Angels of Istanbul, page 23
“It is my will therefore to reward my loyal janissaries with an accession present twice the size of that which Mahmud gave when he received the sword of Osman. It is my will to honour the courage of our Christian vassals, who have defeated demons on our soil. I decree that there shall be no war. Above all, I decree that upon my girding later today there shall begin three weeks of celebrations, for which I will pay. Let there be festivals and food and free bathing for all.”
Beckoned, Mirela and Zayd got slowly to their feet. “Where did he pull that from?” she whispered over the cheering, and when Zayd had passed the question on, Osman gave her a delighted smile, too mischievous for the shadow of God on Earth.
“I have read many fairy stories in my time in the cage. I know how a story must end, and I know how a good king’s reign must begin.”
“And the truth?” she asked, aware she was a fool to draw attention to it, but unable to resist.
“I am the Lord of the Horizons. The truth is what I say it is.”
“He had you enslaved by the power of his mind?”
Decebal had woken up in the late afternoon of the day of Osman’s girding. They had missed the pageantry of the ceremony in favour of bringing him back to their rooms, where they, too, could rest and recover as they waited for him to open his eyes. As soon as he had, Ecaterina had pressed thin soup and lots of tea on him, and though too weak to leave his bed, he seemed himself again. Drained but optimistic, and curious about everything.
Ecaterina sat by his bedside on a pile of cushions and held his hand as she had done for hours. Radu stood a little farther away, at a distance that suggested respectful support. His arm had been set, wrapped tight in strips of wool and protected in a cast of mud-plaster, then tied in a linen sling. He looked almost human once more, having bathed and slept and dressed in clean clothes.
Frank had been hovering in the doorway of Decebal’s room, not sure if he was welcome in this family scene, but at the expression on Radu’s face he stepped in, went to his lover’s side, and didn’t know whether to be proud or contemptuous of himself that he couldn’t let go with grace. The man was standing next to his future wife, for God’s sake! It would go easier on Frank if he could step into his new place without being asked, withdraw voluntarily without causing a scene. But Radu closed the distance between them unself-consciously, apparently glad of Frank’s nearness.
“I—” Radu was trying to persuade himself, Frank knew, to tell Decebal that he was to blame for everything: Stefan’s fate, Bucharest’s plague, Istanbul’s near death, and Decebal’s too.
Frank wasn’t willing to let him shoulder that burden anymore. “Radu was coerced, yes,” Frank agreed. Because mind control or blackmail, what was the difference? They had all tasted by now what it was like to have to make abhorrent choices because those were the only choices the monsters offered. Radu would never have done any of this if given his own will. “We all were. You know what the strigoi can do.”
He caught Ecaterina’s sharp glance, stared back. She’d made her bargain—now let her live with it. Marriage, in exchange for her silence.
“Yes,” she conceded at last. Frank felt Radu relax by his side. “If it wasn’t for the charms the Turkish mage made, none of us would have been able to resist them. But that . . . isn’t what I need your forgiveness for, Father.”
Decebal smiled and let her help him take a fortifying sip of lemon sherbet. “I must admit I had not thought my daughter so wild a creature as to run off with a man to war.” The gaze he gave Radu now had humour curling about its edges, although its core was steel. “You will be married before we return. I will not have all Bucharest gossiping that she eloped with a man only to return unwed.”
Radu drew away from Frank. The gap between them, though little more than an inch in width, seemed symbolic of an opening chasm. Particularly when he looked altogether too pleased with the bargain, too smug for Frank’s taste. “It will be my honour.”
“Hooked you with her charm, did she?” Decebal laughed sidelong at his daughter’s disapproving scowl. “I feared no one would have her now it’s clear she’s both plain and contrary.”
“She hooked me with her bravery, sir. And her love of her brother, and her bold, clever, valiant mind.”
