Sultan's Wife by Jane Johnson

on his cheek. I watch in horrified fascination as the sultan takes the end of his sash and wipes it tenderly away. ‘There, that is better, is it not?’
    â€˜Yes, O Great One.’ The vizier manages a wobbly smile.
    Ismail turns to me. ‘Have you been to look at the wolf yet?’
    Damnation. In the midst of my other woes I had forgotten about the wolf. ‘I will go now, majesty.’
    The wolf looks more dead than alive. There is a large and bloody swelling on the poll of its head. Two children are standing by the cage, the eldest with a stick in its fist. Both have shaven heads but one long braid on the crown, by which the angels may catch them if they fall. No angels are ever likely to attend these children, though. The massive gold ring each wears proclaims him to be one of Ismail’s many little emirs who roam unchallenged and undisciplined about the court. And I know all too well which they are: Zidan, the empress’s eldest, six years old and rotten to the core; the other barely more than a toddler, Ahmed the Golden, a small monster-in-training.
    I sigh. ‘Well, now, Zidan, what are you doing here?’
    The older child regards me with defiant black eyes. ‘Nothing. Anyway, if I want to play with the wolf I can. Father said so.’
    â€˜I am sure your father did not give you permission to batter the poor thing to death.’
    He sneers. ‘I only gave him a little tap.’
    Ahmed laughs delightedly. ‘A big tap!’
    â€˜No need to pretend innocence with me, Zidan: remember how I found you last week.’ I give him a meaningful look. Last week I found him by the stables with an older boy, a slave, cutting out a cat’s claws by the root. Theslave looked sick: the cat had raked Zidan and he had obviously been ordered to hold her down while the little demon wielded his dagger. I had berated them both roundly and whacked the slave-boy over the head, harder than I’d meant, since I’d wished to administer the blow to Zidan, but dared not. Like his mother, he bears a grudge; like his father, he enjoys the power to deprive a man of limb or life. The cat died anyway. I buried it myself.
    â€˜If you tell I will have you killed.’ He taps the stick against his leg. It leaves bloody smears on his
qamis
. ‘I might have you killed anyway, Half-and-Half.’
    â€˜Your father prizes his cats, and the Qur’an says that those who torment them will themselves be tormented in Hell,’ I remind him.
    â€˜It does not say anything about wolves,’ he says, baring his teeth at me. They are already rotting, from the sweets he cons out of everyone.
    Thankfully, the menagerie keeper comes out now. He looks cowed, as well he might. Able to vent my spleen, I yell at him. ‘What the hell happened to it?’
    He shrugs. ‘It went for Prince Zidan when I was putting it in the cage. It seemed it would tear out his throat, but the little emir was most brave.’
    Patently a lie: the wretched creature looks as if it would have had problems even gnawing the throat of a chicken and the child had evidently been battering it through the bars. Zidan crows with laughter and runs off, towing his little brother after him, confident that he is inviolate.
    I glare at the menagerie keeper. ‘If it is not walking and snarling by midnight you will wish it had ripped
your
throat out.’ There is no point scolding him about Zidan: we both know this. I crouch to examine the beast. It really is a sorry-looking specimen, bedraggled and bitten about the legs and haunches by the dogs that brought it down. It regards me with not an iota of interest, neither raising a hackle nor even wrinkling its muzzle, as if all it waits for now is death. My heart contracts in sympathy.
    â€˜Can it even walk?’ I stand up again.
    â€˜It’s stronger than it looks,’ the keeper says defensively.
    â€˜Get it out and let me see it walk.’
    He gives me a look.