Pasha's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  His heart was thumping in his chest as fast and as hard as it could, and it was a moment before he heard the voices over the noise of it. He had been discovered! Ghazi and Bostancı were pouring across the grounds towards the half-moon kiosk with dancing torches, shouting as they came. He was about to be caught. And when that happened, he would die. Slowly. It might even take weeks. He remembered Şehzade Korkut at the hippodrome arches, merrily sending those he considered infidels to their death. He could hardly imagine what the rabid, zealous prince would do to a Christian found in his palace, masquerading as one of his staff. Vertical impalement would probably be only the start of the penalty! Even God could not punish him like Korkut would.

  A fresh burst of incentive flooded through him, and Skiouros began to climb like a man possessed, his fingers reaching up and grasping the next slat. Letting go of the body for a fraction of a second, he instead grasped the rope a couple of feet from where it was attached to the cook’s bindings. With a great deal of difficulty, he slung it over his shoulder and tied it so that the cook was hanging from him, a long tail of rope dangling down over the edge of the roof.

  With two hands now freed and all the weight on his shoulders, he began to ascend towards the apex. The peril of the situation deepened as men started to flood into view around the half-moon pool. They were almost all shouting, the odd officers among them trying to make themselves heard over the din. Skiouros’ wild eyes caught them in passing and noted among them quite a few spears that might just reach up to the roof, but more worryingly: three muskets.

  His terror peaked, and, reaching the apex of the roof, he rose and staggered along it towards the boundary wall, the weight of the body dragging him down and threatening to topple him, causing him to lean precariously to the right to counterbalance as he moved.

  Through the din behind him he heard the order to load muskets. These were professionals – it would not take them long. Reaching the outer wall, he was in clear view of every marksman. His fingers scrabbled up the surface but reached only two feet short of the parapet. There was no hope of him stretching far enough, and he couldn’t jump with this weight dragging him down.

  In a flurry of desperate action, he undid the knot around his front and let the body fall to the roof, gripping the length of rope instead. With a deep breath he jumped, the fingers of his free hand scraping the parapet for a moment until he fell back and his feet skittered on the tiles, threatening to tip him out into the air. Settling for a moment, he closed his eyes and prepared, but opened them again in sudden panic as the first gunshot cracked through the night, shards of stone from the boundary wall exploding in dust as the ball hit the surface mere inches from his arm. Spurred on, he jumped again and this time his arm hooked over the top. Grunting, he hauled himself up until he was astride the wall and turned side-on to present less of a target to the marksmen.

  Willing himself extra strength and simultaneously wishing calamity and poor sight upon his enemies, he began to haul the swinging form of the cook up to the wall top.

  Two more shots flashed and cracked into the night. The first seemed to go awry somewhere in the darkness, but the second took a small piece from Skiouros’ shoulder and fiery white agony seared through him. Worse, the power of the ball punching into his shoulder and glancing off his shoulder blade pushed him sideways, and he found himself falling over the outer edge of the wall until he dropped four feet and then smashed into the outer face, held up by the cook’s body which was wedged against the parapet at the far side on the other end of the rope.

  ‘Never do things by half do you?’ called a voice with dark humour, and Skiouros looked down to see Parmenio grinning up at him, Diego and Dragi close by.

  ‘Agh,’ was all he could manage.

  ‘Drop down. We’ll catch you.’

  ‘Can’t,’ Skiouros breathed, ‘got a friend up there.’ For some reason he was faintly gratified by the slide from wry humour to puzzlement in Parmenio’s expression. Trying to block out the agonising fire of the flesh wound in his shoulder, Skiouros climbed, panting, back up the rope to the parapet, favouring his other arm. At the top, he reached across the parapet and felt the cook wedged there. Looking down, he cleared his throat.

  ‘Hope you lot feel strong enough to catch two.’

  Without waiting for an answer, aware that the strength in his shoulder was almost gone, and he was dangerously close to blacking out, the Greek reached up with one hand, grabbing the bindings of the cook, and then let go of his rope with the other and grasped the cook with that too. Hauling with every remaining ounce of his strength, he pulled his captive over the wall and the two men fell out into space.

