Pasha's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  The ordinary folk of the city milled about them uncertainly, not sure how to deal with this odd group which clearly contained foreigners among their number, yet also a man in a naval uniform and several rough looking specimens. As the party moved forward to the desk the crowd generally afforded them a little extra space, and the official at the table looked up at them in a combination of boredom and uncertainty. ‘How many?’ he asked tersely.

  ‘Ten,’ Dragi replied, gesturing to the entire party, and whipped from his belt a set of papers which he passed to the man. The bureaucrat peered myopically at the documents and looked up with a slightly perplexed expression. ‘You and your crew are free to use all city amenities without charge, of course, Dragi Reis…’ His face creased into a frown and he indicated the rest of the party. ‘These are your crew?’

  Dragi gave him a hard look and collected his papers from the desk. ‘Thank you for your assistance,’ he replied and gestured for the others to follow. The janissaries barely registered this motley collection of sailors as they passed and boarded the caique, and the ten men were soon sitting quietly and waiting for departure.

  Skiouros watched the crew going about their business and, as the ferry launched from the jetty, slopping out into the Golden Horn, he mused on what differences five years had made. Not to the city, of course. The city was little different – a few more minarets had risen since his departure, and the more crumbling, ancient ruins of the Byzantine buildings had been replaced by modern, stone Ottoman edifices, and of course, Balat had flourished with the influx of Jewish refugees. But really the city was much the same. What had changed was Skiouros, and how he perceived the city around him. In the old days Istanbul, as it was known to the bulk of the populace, had been a conquered city, ruled by a strict, if relatively just, enemy. It was a warren of streets occupied by poor, disenfranchised Greeks and smug, superior Turks. He had known of most aspects of life and authority in the city, but had seen them solely as targets for thievery or sources of punishment, considering them only ever from a personal, selfish viewpoint.

  Not once in those days had he given a moment’s consideration to what it was to be a citizen, be he foreigner or Turk. Living now, strangely, without fear of retribution for petty theft, was opening his eyes to the many facets of life in the city, how it all interacted and worked, despite the deep rifts in culture that should by all rights prevent such thriving. Of course, he himself had had to change to appreciate these things. In the last five years, Skiouros had faced both inner demons and real ones in several forms, and had encountered what he could only describe as both the most noble and most despicable deeds of man in the process. He had learned to trust and to give his word, knowing at last that his word was actually worth something.

  It was a little saddening to think that after a decade of quarrelling with his uptight, authority-and-honour-obsessed sibling, now, when there was no hope of the pair of them speaking again until they sat in the presence of God, finally Skiouros had become something that Lykaion would have been proud to call brother. Indeed, five years of confrontation seemed oddly to have turned the low street thief Skiouros into a strange reflection of his janissary brother. He reached up to rub his sore shoulder, now tended and bandaged and far improved, though still sore.

  I miss you, Lykaion.

  ‘What is your plan when we reach the shipyard?’ the young Romani escort enquired of Dragi, drawing Skiouros’ thoughts back to the present and the approaching Galata shoreline.

  ‘We must confront the king-breaker and we must pry from him the identity of the assassin in the Tekfur palace without letting him escape the complex. If he makes it out into the city streets and he is aware that we know of him, then he will disappear, and all hope of our success will vanish with him.’

  The young Romani nodded. ‘Then I am torn as to my course. You may have sore need of all of us in the shipyards but if his containment is that crucial then my men would perhaps be better placed outside the exits of the place to catch any fleeing personnel?’

  Dragi nodded slowly. ‘There are two main roads leading from the shipyard and a few minor places of egress. Between you all, you and your men could make sure no one leaves unobserved.’ He bit his cheek and frowned. ‘I will draw less suspicion entering the yards without a large force anyway. I can claim a tour for inspection with a few men, but ten could be viewed as a danger, so I will just take my friends here in. You create a cordon outside, and if anyone who could be a paşa makes to flee, bring him down and wait for our reappearance.’

  The ferry touched the end of the jetty with a bump and then ground alongside, slowing until the sailors secured the lines and ran out the ramp. Waiting patiently for a few of the higher-class travellers to leave the vessel first, Dragi and his party strode out onto the wooden boards and made their way to the shore. Despite the ease of their journey so far, Diego seemed if anything to have increased in tension and suspicion as they reached this trans-fluvial district, and his eyes darted everywhere as the ten of them strode along the shore beneath the walls of Galata, which rose high and strong to match their counterparts across the water at the city proper.

  The work-sheds and roofed dry-docks of the great Galata shipyards loomed like the red-tiled carapaces of a bale of titanic tortoises sunning themselves on the shoreline, all surrounded by a high perimeter wall. Further along the shore and close to the naval headquarters, as the Golden Horn narrowed slightly, the looming, brooding shapes of the new naval prison and arsenal sat, the latter still in the final stages of construction. As the group passed from the more civic area of Galata – the heart of the suburb sealed off within its ancient defensive walls which marched up the slope away from the water – the young Romani nodded to Dragi and made a number of gestures and guarded comments to his men in their own language. At the commands, the six men melted away into side alleys, leaving the four of them approaching the eastern gate to the shipyards in an almost deserted street. It struck Skiouros as odd that despite the janissaries’ naval branch having two men on the gate to prevent unauthorised access, there was little in the way of actual defence, and the two leaves of the gate itself stood wide open, granting them a clear view of the organised chaos that was the empire’s greatest naval installation. Within the walls, almost every inch of space that was not occupied by an actual building was filled with piles of timber and other stores, drums of ropes and even – most surprising of all – a selection of cannon of different size, recently cast and as yet unencumbered with fittings, awaiting transport to the kadirga that would bear them across the seas.