Considering she had actually hooked him with blackmail, this was a generous assessment. It made Ecaterina turn to him in shock and Frank step back, distancing himself, trying not to feel the sting of being so easily replaced. Had he really supposed this would not happen? Radu was a nobleman with a duty to pass on his land to the next generation. Of course he would marry. All the reasons for Radu to take a male lover were gone now. All the factors that had made it necessary for him to regard Frank as the only thing he had of his own—gone. Why should he not be preparing himself for a very different future? Affection—love, even, if Frank dared to call it that—had never had much of a place in the affairs of the great. As a nobleman’s son himself, Frank understood.
Trying to suppress tears, Frank turned away, and as he did so, one of the pages belonging to their lodgings appeared in the doorway and beckoned him, handing him a note in exchange for a coin.
He unfolded it and almost collapsed, struck by the signature as by a blow. Staggering, he gripped the door to support himself as he read.
Dear Frank,
Lady Asquith recommended this psychic, who she says can pinpoint your location in the future and get a message to you, though none of us know where you are now. After many a scene, I managed to get out of Father what had happened, why you were gone. I want you to know I love you still and wish you would come home. Father isn’t so angry anymore, and the scandal has blown over. I think it would be safe.
I am always your loving sister. Come home.
Anne
Oh, if it really was Anne . . . If it was his sister writing with forgiveness and acceptance, then it was news that brought a joy so pure it was indistinguishable from agony. But . . . a stab of pain went through his forehead. He raised both hands to it, couldn’t for a moment work out why they did not come away bloody. But the handwriting was that of whomever they had got to transcribe the note at his end, so could he guarantee the note was from Anne at all? It could as easily be a ploy of his father’s to flush him out.
“Frank?” Radu had come up beside him while he was blinded by memories of assault, had slipped a reassuring arm around his waist. “What is it?”
Unable to find the words, unmanned and so stupidly grateful for the concern, he waved the note in explanation, surrendering it so Radu could read.
“Your sister wants you back?”
A nod.
“And your father does too? Your father who sent his man to kill you?”
Both alarmed and gratified by Radu’s anger, this time Frank managed to get out a “Hnh.”
Radu’s grip tightened, pulling him into an unmistakable embrace, flush against his reassuring support, the fingers of his good hand tangled gently in Frank’s hair. Startled, Frank peeked over Radu’s shoulder to see Decebal watching them with a knowing expression, as though this was no more than he expected.
“Are you sure about this marriage?” Decebal asked his daughter, gently. “Because this changes things. I would not insist on it if it were not compatible with your pride. We would find some other explanation to silence the gossips. Do you understand me?”
She laughed. “Yes, Father. I . . . know about this. It makes no difference. This is a business arrangement between us. I want none of those simpering fools who fell for me in Bucharest. It wouldn’t be fair to them anyway. At least Radu and I are . . .” she paused, sounding surprised at herself, “friends. Why shouldn’t he have his lover? You’ve had a dozen since you and mother married—”
“And she’s had some of her own—”
“Exactly. And I won’t have to worry about being divorced so that he can marry my rival. To my mind it’s a great deal better than if he had a mistress.”
Confirming Frank’s impression that Bucharest’s high society was astoundingly casual in its attitude to sins of the flesh, Decebal shrugged, and Ecaterina moved on. “But obviously Frank can’t go back to England. If this man is just going to try and kill him again.”
“Perhaps,” Decebal patted her hand, his voice slurring as he grew sleepy, “but there is always the chance that it’s a genuine change of heart. As a father myself, I wonder if he has not regretted what he tried. I wonder if he is not desperate for forgiveness. If that is so, then Frank should speak to him, if only because to mend his relationship with his father would be healing for himself.”
Ecaterina watched Frank with worry, even though he stood in the arms of her fiancé. “Then we should . . . we should all go with you, Frank. To defend you.”
He couldn’t work the words out for a moment. What could it mean that she would defend him instead of demanding his removal? The sensation of being watched by concerned eyes was too much.
“Could we . . .” He jerked his head towards the door, and Radu took the hint, coming with him out into the corridor, where there was the illusion of privacy. “You’re not sending me away?”
