The Sultan's Daughter (9 page)

“Nothing—I hope, as Allah is merciful. But your master Selim—he isn’t shirking his duty, is he? I thought we went to Kutahiya to join him where he must serve his father and his lord as
sandjak bey
—as provincial governor. And as I know you would not shirk your duty to join with him, my next thought is...”

Safiye felt another blow of those eyes, but she refused to stop.

“We all know Selim is sometimes—how shall I say it?—apt to be drawn from his duties by the lure of—No, forgive me. I forget myself.”

“You do indeed, girl,” Nur Banu hissed. “Let me set you straight at once. Selim shall not be
sandjak bey
of Kutahiya any longer.”

Since the only reaction among the rest of the girls was a breathless silence, Safiye volunteered to fill it. “Oh, Allah save us. Then it’s as I feared!”

“As you feared, simple girl? As I prayed! No more Kutahiya, where we were banished when Selim, in the heat of youth, fomented civil war against his brother.”

“Brother Bavazid is dead, a traitor’s death these two—three years. Since before I came to the realm of Islam, lady. If reprieve were assured, I, for one, would have expected it sooner. But”—Safiye was cautious to conclude—”Allah knows best.”

“Allah does indeed know best. You expected it sooner because you don’t understand the just deliberation of the Shadow of Allah on earth. But this is the very news I bring. The sandjak of Magnesia has always been given to heirs apparent”

“Because it lies the shortest distance from the City of Cities, Constantinople.” Safiye held her own. “In case—Allah forbid—something should happen to our Sultan, his inheritor in Magnesia is poised to gather up the reins of power as hastily as possible. But several years have passed now since Suleiman has been left by Allah’s almighty will with but a single son—and Selim has, in all this time, still not been given that plum of a sandjak.”

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 month before. For the sake of those eyes she had rescued him from the Seven Towers—in the nick of time.

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.

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.