sultans by their Kislar Aghas?
But why did he take the valide’s jewels? Perhaps, in some crazy way, he had explained it himself: in his narrow, cunning, superstitious old mind he had come to associate the jewels with power, and stole them as a talisman, a juju that would see him through the greatest crisis of his career.
The slave-girls had crept out already. Yashim followed them, making his way down the steps and through the guard room to the corridor.
He paused with his hand on the handle of the archive door. What should he tell the young man?
He pressed the door and it opened. Ibou was standing just inside, holding a lamp.
“What happened? I heard shouts.”
He held up the lamp higher, to cast a light behind Yashim, into the corridor.
“What’s the matter?” Yashim asked.
Ibou peered over his shoulder. He seemed to hesitate.
“Are you alone? Oh. I…I thought I heard someone.” He put up his arm and fanned his face with his hand. “Whooh, hot.”
Yashim smiled.
“It will be soon,” he said, “if we don’t get the fires put out.”
“That’s true,” Ibou said, with a weak smile.
Yashim put a hand against the door jamb and rested his weight against it, staring at the floor. He thought of Ibou working on all alone while the eunuchs bayed for their sultan in the valide’s court. He thought of the little back door he’d just come through so conveniently, and of the knot of men he’d seen beneath the Janissary Tree outside. The timing was tight, wasn’t it? The uprising in the city, and the persuasion of the sultan. The conspirators would need some way to communicate—to carry news of the sultan’s mystical apotheosis to the rebels outside.
A go-between. Someone who could bring word from the closed world of the harem to the men on the outside who threatened the city.
He felt a great weight in his throat.
“What fires, Ibou?” he asked quietly.
Yashim didn’t want to see Ibou’s face. He didn’t want to learn that he was right, that Ibou was the hinge on which the whole plot turned. But he knew from Ibou’s stuttering effort to reply. From the simple fact that no archivist, corralled within the high walls of his archives room, could have seen or heard the fires that Yashim had seen lighted only moments before he entered the half-deserted palace.
Ibou had already known what would happen.
Reluctantly his eyes travelled upwards to the young man’s face.
“It didn’t work, Ibou. The chief eunuch is dead. You needn’t expect anyone else.”
He looked past the archivist down the darkened stacks towards the door. The lamp ahead twinkled and glistened. Yashim squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The light burned clear.
Ibou turned and carefully set the lamp down on the table. He kept his fingers on the base, as though it were an offering, as though he were praying, Yashim thought. Ibou stared into the little ring of flame, and something in the sadness of his expression reminded Yashim of the man whose corpse lay neglected in the rain-swept courtyard outside. Years ago, the Kislar Agha must have been a man like Ibou. Soft and slender. Charming. Time and experience had made him gross: but once he had been lovely too.
“It isn’t over, Ibou,” he said slowly. “You have to tell them. Stop what’s happening. The Hour isn’t come.”
Ibou was breathing rapidly. His nostrils flared.
Very gently he took his fingers from the lamp. Then he put up a hand and pulled at his earlobe.
Yashim’s eyes widened.
“Darfur?” He said.
