“I choose that prize,” I said, pointing at the brunette with a finger that quivered nervously.

“She is yours, then.” Pasha Mustafa smiled, waving broadly at the wide-eyed brunette, whose pale skin flushed with a ripple of pink that washed from her gold-adorned ears to her delicate toes. Her earrings were not her only adornment; she also bore a pair of bracelets styled as golden snakes with emerald eyes and a delicate necklace adorned with pearls.

As I approached her, my brother said something to Pasha Mustafa, but my shivering prize occupied the whole of my attention. I swept my cloak off my shoulders and wrapped her in it before leading her away, my brother forgotten behind me. Weariness, alertness, and excitement all warred in my stomach as I left the audience chamber, winding my way through the bloodstained halls of the captured palace. Privacy was on my mind, and I left the palace to wander the grounds in search of it.

“You do not understand the Osman dialect, do you?” I looked her in the eyes and then switched to Greek. “This all must be very confusing.”

She bit her lip, hesitating, then nodded. The woman and I exchanged words in Greek, mine halting and hers fluent. Her name was Helena; she was as much of a woman as I was a man, which is to say—as a woman need not prove herself with death—that we were of an age. She flinched every time another of the sultan’s soldiers appeared, and also when I told her that she was beautiful.

“You were chosen as a prize for the sultan himself,” I said. “But the sultan decided to reward me by giving me one of his prizes.”

“The sultan is old, fat, and short.” Helena looked disgusted. “He looked even uglier than I had heard. I was to be a gift for him?”

“No, the man you saw was Pasha Mustafa,” I said. “The sultan himself is much younger—he has just come by the title. The old sultan, who must be the one you heard of, it is true that he was short and thick, and he was of an age with Pasha Mustafa, but the old sultan was thrown from a horse and died. The new sultan is only a few years older than I am.”

“I pray that you and every other Osman fall from a horse and die! You—”

I interrupted her with a finger across her lips. “It is said among the Osman that Murad could not have died in such a way as he did, if not for the curses of the witches of Constantinople. If you wish to keep your head, keep such wishes off your tongue. And please—I am no Osman, even if I am dark-eyed and dark-haired.”

“Perhaps I would rather lose my head than be your slave, whatever kind of Turk you are—Osman or White Sheep or Black Sheep or whatever else.” Helena gave me a fierce look, which became less fierce when I stepped close, looming over her. She shivered fearfully as she craned her neck.

A small childish part of me wanted to stamp my foot and cry that her defiant attitude wasn’t fair. She was my prize—had not Pasha Mustafa given her to me? What right had she to defy me when she was my possession? The illusion of solidity attached to the hierarchy of the Sultanate shattered in that moment. I myself was a possession of the sultan’s court, but in this moment, I could do as I willed. For that matter, I could always do as I willed if I was ready to accept the consequences. And I was now grown. I had killed. I was a man.

Holding my quivering prize by her shoulders, I glanced around. A few of the soldiers of the Sultanate were within earshot, looking on curiously. I did not know if they thought me an ordinary soldier or knew me to be a foreign princeling attached to Sultan Allaedin’s court, nor if they spoke Greek, but I knew I was not ready for this beautiful woman to court death by publicly wishing ill of a sultan who believed his father slain by a curse cast by the witches of Constantinople.

“Your head is precious, and you can only lose it once,” I said, taking hold of her chin. “And for such a noble beauty as yours, such must be a sin against the will that shaped your flesh. Take care of your words, for I am obliged to take care of you. May Saint George strike me down if I fail to protect you.”

“I had heard even the Turks respect Saint George, but I did not credit it.” The tension in Helena’s shoulders eased.

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“It is true. They speak of him with respect,” I said, smiling. “But I am no Turk. I am Roman.”

“Speaking Greek like that?” Her derision was obvious but swiftly transformed into fear as she cringed away from the fierce look that her insult brought upon my face. “You are not of my people, but you have taken the second Rome. I suppose you can call yourself Roman now by right of conquest.”

I sighed, tamping down my anger as I did not desire her fear, but rather her friendship. “It was no jest. But come, let us walk quickly.”