  The janissaries paid a little more attention as the four men approached, their curiosity piqued by the odd makeup of the group. Despite Dragi’s naval uniform, the two men demanded his papers as he came to a halt. Once more whipping out his orders, the Romani waited patiently, his hands behind him and tucked into his belt as the janissaries checked his papers. Satisfied as to his identity and authority, they welcomed Dragi Reis to the shipyard and told him that if he was seeking his new command, he would have to report to the yard-emin’s office and see the secretary or one of his clerks. Skiouros nodded his understanding.

  ‘And where would the emin himself be found?’ he asked, his voice level and professional. ‘As a new captain I need to make my presence known.’

  The janissary shrugged, but his companion at the far side of the gate gestured to the nearest of the large buildings. ‘The paşa is in the great dock, reviewing Göke, the new ship.’

  ‘A ship I would like to take a look at.’

  The janissary gave him a knowing smile. Sailors were always so sentimental about ships. ‘The emin-paşa will not mind you having a look around. You are not the first to visit, nor will you be the last.’

  Dragi thanked the man and gave a commanding wave to his three companions, leading them into the shipyard. As they moved towards the great dry dock, open to the sea but walled and roofed, Skiouros peered at the piles of goods all around him. Ropes and timber from Anatolia, cannon
cast in the Bulgar lands to the north, local Thracian pitch and all manner of goods imported from within the empire and even beyond its bounds. The piles of goods alone were enough to make a merchant salivate and start calculating values and as Skiouros cast a sidelong glance at Parmenio, his friend seemed almost buzzing with possibility as he took in the various goods.

  All around them, poor, scruffy slaves – infidels taken captive during decades of Ottoman warfare – moved about the yard, lugging goods and stacking crates alongside their free Turkish workman counterparts. Skiouros tried not to look the slaves in their hopeless, dead eyes. Slaves were a rare sight in Ottoman lands, being hard to come by legally and too much trouble for most individuals to keep. But at the oars of Turkish trade ships and in great workplaces such as these, captured Christians and even the strange men from the east of Ottoman lands were at work, helping bolster that same empire that had enslaved them in the first place. Not aboard naval ships, of course – their oarsmen needed to be able to fight in an engagement – but on a trade caique, slaves were not uncommon at the oar.

  The huge building that housed Göke dominated the near end of the vast shipyard and the door that provided access stood closed but unattended. After all, with all points of access to the yard itself under the watchful eyes of the naval janissaries, and the shoreline watched and patrolled and in many places walled off, there was almost no chance of anyone being here unauthorised. Still, despite that, Skiouros kept his head down and his gaze lowered as a small detachment of janissaries trooped past them in dress uniform, their hats displaying a stylised ship on the crest identifying the orta to which they belonged as a naval one. Despite the fact that he had every right to be here in the entourage of a new ship’s captain, old habits died hard.

  The doors loomed ahead and, despite their plainness and mundanity, to Skiouros they might as well have been leaden tomb doors or the gates to hell, for he felt his pulse begin to race as he neared them, the hair standing proud on the back of his neck as shivers passed up and down his spine. Beyond that door lay his enemy. Not the unfortunate cook from the old palace, or the agents of the Papacy, or even that brutal butcher Hassan, but the king-breaker. Though his conscious mind dismissed any mysticism as drivel and he could only reason that this was another ordinary human who had been manoeuvred or manipulated by another group of Romani in much the same was as he himself, something about the fact that he was about to meet the man set him almost into a panic. Dragi and the other Romani from the shanty-house in Aksaray would have him believe that this man was a powerful force for the opposition and in some way just as critical to them as Skiouros was to Dragi’s people.

  He tried to shrug off the oddness, but it wouldn’t go. At a basic conscious level, he wanted to sneer, wanted to tell Dragi and his people that they could deal with their own problems, that there was no need for him to play any part in this huge mess. But perhaps, if he thought things through, there was. Assuming this king-breaker was a true opposite number then the two of them would be essentially impartial third parties. Perhaps that was what they had been needed for? In the same way as the king-maker and the king-breaker of the folk tale had been approached to adjudicate a succession in which they had no part, so perhaps had Skiouros and his counterpart been sought to grant a level of impartiality that the Romani themselves were unable to achieve?

