the palace intercepted him by the Grand Bazaar, sent by the High Chamberlain, they said-though anyone could have bribed him to do so." He grinned reminiscently. "I've bribed him to do similar things myself."
"And he sent to you for help?"
"We've been friends a good many years," said the Russian. "Sir Burnwell would probably have complained to the army first, or the C.U.P., and been put off for God knows how long. Semibarbarity has its advantages. I came here-where the Chamberlain and in fact the Sultan still hold a good deal of power- and blustered and shook my fist. Shook my country's fist, which frightened them even more. Already the Sultan is playing off the people against the army, trying to rouse them in a countercoup, for he wields power as the head of the Mohammedan faith, you know. If it comes to it, the Chamberlain and his master are going to need support."
Lydia shivered, remembering a scene glimpsed from the window of the embassy carriage as they'd clattered along one of the few streets in the old city wide enough to admit such a vehicle: three men, dark-haired and hook-nosed, in the khaki uniforms of the new army, beating up an old man outside a half-closed shop. A muttering crowd had gathered, but no one had dared interfere; the old man had only put his hands over his head for protection, as if he knew perfectly well that begging for mercy or asking for help were equally out of court. "They brought him out in a short time," Razumovsky went on, stroking back the surge of his golden mustaches. "As I'd suspected, they were holding him in the guardhouse here, which means it was the Chamberlain who'd been bribed. He had been knocked about a little, nothing serious."
"I hope he put proper antiseptic on it," Lydia said, and was startled when the prince burst into laughter. "I mean," she added hastily, realizing how that had sounded, "I'm quite shocked, of course, that he was hurt, but if he will get into danger... What had he been doing?"
"Apparently-he did not tell me this, but I found it out through palace contacts of my own-questioning storytellers in the markets. That was how they knew where he would be."
"Storytellers." Old man who lived to be a thousand... The wandering script of Fairport's notebook sprang immediately to her mind. Woman who lived to be five hundred (wove moonlight).
"You tell me why," said the prince.
Lydia only shook her head, though a numbness started behind her breastbone and seemed to spread to fingers, lips, toes. Stress on top of hypothermia, she thought. And then, a small inner voice like a child's, Jamie, no...
"You're cold, madame." The prince put a warm hand to the small of her back and led her up the steps again, toward the brighter lights at the other end of the arcade. "We were walking back to his rooms in the Bajazid when an Armenian boy came up to him. I didn't hear all the boy said, but I know he said, 'My master told me to show you the place.' Jamie took his leave of me..." He shook his head. Did he look well? she wanted to ask. Did they take his knife when he was arrested, and did he get it back? Did you see if he still had the silver around his neck, on his wrists?
It was conceivable, she thought, that the Sultan's guards had stolen it. The ones she'd seen at the palace's outer gates looked capable of relieving a dying man of his shoes.
Under her corsets her heart seemed to be pounding uncomfortably fast.
"Your palace contact didn't happen to say which storytellers, did he?" Razumovsky stopped, gazing down at her again. Men had appeared in the colonnade, Europeans in bright colors that had to be uniforms. By the way they were looking around, Lydia guessed they were the prince's own attaches.
"Mrs. Asher," he said quietly, "Constantinople is not a good city. It is not a safe city, especially now, with the army in power and turning things upside down, and it has never been a good city in which to be a woman. I have been making inquiries of my own about James. When I hear anything, even of the smallest, I will send to you at once."
"Thank you." Lydia clasped the broad, kid-gloved hand. "I can't tell you how much I appreciate that. I can't... there are reasons I can't tell you how I know... what I