“I make the landing point on the wall, then perhaps reaching the ground five or ten yards behind,” I said.

  Captain Karaca’s voice responded from the cloud of black smoke above me on the hilltop. “I had best send a message down, then. Go and tell the bey that was the greatest charge I care to risk without the bombard breaking its chocks.”

  I went down the hill to find Bey Ishak. This was not accomplished quickly. When I did so, he thanked me for the news, then asked me to calculate which would be of greater weight: A round stone of solid granite or a water-filled cylinder of equal diameter but half again the length, with walls of three fingerwidths of bronze cased with a coin-thick layer of silver. My education had included the principles of Archimedes and Euclid, but I did not know the density of each of the three other materials in relation to water.

  Treating the assignment with full seriousness but unwilling to admit my ignorance, I spent an hour with coins and pebbles and a bowl that I marked with scratches on the side before returning with an answer based on my measurements. After committing the results to memory, I went around the camp to find Bey Ishak, finding him in close conference with Mevlana, who was talking about fire magic.

  “The cylinder will be lighter by one part in ten,” I said. Then, recalling something my father had said when speaking about the dangers of fast flight low to the water, I added a caveat. “If the cylinder is to be fired out of a bombard, the shock will go right through the water from lid to lid. At high speed of impact, water becomes like stone.”

  “Your calculation of quantity accords closely with most of the others. The other, though… I had not heard of such a thing before.” Bey Ishak paused, then turned to Mevlana. “Have you heard of water becoming like stone, other than by freezing cold?”

  Mevlana hesitated. “I am not well-versed in water magic, but I did study under a master of the four elements. He told me that water has many mysteries.”

  The bey turned back to me. “Who told you this mystery about water and impacts of great speed?”

  “My father,” I answered, and immediately wished I did not, both because revealing any of my father’s secrets seemed disloyal and because of the way the bey’s face contorted and then fell studiously still. Mevlana simply looked confused; he did not know much of my parentage, for even when I called myself the Dragon’s son, I usually gave that epithet in my native speech; to Mevlana, it was simply another foreign name, detached from any meaning or history.

  “Thank you for your calculations, Vlad,” Bey Ishak said, shaking his head. Then he turned to Mevlana. “Go at once to Iskender—tell him the weight is suitable, if barely, but that shock may open the lid if it is built as a simple cylinder. He cannot make it heavier, but he must make an effort to ensure that it is strengthened powerfully against a shock from its main material payload within—even if it means he must reduce the quantity contained a little bit. If we lose a little of the immediate destructive effect, it is better than the canister breaking apart prematurely. The resinous fire will cling to the cage regardless. Tell him the detailed explanation that the princeling said; but say that it is what I have said, the words will mean more to him if you say they come from me.”

  Mevlana hesitated. “You ask me to lie to Iskender?”

  “It is a small lie, a useful one for the saving of time.” The bey shook his head. “He is your peer—would you credit the princeling with knowledge of arcane secrets of water, or would you brush off the concern and proceed with your original plan?”

  Mevlana nodded slowly. “I would not credit the princeling with true knowledge, as he has no magic.”

  “He has done no magic,” Bey Ishak said, glancing at me briefly before raising a finger. “And has not been permitted to practice any magical talents he may have. But he may still know secrets kept close to the Vlachs, including the magical secrets of his father, and he may some day have magic of his own.”

  “I did not think that property of water to be a secret,” I said, apologetically. “Just perhaps one easily forgotten.”

  “Or you would not have given it away, I warrant.” Bey Ishak said with a frown. “I wonder what other of your father’s secrets you might hold—surely there are others.”

  The bey was right, and for that reason, I could not possibly let the statement stand. I reared back my head in shock, speaking angrily. “As one of his officers, I cannot be anything but a loyal servant of the sultan—I am just as loyal as any Turk, even if I was born Roman. But I cannot know what exactly it is that you do not know, not until it becomes clear to me that such knowledge has been overlooked.”

  The bey stared at me for a minute, and then his expression softened, one side of his mouth twisting wryly. “My apologies, Dragon’s son. It is sometimes difficult for the faithful to credit the honor of those who cling to older ways. But in truth, I should trust that you are as loyal to the sultan as many Osman nobles, and on this mission of conquest, you have performed good service to the Sultanate.”

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  Mevlana frowned but swallowed whatever sour words he would have spoken and instead departed without another word—he had already lingered long enough after being given his orders to qualify as insubordinate, whether the bey chose to measure insubordination by delay or by objectionable questions.