Radu frowned as though this was a new idea to him, as though the thought had never crossed his mind. “Of course not. You’re mine. I should have fought to keep you if she had ever raised a doubt about that. But she didn’t. You heard. We have been assuming you will stay. Did you think I would dismiss you upon my marriage, like a servant who has outlived his usefulness?”
That was what Frank had thought. “Yes.”
Radu huffed an angry, exasperated laugh. “I should like to strangle your father, if it is he who has given you so low an opinion of yourself. And I am insulted. You would not even have fought for me? You might have won, had you tried.”
“I do not win.” Frank could say it easily, for even now he was losing the battle not to smile, not to be foolish and hope for the best. “I never have.”
Uncertainty didn’t sit well on Radu’s face. On him it looked more like brutish stubbornness, a child sulking. “So you would have just left me instead and gone home to this keeper who has murdered your friends and all but killed you once already? You’d leave me to fly back to him? Have I been so intolerable?”
“No. No!” Frank hugged harder, though Radu winced at the vehemence of the grip on all his bruises. “Your parents were right about one thing. If I was cursed, the curse ended when I met you. What I want is to stay with you and to work in some scholarly fashion towards understanding my magic. Maybe in your beautiful library, or in Catia’s university. Somewhere where I can begin to pay back all the debts I owe. But Decebal is right too. I would like to find some resolution with my father, and I would like to talk to Anne. To tell her that I am happy, if nothing else.”
He slipped his hand into the sling and closed it around Radu’s hand, both of them looking aside because to stand like this, hand in hand, smiling at one another, was a level of softness that approached embarrassing for them both. When Radu began to fidget, Frank took pity on him and reopened the door. But the softness had done its work; he felt cushioned all over by the knowledge that he had a right to be here.
“So, are we going to England next?” Ecaterina dispelled any awkwardness by picking up the conversation where it had left off. At that, Frank supposed he would probably like her even if she was not enchanting him to do so. “To defend Frank from his monsters?”
Radu laughed. “Defend Frank? You’re talking about the man who held apart two armies with his bare hands. I doubt there is anything anyone could do to hurt him if he did not allow it.”
There was an idea that had not occurred to Frank before. It almost slipped through his fingers, he was so unprepared for it, but Lord it was true. He wasn’t the useless creeping coward he had once been. He was stronger than cannons, stronger than armies. Even now, below wonder and gratitude and stirring hope, he could touch the silver-blue fibres of the world. Power was there, waiting for him to learn to use it to do more, better, greater things.
“That place in your household you promised me? I’m allowed to stay?”
“Never doubt it.”
The room turned shiny for a moment, and then he was tasting warm, brackish water. He wiped the tears away with the back of his hand and laughed. “I’ve never been wanted.”
“You are now.”
This was a handkerchief job, clearly. He dried his face, sniffed, and straightened up. “Catia, if Anne managed to send me a message at a distance, then there must be a way for me to send one back. Do you think that you and Zayd could work something out? Perhaps based on that scrying mirror we made? Then I could talk to them both without allowing my father close enough to touch what’s mine.”
“Marriage first,” Decebal insisted, closing his eyes and settling into his cushions with the air of a man dismissing all problems but his own. “Then my daughter can do what she wills in her own household, no matter how outré.” He smiled at her as if to take the sting of the words away. “You will make us like it, whatever it is.”
The day after Osman’s girding, Zayd woke far too early to find his mother shaking him. He had slept—if recent events were any guide—more restfully than the dead, sunk a long way down in velvet-dark peacefulness, and it took him long minutes of bleariness to work out what he was hearing.
“Mother, don’t I deserve a morning off?”
“Foolish boy,” she said, with her head scarf jingling at him and throwing sparkles into his half-open eyes. For some reason she was dressed in her very best clothes—her wedding clothes—and her face shone.
Jala’s face peeked over her shoulder, and she, too, wore an expression of ill-confined glee. “Listen,” she said. “Can’t you hear them?”
