Someone had cleaned up after all. There was nothing to suggest the violence this room had held.

But no—that was wrong. A rug, one of Radu’s favorites, cheerfully blue and yellow, was gone. The only evidence was the absence of things that should have been there: the body, the blood, the rug, and Mehmed.

Radu walked to the desk, reverently placing his hands on various objects. An inkwell. A map of Constantinople with notes scrawled across it in Mehmed’s compact, aggressive script. Several booklets of religious thought that Radu had been hoping to borrow. A heavy, leather-bound tome detailing the life of Alexander the Great.

The whisper of an outer door sent Radu into a panic. He threw himself behind a pillar, just as the door to the study opened.

The intruder’s steps were quiet but assured. Radu heard items being shuffled, then the crackle of a stiff sheet of parchment resisting being rolled. The intruder left as quickly as he had entered. After a few seconds to calm his racing heart, Radu left his hiding place and returned to the desk. Everything was there.

Except the map of Constantinople with Mehmed’s careful notes.

Without giving himself time to think better of it, Radu raced out of the rooms. He saw a hint of movement around a far corner and ran after it. He turned the same corner and saw the figure—a boy, perhaps sixteen, wearing the plain clothes of a servant, walking with submissive but purposeful posture. It was exactly how Radu would move if he needed to get somewhere without being noticed.

And so he copied the boy’s posture, always keeping him in his line of sight, but staying far enough back not to be noticed. He followed the thief out of the palace grounds, to the nearest street, where opulent, majestic homes bullied the cobblestones for space. The thief joined several people filing in and out of the gates of the first estate. Radu grabbed a basket lying on the stones near the entrance and tucked it under his arm, grateful that he was wearing simple clothes today instead of one of the nicer outfits Mehmed had gifted him with.

The thief entered the home through a side door. He knew where he was going. Radu followed, winding his way through a busy kitchen, nearly losing sight of his prey. They went through a back hallway and then up a narrow flight of hidden stairs for the servants’ use. The walls were close, the steps uneven, the air damp with confinement. In the gloom, Radu only just saw a door swing shut, as he was about to climb another flight of stairs. He pushed through the door into another world. Light spilled with reckless abandon through a wide, high-ceilinged hallway. Thick woven rugs lined the floor, with tile gleaming in the gaps. Statuary and pottery kept the turquoise-hued walls company, reassuring each other of their glorious beauty. Highly polished metal mirrors hung at regular intervals, giving the impression of hallways beyond this one.

All the doors were shut, and there was no sign of the thief.

Radu nearly backed into the stairwell when he noticed that one of the heavy wooden doors was slightly ajar. He crept toward it. If anyone caught him, he would have no excuse for his presence.

“…cleaned up, as you predicted,” said a voice Radu did not recognize but suspected was the servant’s.

“The little swine,” a deeper, older voice growled. There was a rough sound of parchment being flattened, then a few seconds of heavy silence. Radu glanced nervously down the hallway, but he was still in the clear.

“Arrogant devil,” the older man said, followed by some choice curses. “He thinks he can defeat the walls of the city? That it is his divine calling? May God save us from servants such as these.”

There was a swish of parchment, the scratching of a quill. Sweat trickled down Radu’s back. Taking a deep breath, he put his eye to the cracked door. The room was revealed in a single line, and Radu shifted to expand his view. There, the back of the servant. And at a desk, pouring wax onto a folded letter to seal it, the man.

Halil Pasha.

Halil Pasha pressed a ring into the wax, then handed the letter to the servant. “See that this is delivered.”

Radu darted from his perch near the door, back to the stairwell. His breath came in shallow, desperate gasps. He crept into the shadows clinging to the bottom of the next flight of stairs, waiting.

The door opened, and with a terrified rush, Radu launched himself forward against the servant. The boy grabbed at Radu’s shirt, but his fingers found no claim as he fell backward down the narrow stairs, head slamming into the wall as his feet went over and his body thudded before coming to a stop, jammed at an awkward angle.

Radu waited one breath, two breaths, three interminable breaths that filled his lungs with fear instead of air, and then, when the servant did not move or cry out for help, he rushed to his side. The letter was not in his hands, it was all for nothing, Radu had murdered him and now—