Elif murmured a lazy assent. She had known that the old sultan had been about to die. Everyone knew. When he went, he went: a day and a night before they put him in the ground. You couldn’t wait longer; not in this heat. Dead, buried, and the cannons booming out to tell the world that Abdulmecid was sultan now.

High in the sky, something moved: the whirling speck caught Elif’s attention. She raised her chin a fraction.

She heard the distant thump of the cannon, and watched the hawk drop. She saw its talons extend, and the spurt of blood and feathers as it struck.

As the hawk sailed to the ground, clutching its prey, Elif saw the imperial caique approaching from the Golden Horn. Under its fluttering canopy sat the new ruler of the empire, Abdulmecid, sixteen years old, fresh from his investiture at Eyup, at the tomb of the Companion of the Prophet.

She turned from the window.

“Abdulmecid has been girded with the sword of Osman,” she said. She ran her hand across her stomach. “It’s time we joined him, don’t you think?”

3

Abdulmecid’s girls ran as a herd, sweeping past a black eunuch on the steps, across the polished marble floors, streaming up the wide shallow staircase to the harem.

At the top of the stairs, the girls paused.

The wailing and keening for the departed sultan had given way to tantrums and the gnashing of teeth. Doors flew open, and slammed. Women dashed in all directions. Children were running aimlessly from room to room. The black eunuchs stood about wringing their hands. Matrons bawled, while slender Circassians squealed, their blond ringlets all askew; somebody was dragging at the curtains in a little room. Bags and boxes were piled pell-mell in the hallways. A girl sat on a box, crying into a broken mirror.

Abdulmecid’s girls paused, pretending astonishment: eyebrows arched, fingers to horrified lips.