There are nights the body endures but the spirit does not, and this was such a night for the company. In the small hours Sidra al-Najjar, Jean-Zera Mongé, Gizem Faruki and Miray Ruba Mata Biru were visited by a single dream held between them — a harsh, cold scrubland desert, and across it the far-off clamour of battle carried on a wind that gave no comfort. They woke parched and hungry, hearing the echo of that distant fighting still, and every one of the four bore the leaden exhaustion of the vision into the day. Yet, being young and dutiful, they set the malaise aside and fell to laying their plans.
The day's occasion came by way of an invitation from Yasmin, a genial social acquaintance whose knowledge of the Undercity proved a narrow slice indeed — an invitation, linked to Osman, to attend the chariot races at the Spectral Hippodrome. Gizem and Jean-Zera would go openly to the stands upon Yasmin's arm; Sidra and Miray would make their own quieter entry, the better to look into the whispers of race-fixing that clung to the place. As they travelled, Jean-Zera pressed Yasmin gently upon the politics of the Undercity and confirmed her ignorance ran deep beyond her own small circle. Sidra, for her part, drew out a cloak fashioned to aid concealment; rather than buy tickets and be counted, she and Miray slipped in upon the tide of the crowd, Sidra melting into the flow of attendees whilst Miray kept close behind to escape notice.
It was in slipping through that Sidra came adrift. A door closed at her back, and she found herself locked upon the wrong side of it, in a back corridor near the stables. There stood pens of spectral horses, glowing blue and green and champing restlessly at the air, and there, half-seen, a woman young of face — an elven woman — working some necrotic debilitation upon one of the green beasts, sapping the life that was not quite life from it. Sidra kept to the shadows and sent word by a discreet message to Miray, directing her toward the spot but bidding her hold her position until the matter should grow clearer.
In the seating above, meanwhile, Jean-Zera and Yasmin had been greeted by Chique Manu, a wealthy bookmaker and no light bettor himself, who made pleasant talk of wagers. Yasmin laid a modest sum upon the Green Team; and Jean-Zera, wishing to be free of the man, staged a small distraction — the illusion of a friend calling out for him elsewhere — and so drew Chique Manu off and made his escape from the conversation.
Below, Miray found the service door unlocked, opened it quietly, and in the same instant caught sight of Sidra and locked eyes with the elven saboteur, who took to her heels and fled deeper into the Hippodrome. Out upon the track the sabotage told its tale: a Green-team chariot faltered as one of its spectral horses weakened, the yoke-mate overcompensating, and the whole came to a poor finish amid the frustration of the stands. From their separate vantages, Jean-Zera and Miray both marked the same elven woman bending to whisper in Chique Manu's ear during the running — collusion, plain enough. When the race was done, Sidra went to find the backstage door by which she had entered and found in its place only an unbroken wall. Jean-Zera turned his attention upon the arena itself and sensed a pervasive enchantment suffusing the whole structure, though the stonework beneath remained honest and material. He congratulated Chique Manu upon his winnings and asked, as a favour, an introduction to the elf — named to him as Susanna, the elf — which the bookmaker agreed to arrange. The company then regrouped, shared what each had gathered of the sabotage worked against Green and the woman's tie to Chique Manu, and dispersed to run down their several leads.
Gizem's errand took her to Cyrus, a grey-bearded dwarf druid who kept a public face as a seller of beads; she browsed his ritual and magical wares — Beads Of Force, Dispelling Beads, and a costly Necklace Of Prayer Beads — and sought his counsel on the Undercity. He recommended the Styx Bathhouse for both rest and the quiet knitting of acquaintance, made mention of the Misty Pond and some notable natural quality it held, and declined, courteously, to trade in gossip. Jean-Zera betook himself to Osman's Library, hunting records of the Hippodrome and its fixed races and some context upon a protected diary, but found little of use in Osman's absence. There Ashraf, the polymath's extremely ill-mannered tortoise, was more forthcoming: he laid out the practical frameworks by which the spectral races might be rigged — a simple thing for a single hit, far riskier as a sustained scheme — and observed that layered intermediaries, of the sort Chique Manu employed, served handsomely to reduce a man's exposure.
