The Janissary Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

left foot.
    The
tongue that protruded slightly between her rouged lips suggested that she
needed more than a kiss to waken her now.
    Yashim
bent over and examined the girl's neck. Two black bruises on either side of her
throat. The pressure had been severe, and she'd been killed from in front: she
would have seen the killer's face before she died.
    He
glanced down at the girl's body and felt a pang of pity. So flawless: death had
made her like a jewel, lustrous and cold, her beauty beyond all power of touch.
And, he thought sadly, I will die like her: a virgin. More mangled, in my case.
He quickly blocked the thoughts: years ago they had maddened and tormented him,
but he had learned to control them. They were his thoughts, his desires, and so
he could sheath them like a sword. He was alive. That was good.
    His
eyes traveled over her skin. The pallor of death had left it like cold white
butter. He almost missed the tiny suggestion that she was not, after all,
absolutely without a flaw. Around the middle finger of her right hand he
spotted the very slight trace of a narrow band where the skin had been
squeezed. She had worn a ring; she was not wearing it now.
    He
raised his head. Something in the atmosphere of the room had changed--a slight
shift in pressure, perhaps, a shift in the balance of the living to the dead. He
turned quickly and scanned the room: hangings, columns, plenty of places for
someone else to hide. Someone who had already killed?
    Out
of the shadows a woman glided forward, her head slightly cocked to one side,
her hands outstretched.
    "Yashim,
cheri! Tu te souviens de ta vieille amie
?"
    It
was the valide sultan, the queen mother herself: and she spoke, he noticed
without surprise, in the voice of the Marquise de Merteuil. It was she who had
given him the book. In his dreams, the marquise spoke French with what Yashim
was not to know was a Creole twang.
    She
took his hands and pecked him on the cheek, three times. Then she glanced down
at the lovely form laid out in death for his inspection.
    "C'est triste,"
she said simply. Her eyes came up to meet his. "Poor you."
    He
knew exactly what she meant.
    "
Alors
,
you know who did it?"
    "Absolutely.
A Bulgarian fisherman."
    The
valide sultan put a pretty hand to her mouth.
    "I
was about fifteen."
    She
waved him away, smiling.
    "Yashim,
sots serieux.
The little girl's dead and--don't shout now--also my
jewels have gone. The Napoleon jewels. We are all having a very bad time in the
appartements."
    Yashim
gazed at her. In the half-light she looked almost young; in any light she was
still beautiful. He wondered if the dead girl would have looked so good at her
age--or would have survived so long. Aimee--the sultan's mother. It was the role
that every woman in the harem fought for: to sleep with the sultan, bear a son
and, in due course, engineer his elevation to the throne of Osman. Each step
required a greater concentration of miracles. The woman in front of him had
possessed a singular advantage, though: she was a Frenchwoman. One miracle
under her belt from the start.
    "You're
not telling me that I never showed you the Napoleon jewels?" she was saying. "Well,
my God, you are the lucky man. I bore everyone with these jewels. I admire
them, my guests admire them--and I'm quite sure they all think them as ugly as I
do. But they came from the Emperor Napoleon to me.
Personnellement!"
    She
darted him a roguish look.
    "You
think--sentimental value? Rubbish. They are, however, part of my
batterie de
guerre.
Beauty is cheap within these walls. Distinction, though, comes at
a price. Look at
her.
Not all the mountains of Circassia could produce
a creature so lovely again--but my son would have forgotten her name in a week. Tanya?
Alesha? What does it matter?"
    "It
mattered to somebody," Yashim reminded her. "Somebody killed her."
    "Because
she was beautiful? Pah, everyone is beautiful here."
    "No.
Perhaps because she was about to lie with the sultan."
    She
eyed him suddenly: