Our chronicle opens, as such tales are apt to, at a well-laid table. At Thymbra Farm — the Calvert family's farmhouse upon the plain north of Constantinople, its rooms done up in the English style — the company found itself gathered in society rather grander than its own. At the board sat Osman Hamdi Bey, the royal polymath, a man of near ties to the palace and the caliph; Patrice de MacMahon, a French general lately returned from the war in the Crimea; and Herr Heinrich Schliemann with his wife Sophia, the pair of them bound up with the ancient dig newly opened nearby. Their hosts, the brothers Frederick Calvert and Frank Calvert, held forth upon that excavation — a Greek site of venerable antiquity, its finds promising, though the labouring crew had thinned, as crews will, since the last festival. The talk was conducted, as is the fashion amongst such people, chiefly in French, with the occasional sally in Turkish or English for those equipped to follow it.
Osman rose to present the three youngest of the party — Gizem Faruki, the Sufi dervish and baker, arrayed in white and gold and blue; Sidra al-Najjar, a veiled girl of thirteen; and Ahmet Yusuf, an errand-runner of ten — and thanked them before the company for their service at the dig. "Thank you for your patience with me on this," he said, making particular mention of the water the children had fetched and the labour they had spared the crew — a public kindness bestowed with the ease of a man who knows its worth. The two young ones sat at the foot of the table and laboured to ape the gravity of their elders; Gizem pressed small sweets upon them and, with a firm and maternal hand, spared young Ahmet the misfortune of a glass of something stronger than a boy ought to take.
Jean-Zera Mongé, the half-elf bard and antiquarian — turned out, to the mild scandal of the older guests, in modern trousers and a dinner jacket without a tie — made himself the ornament of the evening, sketching the diners and lending the room a fashionable air upon the pianoforte. Rufus Dimitrious, the Greek sailor turned rogue in his half-cape of sailcloth, kept instead to the outer dark beyond the fire, accepting the Calverts' hospitality with one eye whilst weighing their wealthier guests with the other. He marked, as did Gizem, how deftly Evelyn Calvert steered the weightier talk of war and commerce with a well-placed word to Frederick, whilst Sophia, newer to such tables, ventured her opinions more shyly.
It was in a quieter corner that the evening showed its second face. Frank Calvert presented Rufus to the company as a trusted guide of the coast — a purveyor of private yacht excursions, scenic coves, and sport — a genial fiction that served to cloak a more discreet species of business. In private he pressed fifty gold upon the rogue, fifty British pounds, for the arranging of certain third-party logistics of smuggling and the marking of quiet coves along the shore, the fruit of a recent excursion. That settled, Frank bade Rufus fetch Herr Schliemann from the dining room; and Rufus, having delivered him, lingered at the door to listen, and caught the words "the hill" and "the key" before a treacherous floorboard betrayed him and the door was drawn shut.
As the plates were cleared, Jean-Zera — even whilst fielding the general's questions — drew Osman out upon the subject of the dig, and learned that the excavators believed they had come upon a megaron, a civic hall of the old Greeks, in fair condition, and were labouring to open the further rooms. Rufus, for his part, regaled Sidra and Ahmet with tall tales of hunting mermaids and riding leviathans, which the children received with that flat scepticism the young reserve for their elders' inventions. The sweet course brought warm praise for Gizem's baklava, taken, as it ought to be, with Turkish coffee.
Before the dawn, Gizem went out upon the terrace to practise the Sufi turning, and drew the curiosity of Sophia. "What are you doing?" the woman asked; and Gizem told her of the dance of the dervishes of Constantinople, showed her the first steps of the turn and something of their devotional meaning, and set the younger girls nearby to imitating her — their small, awkward spins ending, more often than not, in giggles upon the ground. In Sidra the sight stirred an older unease, for there are those who name the dervishes djinn-possessed, and the girl carried a djinn-touched magic of her own that she did not yet understand. Ahmet, meanwhile, went roving through the house and grounds and let himself into the Schliemanns' empty guest-quarters, taking careful note of their luggage and appointments. And so the night gave way to morning: shortly after ten, as Rufus and the general nursed their aching heads over breakfast on the veranda, a great crack rang out across Thymbra Farm — and a flowering tree before the house withered in an instant, colourless, the very colour draining from the ground about it, and left every ear in the company ringing.