  And whatever his opposite number had attempted, Skiouros had done just that. Dragi and his people believed that Selim was the future of the empire, and that neither Korkut nor Ahmet were worthy of the succession, but Skiouros had flown in the face of that, even with all Dragi’s grisly presentations. He had decided that neither Korkut nor Ahmet deserved to be removed from the running. He had stated that the succession should proceed as history intended. And consequently, he had brought Dragi and his people along that path, attempting to remove the threat to all the princes rather than concentrating on promoting Selim and thwarting his brothers. What, though, had his counterpart for the opposition decided? Clearly he favoured Ahmet, for their agents were in place for the kill with the other two princes…

  Good. He’d needed that moment of mental reasoning to prepare for what lay beyond the door. And if he’d felt a touch of uncertainty before, it had now vanished in a puff of logic. Whoever this paşa was, he needed to be stopped in order to allow the succession to run fairly.

  Dragi opened the door and stepped inside.

  The great dry dock was not nearly as busy as Skiouros had expected, but then it appeared that work on Göke was complete and all that remained was to launch her and raise the masts and rigging that lay waiting on deck. A small group of workers were coiling a rope and bagging a pile of unused wooden pegs near the door, and a second group with an overseer were checking the ramps that led down from the ship to the water but apart from them, the great shed was clear of workers.

  Not clear of other occupants, though.

  Eleven men stood atop the deck of the largest kadirga ever built, ten of them in the dress of soldiers, bearing swords at their hips, though otherwise unarmoured. One of the soldiers held tight to a standard topped by a crescent and with a limp dark-red horse tail hanging from it, signifying the presence of a paşa of the lower grade.

  And amid those ten men, close to the standard, stood the paşa in charge of the Galata shipyard himself – the king-breaker at the heart of the opposition. Skiouros stared.

  The king-breaker was not an imposing man, lithe and small in stature, dressed well, if conservatively, with an ‘affluent turban’ – a domed headpiece of white, surrounded by a bulky band of well-wrapped white linen. He could be any well-off or noble Turk in the street, but for his face.

  Skiouros became aware that Parmenio and Diego were looking back and forth between Skiouros and the king-breaker, but before the paşa had noted the presence of the new arrivals, he had turned his back and descended into the bowels of Göke with half his men, leaving the other five to guard his standard on deck.

  As those remaining five, their attention no longer held by their lord, turned to look at the four men, Skiouros tipped his head down, concealing his face before they could get a good look.

  For gazing upon the face of the king-breaker had been like looking in a dark mirror. Had Skiouros not spent five years in the desert sun of Africa and on the decks of ships open to the elements on the wide seas, he would never have bronzed as he had and his hair would never have achieved its recent golden tint. And if that had not happened, he could have passed for the twin of the man who had just descended below deck. Shudder-inducing memories filled his mind’s eye: the dream-him. The man at the heart of those terrible disguises that had been a darkened, somehow sick version of himself. Suddenly it was a great deal harder to dismiss those seemingly-prescient dreams as merely the product of Dragi’s smouldering hemp.

  Trying to ignore Parmenio and Diego’s goggling expressions, Skiouros bent, wincing at the pulling in his shoulder-wound, and picked up an oddly-shaped piece of cut-and-sanded timber, pretending to examine it closely, keeping his face down. As he caught Dragi’s face he was gratified to note that even the Romani seemed to have been thrown by this development.

  Stepping into the strange silence before the paşa’s guards could question their presence, Dragi gestured to the great ship and began to speak in Turkish, noting various aspects of its construction with the level of knowledge that only an Ottoman sailor could manage, pointing out interesting facets to the others. Despite the fact that Parmenio could understand only the occasional word and that Diego could have absolutely no idea what he was talking about, the pair of them nodded as though they were absorbing every detail, playing the part in which they had been cast with no warning. The Romani began to stroll down towards the enormous ship’s bow, in the direction of the water, still opining about the ship in a clear, knowledgeable voice. His expertise, combined with his naval uniform, seemed to allay the suspicions of the paşa’s guards and, though they continued to watch the four new arrivals, they made no attempt to que
stion them or follow them down the ship. The paşa’s men were, after all, just bodyguards. They would have little knowledge about the etiquette and authority of naval personnel within the shipyard, assuming them to be here with permission.

  As the four of them neared the bow of the vast ship, closing on the hull so that it overhung like a towering cliff, punctured at regular intervals with huge oar holes, Dragi continued to speak about the ship intermittently, but whispered in Greek between.

  ‘…three times the size of the bow of our last ship, but with the same angle to allow for speed, despite the bulk…’

  ‘That is Sincabı-paşa! The king-breaker is Sincabı-paşa!’

  ‘…and the scale of the bow is such that it should be able to hold twelve guns on two different firing levels, four of them facing forwards and eight arrayed in an arc…’

  ‘Who is Sincabı-paşa?’ hissed Skiouros, frowning at the all-too familiar part of that name.

  ‘…you’ll note how the front is built up into a massive forecastle much like the ships of the western nations…

  ‘Sincabı-paşa is the man the sultan rewarded for saving his life. The man who claimed credit for your deeds…’

  Skiouros stared as Dragi started to drone about the huge ram that protruded from the bow, almost as thick across as Skiouros was tall.

  ‘He cannot be allowed to leave the ship. This is our best chance,’ the Romani whispered between statistics.

  ‘How can we get to him, though?’ Skiouros mouthed. ‘His men guard the deck.’