Reign of the Favored Women by Ann Chamberlin

the floor. Was it even possible that this was why the khadim had told him that horrific story, a warning with two separate meanings?
    Andrea looked hard at the eunuch and could see no denial of such a motive behind the creature’s eyes. But he read no confirmation either.
    Ghazanfer rose to leave the room. “I have done my lady’s will. More than that I cannot say. Salaam, Barbarigo.”
    “Here, here!” Andrea shook the fears of Sofia’s betrayal from him as a dog shakes off muddy water. He rose after the eunuch, pulling the locket from his neck. “Take this and give it to your lady—from me.”
    Ghazanfer held the fragile thing in his great, torture-flattened hand. “It may be Allah’s will that she never send you another message.”
    “It was my mother’s locket, but I do not care. No woman on earth is a better heir to it—and my love—than that woman you serve.”
    “Salaam.” Ghazanfer bowed again. “I pray for peace, Barbarigo, both between our countries and within your troubled heart.”
    Tucking the locket within his breast, the eunuch turned to leave.
    “Tell her—” Andrea called after, convinced now that only Sofia’s well-justified fears for her own safety had kept her away. Fears she had defied for his sake. “—tell your lady I will not leave Constantinople without her.”
VII
    Andrea considered his options. He would go and plead peace before the Divan with such power and logic that Sofia would throw all foolish Turkish convention aside and pull back the curtain of the Eye of the Sultan. For, of course, she would be there and, no less than the viziers, be won by his speech. She would leap from there into his waiting arms...
    After that, what should happen was not so clear. Yes, there was the problem of the room and a courtyard outside filled with janissaries. But somehow that seemed a negligible factor, once he had her in his arms.
    Then there was the scenario in which he stormed the palace walls almost single-handedly, killed the mad old Sultan, and then penetrated the forbidden holy of holies. There she (he would almost write it She —divine) would be lying in sorrow and languor on a crimson couch, her golden hair like fire in luscious disarray. She would reach long, white arms out to him, her liberator, her deliverer, her true love. Again, he need not dream further than this point.
    More elegant settings stoked the fire of his brain, but practicality had whittled it down to this: an alley beside the little neighborhood mosque-converted-from-a-church a stone’s throw from the palace of the Grand Vizier. If he shifted just right, he could catch a glimpse of Sofia’s sedan through the wrought-iron gates.
    A sharp wind scudded straight off the Black Sea to attack his fingers and toes. It put out the moon as easily as one of his bravos had put out the light at the end of the alley just after the lamplighter had passed. Now the only illumination came through the heavy curtains drawn over the second-story lattices of the closest homes.
    Andrea blew on his hands to keep them flexible. They must be able to curl firmly around the hilt of his dagger.
    The call to evening prayers directly over his head brought a small congregation to the mosque. Andrea found the men who filed past his hiding place slightly unnerving, being predominantly janissaries from the exercise field. Each man carried his own rug under his arm like an open display of his soul. Andrea felt a strong urge to join them, if only for the better concealment of his own soul, one among many. But public devotion would soon make way for the privacy of tents and hearthstones.
    Already the domestic miracle of fresh-baked bread served with cabbage and earthy chickpeas seeped its scent along with a warm, greasy light through the lattice stars and the curtains overhead. It overwhelmed the smell of rankled garbage at his feet. The balconies and jutting bays of the second stories sagged like matronly breasts.
    This image made Andrea wonder.