The company came to their meeting with the Ghost of March warily, resolved to keep their tie to Osman Hamdi Bey to themselves, and mindful that Sharif the Strong Fur, the cat who keeps the gate of the Undercity, answered to no one and least of all to the Ghost. The compound they sought stood open behind an arched gate watched by an orcish figure and a halfling in fatigues cut after the Sekban fashion, who let them pass unchallenged. Within, they moved through rooms open to the air and rooms closed against it — strategy-chambers, a training-yard, halls of conference. Gizem Faruki marked the maps of the Napoleonic and Egyptian campaigns upon the walls and the practice of the musket in the courtyard, and judged the force to have modelled itself a modern "new army" in the Sekban mould; Jean-Zera Mongé could not decide whether the uniforms were newly made to seem old or true surplus, and noted that the library had been curated to a standard worthy of Osman himself, its military histories expertly chosen. Gizem glimpsed a cafeteria where some dozens of uniformed recruits, few or none of them human, shared a common meal; and Sidra al-Najjar caught the reek of powder and burnt residue beneath the stronger smells of fresh bread and stew, whilst the Undercity's cats flitted at the edges of sight and her jinn tightened in her chest to bid her keep her guard.
Kore, the singer of the Arraf Tavern, met them in the hall, called "alemdar" into the office beyond, and brought them before Alemdar Mustafa Pasha — a leader wrapped in bandages that showed only his eyes, reputed the dead commander of the Sekban, who greeted Gizem by name and made no secret that he knew them already. He told Sidra that Sharif the Strong Fur had reported well of their deeds, and asked Jean-Zera whether they had been followed; the half-elf answered that they did not hide, but were circumspect. When Gizem said they had come for something of Osman's, Alemdar produced a leather-bound journal he had taken but could not read, and offered it to them; Jean-Zera, examining it, found a complex cipher warded with some magical glamour, such as would take real skill or magic to undo.
Then came the asking. Alemdar bade them carry terms to Ahra 'the Wolf' of the Janissaries, that the two might make common front despite their old enmity; pressed as to against whom, he would speak only of unity — for the Empire and for all who dwell in it. Gizem tried to learn whether he was a man at all, but the bandages gave nothing away; it was Sidra's Djinn that discerned their nature, magical wrappings that both preserved him and held back some effect that would otherwise harm those about him. He praised the company for bridging the world above and the world below, citing Druids who had commended their care for the halflings' welfare, and invited them to send him recruits and any versed in the elements or in alchemy for his "new Sekban Army," even as he counselled them to keep up the show of undying Janissary–Sekban enmity for the deceiving of others. To Sidra he spoke of Shehrazat, a young tiefling near the Thieves Bazaar afflicted with a "blood rot," and asked that she look in on the girl and help if she could. Behind his desk hung a fine longsword, fit for war and dignified with some grand title that went unnamed.
Over bread and stew in the cafeteria, amid Turkish spoken in the odd accents of the Undercity and of far-travelled tongues, the company took Alemdar's measure — tactical and cold, a man plainly braced for blood. Gizem tied the compound's readiness of arms to Ahra's earlier word that the Imperial caches had been struck about the season of the Festival of Candles; they observed that Alemdar had said nothing of altering the ghetto-order of the Undercity, and fell to debating safety and equality against the keeping of the Undercity's own spaces. Jean-Zera judged that the crowning of the new Padişah (the Sultan) had left the whole political air malleable, with many looking for change. They resolved to divide their labours: to call upon Shehrazat, to seek Kore again at the Arraf Tavern, and to attend the "specters" race the following day.
