After passing through the silver doors of the great throne room, I sat near the astrologer, who was speaking in low tones with an emir with a tall pointed hat.
The sultan was absent, as had become the usual pattern; less usually, the grand vizier was also absent. The throne was not empty, however; the vizier’s son-in-law, Pasha Mahmud, sat cross-legged within the seat of the throne, a position that surely would have been uncomfortable for an older or less limber man. Although a pasha, Madmud did not have a very Turkish look about him. He could easily have been Rumelian or Greek, an impression aided by the fact that his voice carried a faint but ambiguous foreign accent; the accent had been thicker when I first arrived at court, at which point he had been a barely bearded young man.
“Greetings from Rome upon the Tanais River, Your Imperial Majesty,” the herald began, bowing low.
Pasha Mahmud stood suddenly, gesturing with open hands. “Hold! I am not the sultan, and you should not address me as such. You may refer to me as Your Excellency.”
The herald straightened. “Your Excellency, please admit me to an audience with your sovereign,” he said crossly. “I was advised this was a day of imperial audience.”
“It is. I hear with the sultan’s ear. The missive you would deliver to him, you may deliver to me. His Imperial Majesty prefers not to be disturbed by routine matters.” The pasha sat back down, gesturing at the herald.
“You will deliver my missive to the sultan?” The herald looked back at the man.
“If I believe it merits his attention, I will deliver your missive to the vizier, and then he will deliver it to the sultan.” Pasha Mahmud held up a finger, continuing his explanation. “The vizier is an important man and is himself possessed of a busy schedule; for today’s audience day, I am his deputy, and so I hear with the vizier’s ear. As the vizier hears with the sultan’s ear, thus I hear with the sultan’s ear, as I previously mentioned.”
The herald frowned, holding a furled scroll in one hand. “Most honorable deputy vizier, my missive is of great importance. I was charged to deliver this into the emperor’s hands.”
“Read it to me, then.” The pasha leaned back in his seat. “As I told you, I hear with the vizier’s ear, and he hears with the sultan’s ear; if your missive is truly important, the sultan will hear it.”
The herald hesitated, his hand hovering over the wax seal of the furled scroll. “You wish me to break the seal and read this missive aloud?”
“Yes, and do not tarry further.” The pasha waved his hand. “The captain of the guard already inspected the seal when he verified your credentials, did he not?”
The herald nodded. “Yes, Your Excellency.” He cracked the seal and took a deep breath as he unfurled the scroll. Then he began to orate, his trained herald’s voice ringing within the domed arches of the grand octagonal hall and filling it with echoes. “To His Imperial Majesty Sultan Allaedin, who misnames himself Sultan of Rome, who is a son of the pusillanimous pretender Murad whose modest physical stature towered above his faithfulness as a ruler, having twice abandoned his stolen throne, who is a grandson of a fratricidal pretender by way of a she-goat, who is a great-grandson of the wife of a wretched excuse for a sultan by means of the virility of a passing stableboy, and who has been delivered this missive by the faithful hands of a herald duly appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Golden Empire, I deliver an important imperative.”
The hall was so quiet that I could hear clearly the quick breath the herald took before he continued into the main body of the missive, which laid out a long series of grievances alternated with demands, threats, and a meandering history of sorts presented with considerable detail but questionable accuracy. Long ago, Koschei had received a collection of high-born Byzantines fleeing the sack of Constantinople by Venetians, including several dozen senators and a princess; he had married the latter and been proclaimed Emperor of Rome by the former.
As the Emperor of Rome requires a Rome to rule over, he then founded a third Rome to govern from—and by founded, I mean that he renamed the city of Tanais, sitting where the Tanais River meets the Cimmerian Sea. Most still call it by that name.
The threats and demands grew broader over the course of the message, starting with a demand for withdrawal from Constantinople (“the second Rome”) on pain of “dire consequences” and concluding with a demand that the Osman retreat from Europe entirely and contain themselves within “the lands of the Trojans” or face the prospect of “begging the heartless Ming for the return of some portion of the Osman ancestral lands in the Orient.”
The herald had the rapt attention of the full court most of the way through his final sentence: “With sincere hope for a peaceful resolution of our differences and disputes, your benign neighbor Koschei, first of his name, Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans, Emperor Undying of the Golden Empire, Grand Duke of Ruthenia, King of Cimmeria, Khan of Khazaria, et cetera.”
As the litany of titles marked the end of the missive, an indistinct murmur rose up halfway through the herald’s final sentence. The murmur grew to fill the room, beginning with a susurrus of whispers and rising to a dull rumble as everyone wished to be heard by their neighbor over the rising din over the echoing of everyone else’s voices in a high-arched octagonal chamber that echoed fiercely. When the wave of sound had ebbed, the deputy vizier spoke.
“I would prefer you had paraphrased the beginning rather than the end,” Pasha Mahmud said drily. “Speaking with the voice of an emperor or not, you have spoken grave insults against His Imperial Majesty.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The herald drew back his head, clearly feeling insulted himself. He held up the scroll, pointing at the bottom. “The message ends with et cetera—if what I have spoken is an abridgement of the Undying Emperor’s words, it was an abridgement by the scribe who put pen to paper. May I be struck down if I have delivered anything more or less than the Emperor’s message as it was entrusted to me.” The man gripped an egg-shaped amulet around his neck, which thrummed audibly as it flared with light.