When she mentioned it, he could—the skirl and whine of the zurna, slurring through notes like water running over rocks. Beneath that, the contradictory sharpness and clear rhythm of drums: high, snapping drums and low, booming ones, and the shocking metallic shiver of cymbals, with the melody playing over them as if it didn’t acknowledge their existence.
“Quick.” Zerinah threw off his covers and handed him his turquoise waistcoat, while Jala tried to pass him tea and a comb and a mirror all at once. “Don’t make them wait.”
His sleepy mind grasped that he was to get up, look grand, and go out to greet the musicians. It wasn’t until he had thrown open the tomb’s gates and walked out into an early morning in which nighttime rain was smoking off the cypresses, and the tombstones still glittered in a cool, new sunrise, that the fresh air woke him up properly.
The musicians crowded all the way around Dede Abdul’s mausoleum. Proud men in the colours of the sultan’s private band, sternly playing music that seemed to have risen up through the stones and bones of the country and come to quiver under Zayd’s breastbone and make his breath catch. The sultan’s band? Playing for him? There was only one reason he could think of for such an honour, and that one he couldn’t believe.
Having affixed their veils, Zerinah and Jala came to his elbows. He didn’t need to see their faces to know they were aglow with joy.
“What . . .” he managed, and the musicians stepped aside for a familiar young person to pad gracefully out of their ranks. He was, if possible, more gorgeous than ever, certainly more opulent, dripping with gold and brilliant silks. But his eyes, carefully outlined in kohl, no longer held the teasing laughter Zayd had seen in them the first time. He was grieving—he was trying not to show it, but it was there in his quietness and the stiff solemnity of his grace.
“Daoud,” Zayd embraced him, “I am glad to see you still alive. A thousand, thousand regrets that I cannot say the same of your master.”
The eunuch’s flinch was tempered with pride. “They’re saying he is a saint. That the sultan himself saw it. He will have his own mosque, and always be remembered.”
“And you? I can see you are in no need.”
“I have been fortunate enough to be taken into the household of the padishah sultan himself. My future is assured.”
A last comforting squeeze and Zayd let go. “But you haven’t brought the sultan’s musicians here to tell me of your promotion?”
Daoud grinned. “No indeed, though when I heard that someone was to be sent, I volunteered. It seemed neater. I’ve brought them here to tell you of yours. Come with me.”
The band led them every step of the way, down from Eyup cemetery, past mosque and hammam, waking up the drowsy streets as their music echoed from the bricks. Windows opened and folk came blearily out of doors to watch and to wave at Zayd—all of them his neighbours, the people he had lived beside all his life. He felt simultaneously grander than the sunrise, very glad his mother had insisted on his best clothes, and itchily guilty to be treated as a hero when he had done so little.
Those of his neighbours fitly dressed to come outside fell in at the back of the band, walking with him. By the time they wound out of his neighbourhood and into the avenues of the guilds, the procession was big enough to sweep up all the ragged boys of the street, all the men waiting for breakfast outside the bakers’ shops, or in lines outside the barbers. All the women carrying towels and baskets waiting for the baths to open for ladies’ day.
They brought him to the steps of an empty guild house, and there Daoud handed him ceremonial trousers of emerald-green brocade, a sash of gold, a pishtimal of sturdy linen, and a magnificent turban as round as an onion. He clasped them to him and stood in the gaze of the crowd like a deer in the gaze of a lion. Daoud shook out a document headed by the looping purple swirls of the new sultan’s tughra and pronounced him sheikh of the guild of wizards. This appeared to come with a town house, and a chest filled with silver gurush to pay for its upkeep, and a remit to find and train magicians for the service of the sultan.
Dazed and overwhelmed, Zayd shut the doors on the crowd as soon as Daoud had departed, taking his band with him. He closed the ceremonial clothes in one of the empty chests in the guildhall, and went home to kneel beside Dede Abdul’s catafalque and confess to the saint that he didn’t think he was either worthy or capable of this.