I led her away and into what was likely a gardener’s hut, as a dead gardener lay within a trampled flowerbed a dozen paces away. With the phoenix stone set into the pommel of my utility knife, it was but the work of a moment to restart a fire in the hearth. The furniture of the house—a bed, a small table, a simple chair, an open chest, and a set of shelves for the gardener’s tools and things—had all been overturned and moved about. I barred the door and started setting the furniture to rights. An iron pan, ladle, and a chipped knife went back on the shelves along with a trowel and three pairs of shears.

“We should not be bothered here, for we are quite near to the landing, and this place has been clearly looted already,” I said. “The sultan’s men accorded you great honor when they selected you as a gift for him. Giving him a woman who was anything less than a beautiful, noble virgin would be risking his wrath. But then, I am sure you know of your own beauty. I am surprised he chose to give you up.”

Helena shivered, drawing my cloak more tightly around herself before sitting gingerly on the corner of the bed nearest the fire. “I do not think the sultan ever saw me,” she said. “The soldiers took me to Pasha Mustafa, and he had me taken to the audience chamber with Theodora and the others. There were soldiers who came and went, but the pasha was always the one giving orders—I know the look and sound of a command even if I do not understand Osman speech.”

“Well, then, I am glad the pasha let me claim you, but I hope the sultan will not be irked.” I reached out, transfixed by her beauty as I traced a finger over her chin. “I can hardly believe you are mine.”

She pulled back with a shudder.

I saw a faint smudge left behind by my finger on her porcelain chin and felt suddenly conscious that I was covered with the stink and filth of battle. I drew back. “I am sorry, I have not washed. Between my poor Greek and the stains of combat, I must seem to you a terrifying brute. I promise to be a good master.”

“I had never planned to be a slave,” she said, edging backwards.

“You have lost a war,” I said. “That is how I came to the sultan’s court, a lost war—my brother and I both. Today, I have had more liberty than upon any day since my father surrendered us as hostages.” I turned, my eyes casting about the dim hut and alighting on a half-full bucket of water. “I suppose you might rather be the sultan’s slave—there is the possibility of becoming the mother of the next sultan that way. I hope you are not disappointed in being given away to a mere hostage.”

Behind me, Helena sat silently as I washed my hands and face and doffed the plated mail that had protected me. Several of the rectangular plates were bent or broken, one missing entirely, and the whole thing was spattered and stained. I decided that I did not have it in me to scrub the armor clean, promising myself I would do a better job of it by morning light before piling it on the chair. My gambeson followed, and then I bent to wash my hands again, as my armor had been filthy.

There was a faint scrape of a sandaled foot across the dirt floor behind me, and I turned just in time to see Helena’s hand grab the dead gardener’s knife off the shelf. My dripping hands began to rise in front of my face as she lunged, swinging the knife in a wild overhand slash as my cloak billowed out behind her body, her skin so pale that it seemed to glow by firelight. The iron anti-mage cuffs protected my wrists; perhaps I could block the attack.

But I was slow, caught by surprise. My panic rose, and with it an uncontrolled surge of inner fire from deep within me, magic commanded by unreasoning fear and unleashed by surprise. The cold iron mage cuffs yanked my arms away from my face for a brief moment before the surge of magical weakness suffused the rest of my body and I collapsed completely, the knife whistling through the air above my face as I collapsed face-forward.

My head smacked the edge of the table and bounced, twisting my body sideways, and I landed with my left arm draped limply across my chest, the iron of the anti-mage cuff now uncomfortably warm as it radiated weakness. The tiny cross I had kept on a fine chain beneath my undershirt landed on my face, first poking at one of my nostrils before sliding across my cheek to land on the dirt floor. I willed myself to move, to at least take a deep breath, my own arm feeling like a crushing weight compared to the weakness of my chest. I could not even turn my head. Where was Helena? I had only a thin silk undershirt for protection against her next blow, and I was completely immobile.

A lovely foot came into view, prodding my head. The foot pulled away, and then Helena’s face appeared, upside-down and framed by the dim rafters of the gardener’s hut. The knife next to her promised my imminent demise.

“You are a mage,” she said. “But one cuffed and bound away. Now I believe you are not a Turk. Who are you, really?”

I strained, moving a tongue that felt like it weighed a hundred pounds and lips that felt like they were cast in wax.

“I am a son of the Dragon.”