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easy on his lovers, be they male or female.
    “In his grief, the lad turned to me for consolation. Many’s the early morning he would creep into my room before the hour of prayer. I’d wash the sex from him and—perhaps—if the master had been excitable that night—signs of rougher use—signs of favor many another slave would have been proud to wear.
    “Then the lad would cry himself to sleep in my arms. Perhaps I did wrong by this. If I did—Allah is my witness—I meant no harm. Perhaps it was wrong to coddle the boy so. I should have been teaching him clearly: No love a slave enjoys can ever equal the love of his master. Unfortunately and unknown to me, my young friend began to leave Selim for my room as soon as the prince slept, without being dismissed, without learning if his master had further desire of him. One night—and perhaps Selim had been told by jealous tongues to beware—we were discovered thus—like a mother with her babe, and the master thought the worst.”
    How could Ghazanfer speak of such things so impassively? Yet he did, reciting these terrors as no more than credits and debits in an accounting book. The eunuch was indeed a monster, humanity cut from him along with the rest of it.
    “I was taken to the Seven Towers. Surely you must know of the place on the outskirts of the palace walls, and if you have not heard of the infamous tortures that occur there, I will not disturb your nobility by a rehearsal of mine. Suffice it to say it was in the eunuch’s hospital that my lady found me.”
    Andrea found his mind wandering to where Sofia might be now, if she could not be with him. He could not believe Ghazanfer would be sitting there, so intent on his tale, if his lady were any place but safely tucked inside the imperial harem. Although—and perhaps this was what the monster was trying to tell him—a harem might be anything but safe.
    Ghazanfer continued, “Selim had determined I was to suffer eternally—eternity, at least as far as he has control over it. I was to be slowly brought to the point of death, then brought to health, then death again, as long as flesh could endure it. The master came several days to watch, and brought my friend—”
    Now, with the mention of torture and in spite of his distraction over Sofia, Andrea could not help but find the taciturn eunuch’s tale gut-wrenching and compelling. He shivered, as if the Towers’ shadows touched him, and when Ghazanfer faltered, encouraged him to continue.
    “I will tell you, my young Venetian, I’d not been under this treatment long before I was at the point of seeking my own death. It was then my lady found me and, I know not by what magic, contrived to buy me as her own. I was pleased to think Selim had forgotten his jealousy in a new love, and was easily persuaded of the fact.”
    Some of what the eunuch must have endured Andrea saw in his ravaged face and much-broken fingers—things that had only repulsed before. And the young man heard it in the tenderness and utter devotion with which he approached reference to Sofia Baffo.
    Perhaps, Andrea jolted with the perversity of the thought and studied the eunuch more closely. Perhaps my jealousy of Prince Murad has been misplaced.
    “My young friend I never saw again,” the eunuch continued, “except once. That was yesterday morning. My lady contrived to have me in attendance at the minister’s secret war counsel. Through our connections in the kitchen, I was set to serve drinks, and so became a hearer of their every decision.
    “All would have gone smoothly. The viziers and generals were agreed that the entire army should be thrown against Yemen to beat those rebels back. The Mufti had given his blessing. But then—then the Sultan arrived.”
    “Sultan Selim!” Andrea could not keep from exclaiming.
    “He who, in the intervening years, has inherited his father’s place.”
    “But I thought he no longer attended either the Divan or the war counsels. That, at least,