Sidra called upon Shehrazat, a young girl burdened with unstable magic, shared food with her, and learned that the child could for now shut away a certain "mental closet" of dangerous power but longed for the means to lock it fast or open it safely; the two spoke of finding Alexander to serve as her mentor. Gizem consulted at Sif's Books and Manuscripts, where Sif, a tiefling bookseller, reported having lately sold an excellent volume to none other than Chique Manu. Miray, in turn, went to reconnoitre the Styx Bathhouse, received a rudimentary orientation from a very hirsute half-elf attendant, and took the measure of a large communal pool with private rooms opening off its sides.
At that hamam — the bath-house — the operator Hussein spoke of how the mingling of public and private made the place ideal for gathering rumour and conducting visible business. It was there Miray heard of a posted bounty upon a selective-targeting undead menace off the north side beyond the city walls, with the advice that she treat with Hano 'the Widow' for better terms. Sidra and Jean-Zera, meanwhile, went to a hideout of the Janissaries to ask after Alexander, the recent defector marked out as a mentor for Shehrazat. A Janissary Lieutenant told them that Alexander — who also went by Iskender — had ventured, a couple of days prior, into a particular reach of the catacombs, distinct from the so-called "Secret Church" catacombs, and had not come back.
As dusk drew on, the trio were guided by a servant of Osman Hamdi Bey to the Dolmabahce New Palace Construction Site, and led through a finished pavilion into a roofed courtyard. There sat, newly crowned, the Padişah — the Sultan — Padishah Abd-ul Mejid in state, his wife the Haseki Sultan, the favourite consort, Haseki Sultan Bergüzar Hatun near at hand, and by them the spectacled official Aziz Sefa Bey to mediate. Aziz presented the three as assets cultivated by Osman, whilst the Padishah looked on in silence and left the briefing to his man. The Haseki Sultan delivered into their keeping a silver box holding a single ribbon-tied scroll, and closed the box once it was taken. Aziz explained that Kavalan Pasha had sent a Skilled Assassin ahead of his coming visit; that the Sublime Porte wished the assassin taken in the very act; and that the trio's charge was to identify the assassin's tactical position without disturbing the plan. The scroll, he said, was to be used to wipe from the assassin's mind any memory of the meeting once contact was made, that the operation's integrity be preserved. He furnished, besides, two addresses for secure follow-up — one a government office, the other a concealed Janissary Safehouse in a poor quarter of the city.
Departing, the company examined the scroll and judged it a powerful and lasting Modify Memory effect, capable of stripping recollection away for good. It was then that Miray felt the cold recognition settle upon her: the Sultan was the very woman whose youthful face had walked through their shared dreams — no small matter, for it marked her a formidable worker of magic, one who might reach into memory itself. They fell to debating whether the dreams had been planted by her hand or sent as warnings from some other quarter, and resolved to keep a close watch upon her doings. Jean-Zera began turning over how the false journal might be conveyed to Aziz without implicating their allies, though he took no step for the present. Gizem sounded out Kore, a singer in the keeping of the Ghost, for racing tips, and got from her only the reiteration of an irrational loyalty to the Blue Team and nothing to act upon. Miray scouted the general vicinity of the undead bounty and judged it wiser to bring the whole company to bear than to hazard it alone.
That night the dream returned to all four: a reduced Turkish military encampment where sparring and instruction were under way, and there a youth — a young Padishah Abd-ul Mejid, the Sultan yet to be — training under Alemdar Mustafa Pasha, a senior commander who, quoting Rumi, spoke of wounds that bring enlightenment and of embodying a universal ecstasy through disciplined precision. The lesson soured when the youth lashed out with a slap of magic; Alemdar rebuked him sharply for turning such power against his own. The dreamers, marked in their watching, tried to flee, were caught by a whip and dragged back, and one of them cast a spell — which Alemdar countered, and the scene closed. Waking, the four settled their course: to meet Hano about the undead bounty, to search the catacombs for Alexander, to work the Styx for word of the assassin, and to coordinate with Aziz by way of the addresses they had been given.