Nur Banu waved the protest away as ineffective. “Selim did have Magnesia once. It was in Magnesia, lovely Magnesia, where Selim loved me and where our son was born.”
“But he was removed—remember?—at the Sultan’s severe displeasure for brawling with his brother. Another, a mere bureaucrat, has been considered more worthy to hold Magnesia in recent days.”
“Since you think you know so much, it may please you to learn that Sultan Suleiman—may Allah shield him—has finally decided it’s time to end this tedious interim. And that’s all it was, an interim, while Selim cooled off.”
“Cooled himself with wine.”
Someone—not just a parrot—tittered. Nur Banu was growing livid—and, Safiye noticed, careless.
“You will not say so! It is against Islam to drink the Christian’s poison, and Selim was born to rule the faithful.”
“It is Allah’s will,” Safiye said. She liked this formulaic way to avoid committing one’s own opinion. She kept her calm.
“Suleiman has now declared himself ready to replace that—that fellow he set in the sandjak during the interim.”
“Ferhad Bey.”
Safiye caught yet another snap of Nur Banu’s eyes. She knew she annoyed when she demonstrated more knowledge about the empire’s workings than the older woman had.
But Safiye deliberately misinterpreted the threat in the glance this time and continued: “Ferhad is the name of the man—a cavalry man, I believe. Capable, but young. Not too long out of the palace school. That’s who’s been governing Magnesia since Selim’s disgrace. So Ferhad Bey’s been displaced, then?”
“Only removed for advancement.” Nur Banu struggled to show that she had useful knowledge, too. “He is a particular favorite of Sokolli Pasha, I believe, and the Grand Vizier has decided to reward this bey’s capabilities with a post closer to our lord and to the center of power.”
“Closer even than the heir apparent,” Safiye mused.
“Such recalls for consultation as we have enjoyed with Selim’s presence in Constantinople these past few weeks are uncommon and must mean something. It isn’t customary for Sultan and heir to spend too much time too close together.”
“Too much temptation for rebellion?”
“Lest one disaster under the same roof—Allah forbid it!—take both at once. It isn’t our custom to tempt Fate so.”
“Ah, yes,” Safiye said, with the shiver down her spine she got whenever she knew she was playing too simple. But it was necessary, to drive this skirmish to its conclusion. “So, Magnesia, now being empty—”
“Is in need of a new governor.”
“It’s settled, then? The new bey is to be our master Selim?”
Safiye lost control of her heart’s beat—just for an instant. All this news of Ferhad Bey and the heir’s vacant sandjak—she’d already been mistress of it for the better part of a day, entertaining its rumors for nearly a week. She had Ghazanfer’s skills—not to say his perfect devotion and his own thirst for revenge—to thank for this. Ghazanfer ferreted for her in places where other khuddam would blush or grow faint—certainly give themselves away.
For one moment, Safiye wished Ghazanfer in the room with her. Sharing this triumph would go far to assure his permanent enclosure in the tight oval of her will. She needed this assurance—for the next success. But then her mind gave him his feet again. She was more certain he was with her than she was even of the Quince. For the next success, he must be where those great eunuch’s feet carried him.
Then the thrill of fear came back again, just one more instant. Suppose Nur Banu’s eunuchs had been working just as hard? There were more of them; they could work more directions at once. Suppose Selim were already declared sandjak hey of Magnesia—?
No declaration cannot be annulled by another declaration, Safiye dismissed these doubts. Nur Banu’s khuddam were not half so devoted as Ghazanfer was. And never so motivated by intent of their own. The confidence Nur Banu exuded was only because she had not thought through the entire matter quite so far as she, Safiye, had. And because Safiye had—for the pure desire to fight and win, the more publicly the better-—teased the older woman into an extremely exposed position.
So, then, in for the kill.
“Our master Selim has been granted the heir’s sandjak?”
Ah, the trapped look in those black eyes! Did ever Suleiman the Magnificent take so great a victory from so slight a wave of surrender?
Nur Banu betrayed herself to the rest of the room only by losing the casual drape of her arms and playing with their bangles accompanied by a slight twitch of nervousness.
“Selim has not, no. Not in so many words, he has not. But he will. Who else is there?”
“Who else, lady? Who else, indeed?”
Satisfied with this capitulation, Safiye settled back behind the defenses of her mirror’s rim. She let Nur Banu and her ladies fall unharried into their disparate bursts of satisfaction at the news of Ferhad’s elevation, or rather, of Magnesia’s vacancy. Let them think she had pushed them into only a momentary and tactical retreat—for the time being.
***
Safiye hadn’t too much longer to wait before Ghazanfer entered the room.
She sensed rather than heard him first: a wonder how like a cat he could move on those torture-flattened feet of his. The hands he laid across his chest in the eunuch’s attitude of patient waiting—every finger of them had been broken, too. The nails were only just beginning to regrow, far down at the cuticle beneath great expanses of scabby quick. Every move must give some painful reminder.
She turned her mirror to catch within its rim the feral green flecks buried within the blue ringing the eunuch’s narrow pupils. Over a twisted, broken nose, only those eyes remained the same as she had seen under the bastinado less than a