  *

  Skiouros awoke in a blur of confusion. For a moment he had absolutely no idea where he was. He was not at the bottom of the wall in a pile of his own shattered bones. Nor was he at the Romani house or Ben Isaac’s in comfort. Nor, blessedly, was he in a cell in the palace with a hungry ghazi cutting open his guts and tearing at him with hooks. He was, in fact, in a small room with plain walls covered with broken plaster and peeling paint, a window with no glass admitting the night breeze. Parmenio and Diego sat next to him.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Somewhere called the Saint Irene hospital,’ Parmenio murmured, ‘though I’d hate to have my wounds tended here. There’s more mould than stone.’

  Skiouros gave a small smile. ‘It’s been disused since the conquest.’

  ‘I’d guessed. But it seems to be safe, and it was within reach. Only three streets from the old palace, and we needed somewhere close and fast. Dragi brought us here just in time. Prince Korkut’s men are flooding the streets around the palace looking for you.’

  ‘Sooner or later they’ll come here,’ Skiouros said, trying to rise, but finding that he had virtually no strength in his tightly-bound shoulder.

  ‘If they were coming they’d be here by now. We’ve been two hours.’

  Skiouros blinked in surprise. ‘I’ve been out that long?’

  ‘Your head glanced off the wall as you fell,’ Parmenio explained. ‘I caught you, though you’ll be getting an invoice for the medical work my back’s going to need.’

  For the first time, Skiouros realised that his head was not only thumping but tender, and the back of it felt wet. ‘Am I…?’

  ‘You’ll be fine. Just a bit of a clonk. You’ll be a sight better than that fellow you brought out, anyway.’

  Skiouros noted the darkening of Diego’s expression and sighed. ‘Dragi’s interrogating him?’

  Parmenio nodded. ‘In the next room. I’m surprised the yelps didn’t wake you earlier. He’s stopped making so much noise now, but you can still hear a whimper every now and then. It seems our Romani friend is displaying another hidden talent we were unaware of, though I’m less impressed by this one. All he had was a stick, a knife and a length of rope, but the noises that have been coming out of that room…’ he shuddered, and again, Diego looked disgusted and turned his face away. For a fraction of a second Skiouros thought he saw something else in the Spaniard’s expression.

  ‘Mind you, the guards at the palace started the job for him,’ Parmenio added, and Skiouros frowned. ‘Poor bastard apparently took a stray musket ball in the leg while you were escaping,’ the Genoese sailor explained.

  So that was where that errant shot went…

  ‘You were late.’

  ‘We were unavoidably detained,’ Parmenio replied, and when Skiouros shrugged in incomprehension, he added, ‘the Jews’ house may not be so secure any more. We got to the old palace just after true dark, but you’d obviously already had your adventure. We saw the message on the shutter, but when we looked through the window, your apartment was full of soldiers turning the place over, taking it apart looking for you. We had to duck back out of sight, but we wiped your message off first, just in case. Then we sat watching the wall until we heard all the kerfuffle and realised what was happening.’

  ‘Who found you at Ben Isaac’s?’
>
  ‘Our knightly friends. Luckily Diego was with me, so we dealt with them pretty quick. None of them made it out, so hopefully the enemy are still in the dark about the place, but we can’t be sure. After all they found out about it somehow in the first place. We may have to move soon.’

  Again, Skiouros thought he saw something odd and indescribable pass across Diego’s face, and noted it for consideration later. He was about to ask about their ongoing investigation when the door swung open and Dragi stepped in, wiping his hands with a bloodied cloth.

  ‘Sure enough, your friend in there was positioned to do away with the prince. Two hours after the maghrib call to prayer on the 28th, apparently, the evening before the festival. He claimed not to know the details of his counterpart in Selim’s court, and I am inclined to believe him, considering the pressure under which I put him. But whoever it is, he will have the same orders. Both princes were to die at the same time, so that neither would be put on guard by his sibling’s demise.’

  ‘So we’re no closer to finding out what we need? We still have to get into Selim’s palace somehow.’

  Dragi gave an unpleasant smile. ‘Not quite. I drew one critical piece of information from our friend next door: the identity of the man who gave him his instructions. No other than the king-breaker himself.’

