Egyptian Kavalan
Kavalan Pasha is the Egyptian governor, entangled with sundry foreign powers whose interests he would set against Abd-ul Mejid. His manoeuvres, however, have been outmatched, leaving him in a precarious posture amidst the turbulence of the Empire. A high official has pointed to trouble likely to touch Claude Mongé, a sign of how deeply Kavalan is bound into the intrigues about Osman; and his doings — the seizures of territory, the suppressions that failed — have drawn the notice of Jean-Zera Mongé, who looks into Kavalan's rebellion and into the isolation the late Padishah contrived for him through alliances with Russia, France, and England.
A skilled politician of the Sublime Porte's acquaintance, Kavalan finds himself scrutinised by many factions, his conduct held troublesome and his presence a complication to the balance of power in the region. Of late he raised the stakes of that shadow-game by sending an assassin into the city ahead of his own coming. In a meeting with the Sultan and a trio of associates, the Sultan gave it to be understood that no interference need be looked for from Kavalan in the working of this assassin; and she laid before the trio a silver box holding a scroll tied to his designs, contrived to wipe from their minds all memory of their meeting with the assassin, and so to keep the operation whole.
In a further turn Kavalan revealed himself an assassin in his own person, in league with defectors from the Janissaries. He has sent his agents on before him, a proof at once of his reach and of his craft; and his schemes now take in a plot against Mustafa Pasha, the Vizier-i Aezam, wherein he means to raise a diversion whilst keeping the true mark hid. The agents of the Sublime Porte, seeking to uncover his identity in the course of a mission, put a Memory-Wipe Scroll to a certain representative and struck their conversation from his mind, and so let the plot run on undisturbed. All Kavalan's actions are woven into a larger design that works upon the political balances of the city — a pivotal hand amid the tangled alliances and rivalries that mark its underbelly.
More lately Kavalan came into the intrigue touching the assassination plot against Hamit the Quartz of Damascus. At a diplomatic meeting he rose, drew a hidden blade, and cut Hamit's throat with a single swift stroke; then he laid a spell upon the dying man, so that his eyes glowed a pale blue, after the manner of a Speak with Dead, that he might put his questions to him in his last moments. Suspecting Hamit's memory had been wiped, he killed him precisely to slip past that working and to probe for the hand of the palace behind it — a stroke that cast suspicion of foul play upon Topkapi Palace, which he turned to the strengthening of his own position in the talks. His murder of Hamit thus served him twice over, as a means of disposal and as an instrument of intelligence, and left the peace talks in a strained and uneasy state.
Kavalan likewise put to death a would-be assassin at Topkapi Palace, and there again employed his Speak with Dead upon the corpse before the court was dismissed. The dead man's memory had been wiped in life, yet in death he could still yield up what he knew — a description of Jean-Zera Mongé among it. The party afterward looked in upon Osman Hamdi Bey’s House and its library; and at Osman's Library Kavalan searched Osman's desk, found a secret compartment, and opening it drew out a folded, sealed letter bearing Osman's own seal. In a passage with the shadowy, half-corporeal Janissaries soldiers, Kavalan Pasha turned his magic against the shades at range, loosing a chilling spectral force and enchanted bolts to destroy a number of them.