Even his name was changed. Instead of that silly Hyacinth, she now called him Ghazanfer, “Bold Lion.” She doubted whether even Mihrimah Sultan would recognize her old khadim. But in all his ugly ravagedness, here, at last, was the eunuch for Safiye the Fair. Safiye smiled at him, ever so slightly, through the mirror and across the room. His green eyes missed nothing, not even a flash of light on glass. His reply was slighter still, too slight to be called a smile. But then Ghazanfer never did smile, even for great provocation. His mouth was too gapped with missing teeth; some self-pride remained intact.
His glanced reply was enough, however. Safiye felt the wild darkness of the night in it more clearly than had she crossed to him and felt its lingering freshness on the flat of his cheeks. No, she could not have gone out into the dark and felt the night’s freedom sharper on her own face.
Safiye knew the deed was done, and done well.
And then Murad sent for her.
X
Early the next morning, Aziza and another girl, Belqis, ran in panting and awakened the room, still languid from a late night spent celebrating. The pair went everywhere together, inseparable companions in their beauty and in its rejection by Prince Murad several years previous. Now they stumbled and clung to one another in a new distress, and that distress instantly magnified off tiles and mirrors and riveted the room’s splinters to attention.
“Allah shield you.” Nur Banu looked up at once from the rough beginnings of a conversation on how to alter a wardrobe planned for dusty roads to suit the pleasures of a ship’s deck instead.
The girls’ words stumbled over one another as their feet had done in their agitation.
“We’ve seen him.”
“Seen his head.”
“On a spike.”
“Allah shield us!”
“He is dead.”
“When we saw and guessed...”
“...We sent the khuddam.”
“They confirmed.”
“At the Executioner’s Fountain.”
“As we passed, lady.”
“Past hope.”
“Past life.”
“Allah save us.”
“Dead!”
Nur Banu finally got a word in edgewise. “He’s dead? Girls, calm yourselves. Who’s dead?”
Safiye folded her hands calmly over the mirror in her lap that still revealed her hair in lover’s disarray. She watched Nur Banu instead of the girls as they tried to tell more, watched how the older woman’s face rinsed of all color. The only word Murad’s mother had heard, that anyone had heard of the next jumble was the name of her child’s father: “Selim.”
“Selim? Allah shield me, I am ruined.” Nur Banu’s words came from the very edge of a faint.
“Oh, no.”
“Not Selim, lady.”
“Allah forfend.”
“Allah bless you, lady.”
“Selim lives.”
“Allah be praised.”
“But it’s Lufti Effendi.”
“Lufti Effendi, our master Selim’s companion.”
“Lufti Effendi is dead.”
“Executed.”
“By the Fountain.”
“His crime?” The color had still not returned to Nur Banu’s face and her voice betrayed her.
“Drunkenness,” Belqis choked.
“Oh, lady!”
“Everyone knows.”
“The Sultan knows.”
“Lufti Effendi was drinking—”
“—Drinking with our master Selim last night.”
“Within the very palace.”
“Celebrating the bey’s elevation from Magnesia, I fear.”
“Lufti Effendi was discovered.”
“On his way home afterwards.”
“The Sultan fairly tripped over the Effendi, lady.”
“Dead drunk he was.”
“His body, dead to the world...”
“...Where the Sultan could not possibly miss him.”
“And now he is dead indeed.”
“And shall abuse our faith no more.”
“For that we should praise Allah—perhaps.” Belqis dropped both voice and head in the helpless sorrow her words belied.
Nur Banu struggled for control. “Selim? What of my lord Selim?”
“We think he lives.”
“Allah be praised.”
“It is difficult to tell from this women’s country.”
“But the eunuchs think so, lady.”
The watching khuddam confirmed these hopes in their own silent way, though Nur Banu sent one of them out instantly for better assurances.
Belqis continued: “It seems this public execution was meant as a warning.”
“To no one more than our lord Selim.”
“A sign of the Sultan’s deep displeasure at his son’s habits.”
“A warning to improve.”
“And improve he will,” Nur Banu said. “He must.” She found her feet but nearly lost her voice on these words. Then she regained speech enough to say, “I will find him a new girl. The most lovely girl. Or a boy, too. I’ll give him a boy if that’s what it takes.”
Safiye caught a pair of green-flecked eyes across the room, but rested assured that so changed was her Ghazanfer in appearance that she alone in the harem shared the secret of his past.
“All shall be well, Allah willing, girls. We must calm ourselves.”
Nur Banu then gave more orders to more eunuchs. But though she urged calm, and Belqis and Aziza bolted themselves to cushions in compliance, the head of the harem herself continued to pace.
A girl in novice green piped into the churning silence: “Does this mean, lady, we are not to have a sea voyage?” The still weight that followed let even this girl know herself a fool.
Safiye watched the look that passed between the rigid faces of Aziza and Belqis. She saw Aziza chosen for the nasty task. She saw the girl chew on her lip until surely blood must mingle with her words.
And finally the word came: “Lady.”
“What is it, Aziza?” The girl flinched as Nur Banu snapped, the older woman impatient to have her desperate maneuvering disrupted yet again. “Lady, the Sultan has declared a yet sterner warning.”
“Warning? What warning?”
Aziza gasped for breath. “The Sultan has decreed…” Then she looked frantically to her companion as the judgment failed to leave her throat.
“The sandjak of Magnesia will not go to our lord Selim,” Belqis finished the tale when her friend’s words failed her. “As a sign of his severe displeasure, the Sultan has given the governorship to his grandson, Murad, instead.”
For one brilliant moment, Safiye felt the lash of Nur Banu’s black eyes on her. It thrilled rather than chastised, as some of his reported perversions must Selim. With one deliberate finger, Safiye drew around the oval of her mirror’s rim.
Then the room exploded with fury which tile and parrots amplified, feathers flying like bits of sound.
“Get out! Get out of my sight! Get out!” the older woman screamed