  Skiouros’s eyes widened. ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘Better,’ Dragi coughed, finishing wiping his hands, tossing away the cloth and then fishing something from his belt pouch. ‘I know who he is and where he can be found. And I know how to get to him.’

  Skiouros, ignoring the searing pain in his shoulder, sat up eagerly. ‘Go on?’

  ‘Your counterpart is a paşa of one horse-tail rank, in charge of the great Galata shipyard.’ He crossed the room and dropped what he was holding into Skiouros’ lap. The Greek looked down to see the blue and white eye pendant the cook had bought from the Romani witch staring up at him. ‘May it bring you more luck than it brought him,’ Dragi noted. ‘So… to the Galata shipyard, next.’

  Skiouros felt a grin slide across his face. ‘And with your position in the navy…’

  Parmenio chuckled. ‘That’s the other news. Tell him, Dragi.’

  The Romani gave a modest shrug. ‘Kemal Reis has been honoured personally by the sultan for his work with the refugees of Spain. He has been made kapudan paşa – the empire’s senior admiral. He is to captain the great galley – Göke – which we saw in drydock. And with his promotion, I am to be made captain of his former ship. I am now Dragi Reis.’

  ‘And that means no Turk is going to stand in his way at the naval shipyard, not even a paşa,’ Parmenio grinned. Nothing brought out his positive side like a conversation about ships.

  ‘So we go to take on this king-breaker, then?’

  Dragi nodded. ‘In the morning. He will be able to reveal the identity of the man in place in Selim’s court.’

  ‘I do find myself wondering whether we are simply delaying their plans for another day,’ Parmenio mused. ‘Have you given thought to marshalling your Romani, arming them, then simply heading south to Sulukule to wipe out your opposition? It seems a less elegant solution to your problem, but a lot simpler. And now we know exactly where they are based.’

  Dragi shook his head. ‘There are many reasons, my friend. Firstly, there will be no other day. This is their only chance and we only have to halt their plans this once. When the festival is over, the princes will return to their own sanjaks to govern their lands, and the next time they meet will likely be the succession on Bayezid’s demise. If we stop it now, we stop it for good. And as for why we do not start a war: remember that these opposition are Romani, like myself. They may be misguided and driven by falsehoods, but that does not mean that I am willing to systematically exterminate an entire colony of my own people. Better we deal with this as a surgeon deals with disease – small, precise cuts that leave the body healthy.’

  Skiouros nodded. ‘The authorities in the city would take a very dim view of a civil war being prosecuted within the walls right under their nose, even if they are not threatened by it. Dragi’s right. Tomorrow: the king-breaker. Then that gives us almost two days to find and remove the man in Selim’s court.’

  He looked at his friends and realised that Diego was half-listening to him at best, his gaze aimed through the broken panes of the window.

  ‘See anything, Diego?’

  The Spaniard turned slowly and shook his head. ‘I thought I saw movement across the courtyard, but only a glimpse. It certainly wasn’t Korkut’s soldiers, and there were no torches. It was probably an old dark curtain flapping in the breeze.’

  ‘Or a black cloak?’ mused Parmenio darkly. ‘Suddenly I’m feeling a lot less comfortable here than I was. Skiouros needs that shoulder seeing to somewhere a bit healthier than this. How’s the captive.’

  ‘Not a threat,’ said Dragi with leaden finality, leaving none of them unsure as to his fate. ‘Come. We will return to Balat for the night. And tomorrow we will face and defeat the keystone of the opposition.’

  Chapter twelve – Of the King-breaker

  May 27th - Two days to the festival

  ‘WHAT is the matter with you, Diego? I’ve never seen anyone look so tense. You’re like torsion artillery – wound up so tight you’re positively vibrating.’

  The Spaniard’s head snapped around to Skiouros’ comment, and his eyes were narrow, suspicious, even then. ‘I can feel eyes on us, Skiouros. I thought I felt it at the hospital last night, and I never feel comfortable now in Balat. And I feel that same sensation now. I would wager my arm that we are being observed, though I fear that, that being the case, I may well need the arm soon.’ As if to add weight to his words, his fingers closed around his belt where his sword hilt would be, were he armed.

