Free Vlad: The Last Confession by C. C. Humphreys

garden that when one of his prize cucumbers disappeared, he personally slit open the stomachs of seven gardeners to find it.”
    “And did find it, I am told. So?”
    “So? So he is not a man to have as an enemy!”
    “He is already that. Nothing I can do will make him more or less so. And do you know?” He turned to stare, where men were still following, crying the name of Mehmet. “I truly believe that one day, one of us will be the death of the other.” He reached back, lifted the beaker of pomegranate juice, drained it. The red liquid glimmered, staining his teeth in the smile that came. “But forget all that, my friend, because…didn’t you hear her laugh?”
    Before Ion could reply, Vlad had laid the cup down. “Come on,” he said, “we must follow. We have to know where she lives if we are going to steal her.”
    Vlad set off. For a moment, Ion and Radu did not move, just looked at each other. “We?” they each said, faintly.

– SIX –
     
    The Chosen Girl
     
    It was not all unpleasant, the preparation for her deflowering.
    True, they had woken her early, just as the muezzin was calling the most faithful to first prayers. Ilona would have slept through that, easily, as she always did. But not this day.
    The air was chill when they fetched her from the bed she shared with Afaf, who just grunted and fell back asleep. A cloak covered her but she was not allowed to dress for they needed to consider every part of her. She was led to the stone slab at the entrance to the house’s small hamam , mounted it. The cloak was pulled away and she stood there and tried not to shiver, her eyes downcast, her expression bland, her hands open-palmed to the side, her weight on her right foot which was turned out so all of her was exposed. The servants moved around, pinching here, prodding there. They were trying to be calm—a girl was often sent out, to be the concubine of some victorious general or provincial governor. Sometimes, rarely, a wife to a state official. But today was different and Ilona could sense the excitement. Within minutes, even the most reticent of servants was chattering.
    Today, a girl was being sent to the Sultan.
    Or was he the Sultan? Ilona frowned, then relaxed at a snapped command. He had been two months before. And now it was said he wasn’t but would be again, with Allah’s grace. It confused her but it didn’t truly matter. All that did was that he had picked her for some reason, some facet of herself she did not understand. Twenty girls had been paraded before the screen in Mehmet’s saray . She had not seen him, of course, but he had seen her. Now she was godze , the chosen girl.
    Hence the excitement as the servants walked round her, and the attention to her every detail. She had been told what this could mean—there may have been five concubines already in Mehmet’s saray but none had yet borne him a son. If she pleased him enough, and thus drew him often enough to her divan so that he got her with child—with male child…well! Concubines who bore sons often became wives. Wives were given freedom and power.
    Freedom. She kept the sigh within. What was that?
    She looked through her lowered lashes as the kahya kadin , Hibah herself, came in. Mistress of the house on the Street of Nectar, she rarely bothered with the little details. But now the woman stopped, folded her arms over her enormous stomachs, tipped her head. Then she clapped two fat hands together, her gold bracelets jangling. “Begin!” she called. “Bathe her. Bring her.”
    It was not all unpleasant, the life of a slave. In the first ten years of her life, when they called her free, she had never had a bath. In the house on Rahiq Street, she had one daily and loved it: the delicious heat of one plunge, the exhilarating shock of another; the steam that enveloped her and opened every pore; the chilled water they rinsed her with before they wrapped her in softest, warmed sheets. Today they took even more time and