The Janissary Tree

Janissary work. To think we used to get the Janissaries from the Beyazidiye Pound to do this for us.

A Janissary fire-brigade had been stationed close to the Beyazit Mosque, the first and perhaps, in its way, the greatest of the mighty mosques of the sultans: for even Sinan Pasha, the master architect whose sublime Suleymaniyye surpassed Aya Sofia, acknowledged that the Beyazit Mosque had shown the way. But it wasn’t the mosque which mattered: it was its position. For the Beyazit Mosque straddled the spine of the hill above the Grand Bazaar, one of the highest points in Stamboul.

A unique vantage point. So unique, in fact, that it was selected as the site of the tallest and perhaps the ugliest building in the empire: the Fire Tower which bore its name. The bag of bones had been discovered only yards away.

And there had been another Janissary watch, across the city, operated from the Galata Tower. The Galata Fire Tower. High over the drain which held the nauseating corpse of the second cadet.

And at the Janissaries’ old centre of operations, the old barracks now razed and replaced with the imperial stables, there’d been a tower which Yashim could still vaguely recall.

Palewski had suggested that there could be a pattern to explain the distribution of the bodies—so if each body had been placed in the vicinity of an old fire-station, a Janissary fire-watch, a tower…Yashim probed the idea for a moment.

Fire had always been the Janissaries’ special responsibility. It had become their weapon, too. People were roused from their beds by the firemen’s tocsin. Wake them.

Where, then, had the other fire-station been? There were to be four corpses. There had to be four fire-stations. Four towers.

Perhaps, Yashim thought fiercely, he might still be in time.

[ 45 ]

The Kislar Agha had the voice of a child, the body of a retired wrestler and weighed eighteen stone. No one could have guessed his age, and even he was not completely sure when he had crawled from his mother’s womb beneath the African sky. A few pounds of unwanted life. Another mouth to feed. His face was covered in dark wrinkles, but his hands were smooth and dark like the hands of a young woman.

It was a young woman he was dealing with now.

In one of those smooth hands he held a silver ring. In the other, the girl’s jaw.

The Kislar Agha dragged the girl’s head sideways.

“Look at this,” he hissed.

She closed her eyes. He squeezed his hand tighter.

“Why—did—you—take—the—ring?”

Anuk squeezed her eyelids shut, feeling the stabbing tears of pain. His fingers had caved in on the soft part of her mouth and she opened it suddenly very wide. His fingers slipped between her teeth.

She bit down hard. Very hard.

The Kislar Agha had not screamed for many years. It was a sound he had not heard himself since he was a little boy in a Sudanese village: the noise of a piglet squealing. Still squealing, he brought his left hand up between her legs, sagging slightly for a better grip. Don’t mark the goods.

His thumb searched for the gate. His fingers stretched and encountered a tight bunch of muscle. His hand clamped shut, with iron force.

The girl gave a gasp and the Kislar Agha pulled himself free. He put his sore fingers under his armpit, but he did not let go.

He wriggled his fingers and the girl jerked her head back. The Kislar Agha pressed harder. The girl felt herself being pressured to roll aside, and she obeyed the pressure.

The eunuch saw the girl flip over and fling out her arms to meet the ground. He gave a sudden pull with the pincer of his hand.

Panting now, he dropped to his knees and began to fumble at the folds of his cloak.