  Skiouros glanced round at the buildings crowding in on this wide avenue and the looming city wall on their left, behind which the Golden Horn teemed with life. There were few people around, and even with Skiouros’ practiced and shrewd eye, he could identify no signs of pursuit or observation. ‘There’s nothing there, Diego. You’re letting your nerves get the better of you.’

  ‘Better nervous and prepared than blasé and dead,’ the Spaniard replied flatly.

  ‘I have to say,’ Parmenio said in an unusually subdued tone, ‘that I am feeling less than comfortable in our current surroundings myself.’

  ‘That,’ Skiouros smiled cruelly, ‘is because this used to be the Venetian quarter in the days of the emperors. What you’re feeling is the wraiths of all your Italian competitors trying to swipe the ducats from your purse with ghostly hands.’

  Parmenio shivered. ‘Stop that.’

  ‘We should have taken one of the private boats upstream near the Romani quarter. This is too exposed.’ Diego’s suspicious glance raked the buildings to their right again.

  ‘That would have been foolish. You know now that the Hospitallers are using them. And we are above-board and here on official business, so we use the ferry like good citizens.’

  ‘Quiet, all of you,’ Dragi hissed and turned to their escort. In addition to the four of them, given the potential for attacks by their enemies following the foiling of the Korkut plans, Dragi’s commune had sent a small party of half a dozen of their more martial number to accompany the group, led by Dimo, the younger eastern Romani with the hare lip who had sat counsel with them each time they had planned during the week. It seemed, from what Skiouros had gleaned, that the young man had gained much vaunted military experience fighting for the empire among the voluntary azap troops against the Mamluk incursions of Anatolia a decade ago. As such, the community turned to him and his men when force of arms might become necessary. Despite the lack of apparent evidence that they were in any danger, Skiouros couldn’t help but feel slightly more secure with the half dozen muscular fighters in their company. Dragi leaned towards the young leader.

  ‘What do you think?’

  The gangly, hare-lipped former me
rcenary glanced left and right. ‘We are being watched by a hundred sets of eyes, but I sense no hostility among them.’ He looked to the two of his men who were leading the group through the streets. ‘Tigran? Kulagyoz?’ Both men shook their heads, their eyes still on their surroundings.

  ‘They’re wrong,’ Diego mumbled, his eyes still darting about. ‘I wish we had our blades with us.’ Skiouros nodded his heartfelt agreement with that sentiment. Despite Dragi being out here in an official capacity, it would have been too dangerous to wear swords or even to carry knives in public, especially given the clearly non-Turkish origin of several of the party. Skiouros had enquired anxiously as to how they intended to attack a high official, who was no doubt well-guarded, if they were unarmed and Dragi had simply answered with that usual mysterious smile. ‘God will provide,’ he had said. ‘And if God does not, then either luck or the Turkish navy will.’

  ‘Whether we’re being observed or not,’ Parmenio said quietly, drawing Skiouros back to their current worries, ‘we are now in the heart of the city in plain view of hundreds of people. No one in their right mind would try an ambush here.’

  ‘All it takes is one well-placed arrow,’ the Romani replied in a menacing tone, ‘and no more Genoese merchant, with precious little chance of the marksman being found. Stay alert.’

  Parmenio gave a slightly nervous laugh, his eyes ranging around the windows once more, searching for hidden archers. The ten men walked on cautiously but at speed, passing the Saint John gate and finally reaching the Perama gate just before the great Neorion harbour. All walks of city life passed back and forth through this busy portal unchecked by the janissaries on watch, for the Perama gate led down to the wharf from which the ferry departed for Galata every half hour throughout the hours of daylight. The ten of them passed through the great sea walls and down towards the wide, shallow-bottomed caique that so regularly plied the calm waters of the Golden Horn. Tall fences funnelled the crowd to a narrow point, where a lesser official sat at a desk with a couple of functionaries and three evil-looking, watchful janissaries, taking coin from the citizens in return for passage, and depositing the money in a heavy iron box at the feet of the soldiers, where even the most daring thief would fear to tread.