Yashim shrugged. “I buy it for the sultan.”

Palewski was quiet for a moment. “Do you remember Lefevre, the Frenchman? He stole old books.”

Yashim nodded. How could he forget? ^*

“I told you then about provenance. About how a book could become valuable if it had a story attached to it. Remember?”

Yashim remembered. Old books, guarded in some monkish scriptorium for generations, could accrue a value far beyond their worth as literature. Sometimes, it seemed, beyond the value of a human life.

“Bellini’s portrait of Mehmet could be worth a lot of money, Yash,” Palewski said. “A Bellini’s just the sort of thing some young milord would want to carry off in triumph to his big house. And a Bellini portrait of Mehmet the Conqueror-so much the better. Exotic. Story attached. Impresses his friends.”

Yashim’s chin sank onto his breast. He thought of the Iznik tiles he had rescued. To him they were priceless, irreplaceable. They were beautiful works of an artist’s skill and imagination-but in Istanbul they were treated like old bricks.

He took a sip of Polish lemonade.

“Imagine if some turbaned Ottoman dignitary arrives in Venice with instructions to buy the painting and a sultan’s purse at his disposal.”

Yashim’s nose prickled against the vodka. “I pay too much,” he said simply.

“You’re a sitting duck, Yashim. You’ll pay double for an artwork that many of Abdulmecid’s subjects will think is blasphemous. Mahmut left the Ottoman state almost bankrupt: it’s an open secret. Resid is right. This, Yashim, is a watery command.”

“But if I don’t go…” Yashim trailed off.

“Well, you’re in a fix, Yashim. If you don’t go, the sultan may resent it. If you do, Resid will never forgive you.”

Yashim snatched up Palewski’s atlas and bent his head over the map. Mountains on the atlas were shown as a scattering of tiny peaks, cities as small black dots. The edge of the land was represented by a pretty shading, in blue.