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once been hatred in him; it
had passed. It had ebbed away slowly, like a receding flood, leaving only its
shining imprint in his mind, the dangerous outline of bitterness and rage. These
days he walked warily where the flood had been, trying to recognize old
landmarks, to piece together the elements of an honorable life out of the
jumble of everyday objects he encountered.
    Yashim
squeezed his eyes shut tight, to focus on the order of the day. He had to visit
the seraskier. Standing by that cauldron in the wee hours of yesterday morning,
there were any number of questions he'd been too surprised to ask. What had the
soldiers been doing on the night they disappeared? What did their relatives
think of the affair? Who were their friends? Who were their enemies?
    Then
there was the cauldron to reckon with: the oddest and most sinister part of the
whole affair. He needed to visit the soup makers to see what they had to say.
    As
for the girl in the palace and the valide's jewels--that was, you might say, a
more private affair. In every family home, there lay a region that was harem,
forbidden to outsiders. In the Topkapi palace, this region was almost an acre
in size, a warren of corridors and courtyards, of winding stairs and balconies
so cunningly contrived that it was sealed from the world's gaze as effectively
as if it had been built in the great Sahara, instead of in the middle of one of
the greatest cities in the world.
    With
the rarest exceptions, no man but the sultan himself, or men of his family,
could enter the harem.
    Yashim
was one of the exceptions. He could go where no ordinary man could go, on pain
of death.
    It
did not do to make too much of the palace harem itself. It wasn't the harem
that made eunuchs, though many of them worked there, and the Black Eunuchs, led
by the kislar agha, effectively controlled it. Unlike Yashim, unlike many of
the White Eunuchs, unlike the castrati of the Vatican, the Black Eunuchs of the
palace were utterly clean-cropped: shaved to the quick in a single sweep of the
sickle blade wielded by a slaver in the desert. Each of them now carried a
small and exquisite silver tube, tucked into a fold of their turban, for
performing the most modest of bodily functions.
    Yet
men had been gelded for service in the time of Darius and Alexander, too. Ever
since the idea of dynasties arose, there had been eunuchs who commanded fleets,
who generaled armies, who subtly set out the policies of states. Sometimes
Yashim dimly saw himself enrolled in a strange fraternity, the shadow-world of
the guardians: men who since time immemorial had held themselves apart, the
better to watch and serve. It included the eunuchs of the ancient world, and of
the Chinese emperor in Beijing. What of the Catholic hierarchy in Europe, which
had supplied the celibate priests who served the kings of Christendom? The
service of barren men, like their desires, began and ended with their death;
but in life they watched over the churning anthills of humankind, inured from
its preoccupation with lust, longevity, and descent. Prey, at worst, to a
fondness for trinkets and trivia, to a fascination with their own decline, a
tendency to hysteria and petty jealousies. Yashim knew them well.
    As
for the harem, none of the women there could come or go at will, of course. So
Yashim's current business in there was, in that sense, a more private affair. Even
time, Yashim reflected, ran differently on the inside: the harem could wait. Outside,
as the seraskier had warned, he had just nine ordinary days.
    Brushing
the crumbs of the
borek
from his lips, Yashim decided that he would
visit first the guild, and then pay his call on the seraskier. Afterward,
depending on what he learned, he would go and question various people in the
harem.
    Which
is why when a little boy darted into the cafe a few minutes later, red faced
and puffing and bearing an urgent note for Yashim from the seraskier, the cafe
owner shook his head and gestured helplessly up