of paper nailed to a post or tree. He had pulled down the paper and studied it again.
Unknowing
And knowing nothing of unknowing,
They sleep.
A fire in the night, Yashim thought. A call to arms. But what did this mean?
Knowing,
And knowing unknowing,
The silent few become one with the Core.
He folded the paper and tucked it into his belt.
[ 109 ]
The sultan kept them waiting for an hour, and when he met them it was not in the private apartments, as Yashim had expected, but in the throne room, a room that Yashim had seen only once fifteen years before.
He had not seen the sultan, either, for several years. Mahmut’s beard, which had been jet black, was red with henna, and the keen dark eyes had turned watery, sunk beneath folds of fat. His mouth seemed to have drooped into a pout of permanent disappointment as if, having tasted everything that money could buy in the world, he had found it all to be sour. He waved them in with a chubby hand, larded with rings, but made no effort to rise from the throne.
The room itself was as Yashim remembered it, a jewel box of the coolest blues, tiled from the floor to the apex of the dome in exquisite Iznikware, a frozen dream of a garden that twined and dripped and hung festooned around the walls.
Yashim and the seraskier entered stooping at the waist, and after they had advanced five paces they prostrated themselves on the ground.
“Get up, get up,” snapped the sultan testily. “About time,” he added, pointing at Yashim.
The seraskier frowned. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he began. “A situation has arisen in the city which we believe— Yashim effendi, and myself—to be of the gravest potential consequence to the well-being and security of the people.”
“What are you talking about? Yashim?”
Yashim bowed, and started to explain. He spoke of the Edict, and the murder of the cadets. He described a prophecy uttered centuries ago by the founder of the Karagozi order of dervishes—and caught the sultan’s warning frown.
“Be careful, lala. Be very careful of the words you choose. There are some things one cannot speak about.”
Yashim eyed him levelly. “Then I don’t think it will be necessary, sultan.”
There was a silence.
“No,” Mahmut replied. “I have understood. Both of you, approach the throne. We don’t want to shout.”
Yashim hesitated. The sultan’s words had reminded him of the last lines in the verse:
“What do you say, seraskier?”
“There may be upwards of fifty thousand men preparing to take to the streets.”