  Iskender hefted the mallet in a two-handed grip, tracing a slow overhead arc to the phoenix stone embedded in the butt end of the bombard. I kept my index fingers plugged firmly in my ears as Iskender reversed the arc and held the mallet on his shoulder, chanting too quietly for me to hear with plugged ears. A tracery of azure light shimmered up and down the silver wire that wrapped both the handle and the head, a pale blue shade that closely matched the sky. A trio of matching silver wires were strung across the surface of the phoenix stone, looping into the barrel to contact the projectile within. On one side of the mallet’s head, the wires had been mashed flat by the test swings proofing the hammer, and the azure glow slowly concentrated there.

  Then Iskender swung. There was a bright flash of azure light along the line of the barrel and a gout of fire that belched from the muzzle, then black smoke billowed out. A couple of heartbeats later, the projectile sailed cleanly above the wall, too high to cause any damage to the fortifications, and landed.

  “It cleared the wall above by at least twenty yards—landing perhaps sixty yards beyond,” I shouted, turning back to look up the hill at Bey Ishak and Captain Karaca. “The line of direction is barely changed from before; it passed over close to the right edge of the notch the last shot put in.”

  While Karaca’s expression was glum, the bey was smiling as he tried to wave thick, black smoke out of his face. He coughed once before speaking. “Mark the point of the landing, Dragon’s son—what do you see?”

  I put the spyglass back on my face, looking at the city and the near slope of the hill within. “Fire—I see three buildings have caught, and there is a round crater that holds a little lake of fire. Debris is scattered across the streets. And there is something gleaming within the fire—one part of it is moving against the wind.”

  “The ifrit is still tied to the pieces of its cage, then. Good.” Bey Ishak coughed and then raised his own spyglass, the cloud of smoke at the top of the hill having thinned enough to make the exercise useful. “Wonderful, wonderful. Go down, get your horse and a flag of parley, and make ready to ride out. But come up here before you do; I will have chosen words for my next message to the city.”

  I was met outside the wall by only one man this time, the colorfully dressed one who had been silent during our previous meeting. “I come bearing a message from the bey,” I said. “I am to wait for a reply, if needed, but only while the sun stays above the hills to the west. He is willing to hold fire for that long.”

  “Speak your message, then; I will deliver it within.” The colorfully dressed man had an accent that marked him as not local, though it was thin enough that he was easily understood. When he ended his statement, he glanced up at the wall, as did I. There were men stationed on either side of the damaged portion of the wall, the workers seeking to reinforce the damaged position, and the columns of smoke still rising from within the city. “And your first message, as well. The respite is appreciated.”

  “The bey still wishes a prompt surrender. He understands that you may not be impressed with the results of our first few bombardments due to the difficulty in calculating the correct range of fire from a heightened and angled emplacement and the variance in weight between explosive shells and solid shot. He is confident that his engineers will have the ranges and angles figured correctly for the targeting of your western wall via enchanted explosive rounds from the heights in another three to five days of preliminary bombardment.”

  I raised a second finger and continued. “He is also confident that you may infer from the presently observed effects of bombardment that once we have those ranges and angles correctly calculated, the walls themselves may shortly thereafter be completely reduced quite swiftly.”

  A third finger while I took another breath. “Thirdly, he is confident that you have neither the artillery with which to respond nor the army with which to sally forth in such time, nor will the Undying Emperor provide aid in such time—if, indeed, at all.” I stopped, lowering all three fingers, and with them, my hand.

  For a moment, the man did not reply, frowning. Then he nodded very slightly, a nod directed surely at himself rather than anyone else, and repeated the message back to me word for word before adding his own question. “Is that the whole message?”

  “That is the whole of what the bey asked me to speak verbatim,” I said. “He did tell me that he expected me to wait until sunset only to receive a negative reply while you work on building back the outer wall—so, I have brought with me some food and a flask of wine.”

  “I thought the Turks were forbidden wine,” the man said.

  “Some Turkish soldiers drink it anyway,” I said. “But I am not a Turk—and thus, it falls upon me to assist the Turks in disposing of requisitioned retsina.”

  When the colorfully dressed man returned, I had finished my first sandwich but was only a little of the way through the flask of wine. He was accompanied by a familiar-looking man in black.

  I stoppered the flask and sprang to my feet, bowing deeply enough for good manners, but not so deep as to be engaging in obeisance. “Well met, Theophilus Romulides,” I said. “You have returned in good time—had you a response ready before I delivered my message?”

  Theophilus’s teeth did not appreciably part as he spoke, his jaw firm with distaste. “We have duly deliberated, discussed, and decided a response.”

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