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hers—”
    Andrea managed to stop his mouth and his frantic pacing. His insides wobbled like a child’s top losing its spin and equilibrium. He took a seat to keep himself from falling over.
    The seat Andrea took was the edge of the cot which he and Sofia had had no trouble turning into a bower of bliss. In order to make himself sit now on this compacted mattress laid over sagging strings, it was necessary for him to brush a score of webbed associations from his mind. He had to realize that others, many others, had used this room for many purposes. The stench of such purposes seemed to creep out of the plaster and splitting boards to assault his nostrils. He joined himself to the rest of unbenedicted humankind with this thought, and to be no better than the redundancy of the copulating, groveling, self-interested race did not do much for his own esteem.
    To even settle himself down to the level of this stone-like creature before him—not male, not female, nor yet quite beast—that was too much to be endured. But having endured news that he would not see the revelation of Sofia, anything else was easy enough to take.
    “I suppose there is something she wants you to tell me.” Andrea found the words at last.
    “There is.”
    “Something more than that she won’t see me, else she simply wouldn’t send you at all.”
    “I am merely considering—how much of this you need to know.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, tell it all,” Andrea spouted. “You can give me no greater sorrow than you already have.”
    The great eunuch shifted on his little chair with a dangerous creak and there seemed not air enough in the narrow room for the two of them. “The tale has little to do with my lady.”
    “Tell it, ustadh, and get it over with.”
    The green in the eunuch’s eyes shifted towards the flimsy boarding of the wall over Andrea’s head.
    Andrea resisted the temptation to turn and follow the khadim’s eyes, afraid any sign of nerves would make the gelding skittish and drag the story out even longer.
    “My lady bade me,” the eunuch began, “relate to you something that happened to me yesterday morning.”
    “Nothing else?” What happened to a eunuch could be of little consequence anywhere.
    “Nothing else,” Ghazanfer replied. “But attend me first before you turn a deaf ear. Are you aware that I was once guardian to Mihrimah Sultan, Selim’s sister?”
    Andrea shook his head. He still couldn’t discern any reason why he should hear the tale, drawn with such difficulty from the huge freak, as if his mind were shut by a door that had not been swung in years. But Sofia, Andrea reminded himself, trusted this creature.
    So Andrea worked up more concern in order to say, “I beg you, ustadh, continue.”
    “It was almost six years ago now, when Selim, our present master, was as yet only crown prince.”
    Andrea noted the eunuch did not recite the customary formula praying for an eternal reign when he spoke Selim’s name. Did this betray treasonous thoughts against the master who owned him, body and soul? It certainly would explain why the eunuch felt a need to confess something he dared not speak even to others of his kind, perhaps to no other breathing soul. Andrea scooted closer to the hard edge of the cot.
    “There was in those days a youth among the imperial pages whose fair features and gentle manners won him a friend in everyone he met. He was all but guaranteed quick advancement among Suleiman’s—Allah keep his soul—closest attendants. But then Selim came to Constantinople on an obligatory visit to his father—may Allah rain blessings on our departed sovereign—and it was not two days before Suleiman’s son claimed the child as his attendant as well. And Selim demands a little more of his favorites than our departed master ever did. Alas, the poor boy’s severe Christian upbringing did not allow him to accept the master’s attentions with anything but utter distaste. And, you must know, Selim is not