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line to buy nuts hot from his fire.
    The women stayed close to their men, but their eyes were trained on a single kayik, flying fast across the water. Near-naked men, their legs and loins wrapped in gauzy white breeches, rowed the Princess Esma Sultan across the Golden Horn to the Aya Sofya. The men’s skin was oiled and their muscles gleamed in the sun. The Princess reclined under an awning, joined by her two favorite handmaids, the freckled Nazip and always veiled Bezm-i Alem, the “Jewel of the Universe.”
    It was rumored that Bezm-i Alem was so beautiful that if any man gazed upon her unveiled, he could never love another woman. Still the other women of Esma Sultan’s harem laughed barefaced at the sun and exchanged whispers at the beauty of the oarsman, who pulled the kayik gracefully across the water.
    It was treason to criticize the Sultan or the Sultan’s favorite sister, so knowing looks and gasps at the bare faces and necks of the women sufficed to convey how the Princess’s court brazenly disregarded the word of the Prophet. Esma Sultan’s lack of morals was notorious and made clear yet again each Friday before prayers.
    But today the Princess appeared with her face covered in blue silk. Had there been a death in the Royal Family? Some favorite niece or nephew? Or had the Sultan drowned one of his once-favored wives?
    The chestnut man chewed pensively on one of his wares and wondered what the sudden change might portend.

    Ivan Postivich sat on the edge of his cot, inspecting his saber. There were nicks and scrapes that could not be repaired, and he considered each with a flash of memory.
    In the Sultan’s service, fighting the Greeks in Peloponnesus or the Russians in Wallachia, he had nicked and scored his sword a dozen times. He remembered the sound of a skull cleaved in two, the blade sinking into the brain as swiftly as a knife into a melon. He had fought off starving looters who had tried to rob the Sultan’s shipment of French champagne and fine brandy, his sword slicing into the backs of their thighs as they ran, attempting in vain to flee their death.
    Indeed, the fame of Ahmed Kadir had reached the inner court of Topkapi and inflamed the jealousy of the young prince Mahmud, long before he became Sultan. The paths of their lives ran surprisingly close. The sultan and the soldier were of the same age and the soldier was trained and educated within the palace.
    Even as a boy, Ahmed Kadir worked with the wildest of horses and won the grudging respect of the Turkish Master of the Horse. It was his skill in the war game of cirit that had won the highest praise, for despite his size Ahmed Kadir was agile as an acrobat on his horse, ducking the pointed spears that whistled over him.
    “He climbs around on a horse like a monkey hanging from a tree!” marveled Sultan Selim III, watching a cirit game. “What agility he has!”
    “Truly an ape,” muttered Mahmud.
    The Horse Master cleared his throat and addressed Selim III, turning away from the young prince Mahmud.
    “Ahmed Kadir will one day become a great cavalryman, my Sultan, and though he was born in the northlands, he is Turkish in his instincts. He will save his horse and stand on the field if he thinks there is an advantage infighting on foot. The infantry respect him as much as the cavalry—he will inspire the Ottoman armies on the battlefield and win many battles, if Allah wills it. He is a leader, and the soldiers look to him to follow.”
    Mahmud remembered these words when his cousin Selim was butchered by rogue Janissaries who attacked the Topkapi. At that time Ahmed Kadir was only a boy himself, and his orta was on a foreign campaign in the borderlands of Wallachia, fighting the Russians. It was only a faction of the soldiers who supported Mahmud’s half brother, Mustafa IV, in the struggle for the throne and carried out the assassination. Still when Mahmud closed his eyes, he saw the Janissaries who searched the Topkapi to kill him as