city burning to the ground. That any of it still stood at all was a testament to the wisdom of the Genoese master- builders who erected the Galata Tower.
The trick with any fire was to catch it early, contain it quickly. And to use it wisely, in the Janissary days—to control and shape it to the Janissaries’ best advantage. Orhan Yasmit was too young to have known those days personally, but he had heard the stories. Oh, the Janissaries put out fires—in the end.
Orhan Yasmit leaned on the parapet, wondering how much longer it would be before he was relieved. He looked down. He had no trouble with vertigo. He liked to watch the people bustling back and forth so far below him: with the sun on his back there were times when he came close to feeling like a flying bird, skimming the rooftops and the marketplaces. From above, in their turbans, the people looked like birds’ eggs, rolling about beneath his feet: the foreigners with their small heads looked weird. More like insects.
Hearing footsteps, he eased himself off the parapet and turned around. He expected to see the duty fireman, but the man who stepped out onto the platform was a civilian, a stranger in a plain brown cloak. Orhan frowned.
“I’m sorry,” he said sharply. “I don’t know how you got in, but civilians aren’t allowed up here.”
The stranger smiled vaguely, and looked around.
“Two pairs of eyes are better than one,” he remarked. “I won’t detain you.”
Orhan could make nothing of this.
“You might say that we’re both working for the same service. I’m here for the seraskier.”
Orhan instinctively stood a little straighter.
“Well,” he said grudgingly, “it’s no use your being here anyhow. No one could see a thing on a day like this.”
Yashim blinked at the fog.
“No, no, I suppose not.” He went to the parapet and leaned out. “Amazing. Do you often look down?”
“Not much.”
Yashim cocked his head.
“I expect you hear stuff, though. I’ve noticed that myself. The way sounds can carry much further than you expect. Especially upwards.”
“True.” Orhan wondered what all this was leading up to.
“Were you on duty the day they found that body?”
“I was on the night before. Didn’t hear or see anything, though.” He frowned. “What do you want up here, anyhow?”
Yashim nodded, as if he understood. “This tower must have been here a long time.”
“Five hundred years, they say.” The fireman slapped a hand on the parapet. “The Stamboul Tower, Beyazit, that’s mostly new.”
“Mostly new?”
“There’s always been a fire-watch over there, see, but the tower used to be shorter. Good look-out over the bazaar and such, but to the east you’ve got the mosque, haven’t you, and that used to block the view that way. Didn’t matter so much, not with the Janissary Tower beyond to cover the ground.”
“Ah. I thought there’d been another fire-tower there—above Aksaray?”
Orhan nodded. “Proper job, by all accounts. Gone now, along with the tekke underneath and all the rest.”
“Tekke? What tekke do you mean?”
“Tekke, prayer-room, whatever. Like here, downstairs. For that Janissary Karagoz mumbo-jumbo. Oldest Karagozi tekkes in the city, apparently. That tower’s gone now, like I said. Got burned down during the—well, a few years back, you know what I mean? So what they did was, they raised the tower at Beyazit. To get the lift, see, over the mosque? Must have doubled its height, I reckon—and all in stone, now, like this one. The old ones were wood, and kept burning down. So there you are, we’ve got the two towers as good as the old three. Better, really, being all stone.”