Pasha Mustafa came quietly up to the throne, whispering in Pasha Mahmud’s ear. The deputy vizier nodded. “The sultan is much beloved by his subjects, and the insults you have spoken, even if entrusted to you as a matter of diplomacy, place risk upon your safety in this city. The house guard will escort you to a protected place while an appropriate response is considered.” He turned his face up, addressing the whole hall rather than the herald. “And with that, I must regrettably call the audience to an early end. I cannot hear more petitions or missives today. Return tomorrow, and your voices may be then heard.”
The young pasha unfolded his legs and stood, flexing his knees for a moment while a pair of large eunuchs flanked the herald. Then he turned abruptly to walk out through a back hallway, his steps quick as the chamber flooded with noise and activity, half the courtiers turning to gossip and half immediately making their way to the exit.
The emir who had been speaking with the astrologer was in the latter half. After a nervous adjustment of his towering hat, he walked briskly away to the silver doors that would lead him out of the throne room. The astrologer turned and waved at me, and I came closer.
“I see travel in your future,” he said enigmatically.
“Is that a horoscope, or…” I gestured at the herald, who by this point had nearly reached an exit, one that led into the palace. “Or, um, about what he said.”
“Yes,” the astrologer said, which seemed to be hardly an answer.
I glared. “Which?”
“Both, naturally. I feel very confident. You may expect to depart the city within the week. Please visit me in my chamber before you leave.” The astrologer gave me an enigmatic smile, which by now I recognized as a sign I could expect no more answers for the time being.
“You cannot leave me here,” Helena said, her gaze skittering from wall to wall as if following a sea of spiders.
“This is your city,” I said. “Would you want to go away to war with me?”
“Yes. No. But I cannot stay here in the palace without you. It isn’t safe.” Helena’s hands fluttered as she turned in place, coming to rest on her abdomen. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I folded my arms around her, holding her in place and resting my chin on top of her head. “One thing at a time,” I said. “What if I put you up elsewhere in the city?”
“If… maybe… but…” Helena’s face rubbed against my chest, and she breathed more evenly, quiet for a moment. “If I am by myself, no matter where I am, I am vulnerable to anyone who wishes a lever to move you with. Or hurt you. And there is no guarantee that one of the pashas may not decide to make a different use of the lighthouse.”
“What would they think if I took a trip to the slave market to sell you off?” As she stiffened in my arms, I hastily clarified. “I would only pretend to sell you off so that they think I am no longer attached to you. But instead of actually selling you, I stash you away in a hut or house somewhere. Then, when I return, I can fetch you back, and if anyone challenges the lie, I could say I had bought you back from your new master. Since you are accounted homely in the eyes of the court, it would be no surprise that I do not value you well enough to keep you when I am ordered away.”
Helena sniffed softly, her face pressed against my chest.
“I do not mean that you are ugly,” I said. “Just that you were seen as such in court. You are lovely, from head to toe.” I kissed the top of her head, then bent down to scatter more kisses upon the rest of her, stopping only once I had, by virtue of persistence, wrested a cheerful giggle out of her. Her moods had been quite changeable lately, accompanied by rapid shifts in appetite—at some times gripped by distaste for what had come up from the kitchens and at others interested in stealing every morsel of some particular food from my plate.
Having gotten one giggle, I picked her up. “So. What do you say to my pretending to get rid of you?”
“As long as you don’t really sell me off,” she said, a nervous frown again creasing her face. “I do not like the idea of going anywhere near the slave market.”
“You are too precious,” I said, kissing her firmly on the lips. I adjusted my grip so that her legs rested in the crook of my elbow, turning my hand towards her body with open wiggling fingers. “Now, will you take my word when I declare that you are a prized jewel I will not throw away, or must I tickle you until you cry mercy?”
She giggled and writhed before my fingers touched her, the idea of being tickled enough by itself to effect a reaction. “No, no. I will take your word! Mercy!”
As I made my way across the gangway, my chest slung over my shoulder, Pasha Mustafa nodded in greeting.
“You are not bringing your leman along?” He quirked an eyebrow.
“Would that have been a good idea? I have been told women are poor luck on a ship.” I adjusted the heavy chest uncomfortably.
“Some say so, yes,” Pasha Mustafa said. “But I have seen plenty of ships sail with a mainly female slave cargo without mishap. I think the much-told misfortune is related only to the working members of the crew of a ship. There are some inconveniences with such an approach, which are why I have not brought mine, but I am old enough that my blood burns less hotly—at your age, with your first woman in hand, frankly, I expected you besotted to the point of inseparability. You certainly have spent enough time ensconced in that lighthouse.”
“She was pleasant enough,” I said with a cold expression. “But aside from the reputation for ill fortune, I doubt her company would be worth the trouble of managing her affections and appetites aboard a warship full of envious sailors and soldiers who have no shipboard leman of their own, even a homely one. So, I sold her off—I expect I can get a replacement later, easily enough.”
“A keen insight,” Pasha Mustafa said, frowning up at me with a concerned look, as if I had somehow disappointed him. “Discipline on the sea is a different matter than on land, and while the men will tolerate special privileges for a pasha or a captain, your standing is lesser as far as they are concerned—I planned to treat you as a junior officer, and the standing of a junior officer is not so great as to frighten off all challenges to your authority over your leman.”
“May I ask our destination?” I said. The weight of the chest was uncomfortable on my shoulder, and I shifted from foot to foot.
The pasha gave me a smile that did not reach his eyes. “You may ask our destination—but we are at war and not yet cast off. The captain does not even know yet. Stow your chest in the fourth cabin to the right and then make your way to the engine room—anyone you find playing at dice or cards along your way, tell them to get to work. A ship this size always has shirkers.”