Sidra led the way to a tenement by the Thieves Bazaar, where an older woman left a meal at the girl's door and hurried off. Within she found Shehrazat — a young tiefling with a ram's horns and blue-purple skin — shivering beneath layers upon a cushioned bed, the skin of her forearms hardened and cracked. Sidra gave over her own cloak; Jean-Zera laid a lesser restoration upon her that eased her chattering; and the girl explained that she had been bidden seek one Dr. Feuerbach at the Pera Palace Hotel, but could not go up above. A "Grandmama," she said, brought her meals and laundry yet kept her distance for fear of the rebound — for the illness had come upon her after an involuntary surge of her own innate magic, and had worsened across nearly a fortnight. Miray set a healing word and druidic rites to her, but during the working a "Hellfire" rebounded and scorched all three healers before it vanished without setting the room alight; and so they fell to the notion of finding a tutor who might teach Shehrazat the mastery of her own fire, agreeing that one of them should stay by her whilst Sidra went for further aid.
At the Arraf Tavern, Mervhan sent Gizem back to Kore's dressing-room, where the singer allowed that her dealings with Alemdar were no more than the occasional referral, and nothing like a patronage. When Gizem recounted how, in the histories, one Alemdar Mustafa Pasha had destroyed the Janissary hearth, Kore answered that this did not match the Alemdar she knew. She spoke for guarantees of safety and free movement whilst yet preserving the Undercity's spaces, observing that some — Mervhan among them — had never once been above; she believed the bandages the mark of a severe rebound the man had barely survived; and she mentioned the "specters" race and her own partiality to blue, though her performances would keep her from attending. Near Papa Mert's, Jean-Zera caught sight of an angular, human-passing figure shadowing them, and the company split to divert and back-trail; the tail surfaced above by way of the Arts District Entrance, hard by an obelisk and its timepiece at dusk, and Jean-Zera peeled away to regroup.
Sidra put the case of the blood-rot to Papa Mert, the Undercity alchemist, who walked her through the compounding of a thick, whitish-blue paste and the hour-long ritual of its application, and offered to come along once his shop had closed. After close he uncovered the afflicted skin whilst Sidra performed the rite, spending of her own power to do it, with Gizem coaching her through the repeated steps; and some two and a half hours on, Shehrazat convulsed and then settled into a deep and steady breathing. Papa Mert thanked Sidra for "being his hands," this being his first true use of the technique, and took his leave; they left the girl resting with the paste in place and a note promising to return upon the morrow, meaning to carry word of the success to Alemdar and to find her a tutor.
Jean-Zera carried that word back to the compound, where Alemdar — re-wrapping himself within a curtained bed-chamber — received it with approval. He asked after Jean-Zera's elephant-blooded parent and named Alexander, a former colleague of like pedigree now serving under Ahra, as a possible tutor, asking too that they learn why the man had left him; and Jean-Zera, surveying the Ghost's library, found it given wholly to recent French, Russian, Austrian, and Persian works of war, all of them mundane. Miray, for his part, thought to seek out two other Druids — Cyrus, a dwarf bead-craftsman of the Thieves Bazaar, and Deniz, a druid known to none save in the shape of a goat, who keeps an Undercity oasis.
As they made ready for the next day, Osman put into Jean-Zera's hand a gold-foiled invitation from Abd-ul Mejid to attend him at the Dolmabahce New Palace Construction Site on the morning after next, bidding Osman come "and all those he recommends." Reading the sheet, Jean-Zera found a thieves' cant hidden within it — a charge of secrecy, the promise of an audience with His Imperial Majesty, and a reference to the Kavalan's Rebellion. He then made the exchange he had long intended: telling Osman he held the true journal, he took in its place an identical forgery, leather-bound, with which to deceive the interested Community, Osman warning him of the consequences should the substitution be found out. Jean-Zera read up on Kavalan Pasha's rising in Egypt — the seizing of territory, the failure to put it down, and the late Padişah's deft diplomacy with Russia, France, and England that had isolated Kavalan and now promised a suit for peace — and the company set their agenda for the day to come: to attend the specters race, to look in on Shehrazat, to pursue Cyrus, and to prepare themselves for the meeting with the Padişah at the Dolmabahçe works.