Something moved at the back of Yashim’s mind. “When you say-suspended?”

Palewski busied himself with the ice and the jug, murmuring something Yashim could not quite catch. “Half thinking of going away for a while, Yashim.”

Yashim blinked. “Up the Bosphorus?” He found it hard to imagine Istanbul without Stanislaw Palewski.

“Farther. I don’t know.” Palewski pulled a face. “Not that I have a crowd of options. A felon in my dismembered country. Wanted by half the despots in Europe for upholding Poland’s dignity in a foreign court.” He shook his head. “Paris? Rome? London’s safest, I suppose.” He groaned. “Boiled beef and gin.”

Yashim smiled. “Pera’s pretty horrible in summer.”

Palewski scratched his ear. “I mean it, Yash,” he said gloomily. “The inaugural ball.”

Yashim laughed. “You have six weeks to get ready.” It was common knowledge that the young sultan would mark his accession by throwing a ball for dignitaries foreign and domestic on their return to the city. “I expect you’ve still got that glorious coat you wore last time-unless the moths have got it, too?”

“It’s not about moth, Yashim.” Palewski looked grave. “It’s the new sultan.”

“I’ve just met him,” Yashim said. “He has a cold.”

“Fascinating stuff, Yashim. Maybe I could take a caique up to the British embassy and cadge an evening in the gardens on the strength of it.” The ambassador picked moodily at the grass. “Sultan Mahmut may have been a reformer, but he had a proper sense of his own power. He waited almost twenty years to achieve it, but by the time he was big enough to do what he liked, I was a sort of fixture. He liked the way it broke the Russians’ hearts to have me turn up at his functions.”

“He liked you,” Yashim said.

“That doesn’t count in politics. Anyway, he’s gone.”