The Janissary Tree (19 page)

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?"

Asul
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.

He'd
forgotten all about the silver ring.

He
remembered only the need for punishment, and the itch for pleasure.

46

****************

PREEN
had found it hard to believe what the imam seemed to be saying. A revival of
the Janissaries? New Guard cadets found murdered in despicable ways?

She
picked up a pair of tweezers and began to pluck her eyebrows.

She
wondered, looking into the mirror, if the imam's message had anything to do
with the information she had brought her friend Yashim.

Murder.

Her
heart skipped a beat.

Today
she would take the line ever so slightly higher: she could always heighten the
curve with kohl. She began to hum.

Nothing
she'd heard in the mosque had anything to do with Yashim, or her, or that
disgusting pimp.

She
worked briskly with a practiced hand along the arch of her brow, watching
herself in the mirror.

But
Yorg could be involved in anything. With anyone.

She'd
only peddled a little ordinary gossip. It was nothing.

Though
Yashim had been pleased. Gold dust, he called it.

But
Yashim wouldn't tell. She moved her hand and began on the other eyebrow.

Yorg
would tell. Yorg would tell
anything
, if he was paid enough.

Or
frightened enough.

Preen
sucked in her breath. The idea of Yorg being afraid was, well, scary.

She
lowered her tweezers and snapped up a piece of kohl between their jaws. Carefully
she started to thicken the line.

What
would Yorg do, she wondered, if he heard about the murdered soldiers? Not at
mosque. The Yorgs of this world heard nothing at mosque. They wouldn't even go.

But
if he heard, and started putting two and two together?

The
kohl wavered. The face in the mirror was very white.

He'd
squeal, for sure.

47

****************

FIRE
officer Orhan Yasmit cupped his hands around his mouth and blew into them. It
had been a filthy morning, not just because it was damp and cold but because
the mist made it almost impossible for him to work properly. Who could spot a
fire in this miasma? He could scarcely see across the Golden Horn.

He
stamped a few times to warm up, then crossed the tower to the southern side and
peered gloomily down toward the Bosphorus. On good days, the Galata Tower
presented him with one of the finest views the city could afford, almost three
hundred feet up above the Golden Horn, across to Stamboul with its minarets and
domes, south to the Bosphorus and Scutari on the farther side--sometimes he
could actually see the mountains of Gule, purple in the distance.

It
was a solid tower of massive dressed stone, built by the Genoese almost five
hundred years before, when the Greek emperor ruled in Byzantium and Galata was
its Italian suburb. Since then it had survived wars and earthquakes--even fires.
The face of the city had changed, as minarets replaced the spires, as more and
more people settled in the burgeoning port, building their wooden houses cheek
by jowl, fragile wooden houses crammed like dry tinder into the declivities of
the seven hills. They'd been kicking over their braziers, letting their candles
tilt, sending out careless sparks for centuries, too. Hardly ten years ran by
without some section of the 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 farther than you expect. Especially upward."

"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
lookout over the bazaar and such, but to the east you've got the mosque, and
that used to block the view that way. Didn't matter so much, not with the
Janissary Tower beyond to cover the ground."

"Ali.
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."

"I'm
sure. Go on. Tell me about the fourth tower."

Orhan
gave the stranger a look. "There isn't a fourth. Galata, Stamboul, that's it."

"There
must be another. Yedikule, maybe?"

"Yedikule?"
The fireman grinned. "Tell me who'd be sorry if Yedikule caught fire?"

Yashim
frowned: the fireman had a point. Yedikule was the sink of the city, down in
the southeast where the walls of Byzantium joined the sea. Apart from the dirt,
and the feral dogs that prowled its mean, dark streets, the tanneries were
there; also a grim edifice, old even when the Ottomans took Istanbul, known as
the Castle of the Seven Towers, variously used as a mint, a menagerie, and a
prison, particularly the latter. Many people had died within its walls; still
more had wanted to.

"But
you can watch Yedikule from the new tower at Beyazit, efendi. Stamboul and
Galata, like I told you. Cover the city."

Yashim
winced. The second verse of the poem swam into his head.

Unknowing

And
knowing nothing of unknowing,

They
seek.

Teach them.

He
was obviously a slow learner.

"Look,"
Orhan said affably. "You can ask old Palmuk, if you like."

A
whiskered face appeared in the hatch. Palmuk was not really old, only perhaps
twice Orhan's age, with thick white mustaches and a noticeable paunch. He came
out of the hatch wheezing.

"Those
bloomin" stairs," he muttered. Yashim noticed that he was carrying a paper
twist of sugared buns. "No babies, then?" He winked at Yashim.

"Now,
Palmuk, I don't think the gentleman wants all that. He is from the seraskier."

Palmuk
took the warning with an exaggerated roll of his eyes.

"Oho,
old Frog's Legs, eh? Well, efendi, you tell him not to worry about us. We get
cold, we get wet, but we do our duty, ain't that right, Orhan?"

"You
might not think it, efendi," Orhan said, "but Palmuk's got the best pair of eyes
in Galata. You'd think he could smell a fire before it's even started."

Palmuk's
face twitched. "Steady, there, boy." He turned to Yashim. "You wondering about
them babies I mentioned? It's fireman's talk, that is. Baby--that's a fire. A
boy's a fire on the Stamboul side. We hang out the baskets that way"--he
gestured to four huge wicker baskets leaning against the inside of the
parapet--"and that puts the lads in the right direction, see? A girl, that's
Galata side."

Yashim
shook his head. However long you lived, however well you thought you knew this
city, there was always something else to learn. Sometimes he thought that
Istanbul was just a mass of codes, as baffling and intricate as its
impenetrable alleys: a silent clamor of inherited signs, private languages,
veiled gestures. He thought of the soup master and his coriander. So many
little rules. So many unknown habits. The soup master had been a Janissary
once. He looked at Palmuk again, wondering if he, too, wore a tattoo on his
forearm.

"You've
been a fireman a long time, then?"

Palmuk
stared at him, expressionless. "Nine, ten years. What's it about?"

Orhan
said, "Gentleman wants to know about another tower. Not the old barracks place.
A fourth tower. I told him there wasn't one."

Palmuk
dug into his paper twist and took out a bun, looked at it, and took a bite.

"You
did right, Orhan. You can cut along now, old Palmuk's in command."

Orhan
yawned and stretched. "I could use a nap," he said. "Fire in?"

"Warm
and bright, mate."

With
a happy sigh, and a small bow to Yashim, Orhan lowered himself down the hatch
and went off to enjoy the brazier in the fireman's cuddy down below.

Palmuk
took a turn around the walls, looking out and finishing his bun.

Yashim
hadn't moved.

Palmuk
leaned over the parapet and looked down.

"Funny,"
he said. "As you get older, you lose your head for heights. They ought to pay
me more, don't you think?"

He
looked back at Yashim, his head cocked.

"Know
what I mean?"

Yashim
eyed the fireman coldly. "A fourth tower?"