The reader will recall the grim theatre lately played out within the grand hall of Topkapi Palace, where the Egyptian Kavalan struck down his would-be assassin — the echo of the act reverberating through the assembled nobles — and then, with a swift incantation, called the dead man's memory back to his lips by a Speaking with the Dead. A hush fell upon the court. The corpse confessed that its recollections had been wiped clean whilst it lived, and yet in death it surrendered what it could not have known it still kept, and among that testimony was a description of Jean-Zera Mongé himself — a hint, to those with ears to hear it, of deeper connections and nearer threats. The court was hastily recessed and dismissed, and the company withdrew with heavy minds. Weighing one bolt-hole against another, they judged the home of Gizem Faruki the safest haven amidst their troubles; "Let's do that," one of them affirmed, and there they settled to eat and to rest, agreeing to leave the heavier discussion for the morning.
That night sleep brought each of them a vision, and the visions rhymed. Jean-Zera dreamed of a square piece of sturdy paper edged in fancy filigree and bearing an ornate sigil or monogram, of the kind one finds cut upon a signet ring; it felt to him vitally important, a very marker of his own identity, akin to the device emblazoned upon his ring, and he woke in terror that it had been taken or misplaced. Gizem's dream was gentler: her anxiety was relieved when a lost square of paper was returned to her, and a much younger Aziz Sefa Bey escorted her toward the Sublime Porte in Istanbul, the city's grandeur looming with the weight of purpose and old feeling. Sidra al-Najjar dreamed of a paper she could not read, and carried it to a coffeehouse owner to have it deciphered. "Oh, this is — you are quite fortunate," said the man, reaching for his purse; "It says I'm obliged to give you five gold pieces, lucky girl." But a strong magical warning told Sidra she was being cheated, and she declined the coins — "Gosh, my parent, I need to get home. Can I come get it later?" — and made for the door, where a man in his early thirties caught her by the shoulder. "I do believe you forgot something that belongs to you," he said, with a meaningful glance at the vendor. And Miray, for his part, inhabited the person of a runaway girl at a campfire, to whom a slightly older boy approached with hands raised in peace. "It's okay, I won't hurt you. I just want to speak to you for a moment," he said, and drew from her the confession that her family had cast her out for her magic; noticing her shivering, he wrapped his own cloak about her, and before departing into the dark he pressed a square of paper into her hand — "If you go to the city, you can reach me there."
In the morning the four compared these dreams and found them of one cloth. Jean-Zera and Miray sat to reconstruct the sigil from memory, and Miray, no mean hand at it, produced a convincing approximation upon a square of paper; Gizem, gazing upon it, recognised the device as well, and confirmed its importance. Their curiosity thus whetted, the company resolved to look in upon Osman Hamdi Bey’s House and its library, and found there that mischief had gone before them. Ashraf, the tortoise who keeps that place, met Jean-Zera with a sharp tongue. "Why are you letting your friends use the library?" he demanded, and when Jean-Zera protested that his friends had caused no trouble, the creature replied, "The perpetrators were indistinguishable to me from those you spend time with," and added, sourly, "Are they leaving the books out?" The looting, they saw, had been selective and knowing: the genuine journal was gone, and with it several particular volumes touching upon ciphers, upon charm magic, and upon the archaeological digging of a certain city; Osman himself had not come home. Ashraf let fall, too, that his master had lately spoken of needing to seek help from "The Shahmeran."
The search wanted the tortoise elsewhere. Whilst Sidra coaxed Ashraf down the hallway with cheerful talk and a feeding of flowers, Miray slipped the string from about the creature's neck, palmed the small cylindrical key it bore — such a key as might open a little chest or a drawer — and re-tied a fresh string in its place, all without waking the old thing's suspicion. At the desk, Jean-Zera marked a discrepancy in the depth of the drawers and went probing for the mechanism; his pen sprang a trapped latch, and a metal scorpion struck at the intruding point, but the compartment gave up a folded letter sealed with Osman's own seal. Miray, casting about the room, found the true article hidden in plain sight — Osman's Journal tucked behind the open book held forth by a bust. "Osmond's Journal, yeah," he exclaimed. Weighing his forgery kit and his thieves' tools, Jean-Zera chose to open the letter with care, preserving as much of the seal as he might; and inside, entangled with the paper, lay a Black Queen Chess Piece with a coiled metal serpent set within it. The letter, written in plain Turkish and addressed "to my dear friends," made a testament of it. "If you're reading this, it is of utmost probability that my mortal body is no longer with you," Osman had written, bequeathing his manor to them — its secret compartments and its vault of artefacts and all. His journal, he said, holds the whereabouts of the sister of the Padishah’s Consort — a powerful diviner whose very existence blocks the consort's full arcane potential and so thwarts the grand design of the Padişah, the Sultan himself. The journal was locked twice over, mundanely and by art; but with his living body no longer to hand, another road remained: "go to your ally; they will lead you to her," and he had left them "the key to where she is kept." He closed upon a metaphor drawn from the chessboard, and signed himself "Osman Hamdi Bey, Loremaster of the Lodge of Byzantia."
An ally, then, was wanted. The company debated the question, and on Sidra's counsel — for his underground connexions might serve to find a person in hiding — settled upon Alemdar Mustafa Pasha of March, the Ghost of March. Jean-Zera turned up an address for the Lodge of Byzantia and marked that its members convened upon the new moon; Sidra put the question to her djinn, which recalled having once been summoned by a Lodge ritual and imparted two of that fellowship's secret gestures, after the manner of a handshake. "So we got the location and we got the secret handshake," Jean-Zera observed, to the laughter of the rest. At the Old Perfumery Sidra fell in with Sharif — a white cat got up in a fez and a small sword — who asked her to bring back from the races the whereabouts of a powerful item known to a certain faceless ghost, one affiliated with either the Blue or the Green faction. The party looked in as well upon Alexander and Scheherazad; Sidra observed a strong concealment ward laid upon their door, satisfied herself that the two were safe and settling in, and arranged that future word should pass by way of a calico alley cat.
To the Spectral Hippodrome, therefore, where the dead run their horses for a phantom crowd. Gizem met Kore in the stands and learned something of the throng's customs — Kore favoured Blue, and told her of the tradition of crying "Joseph!" at the rider. Jean-Zera sought out Susanna, a fixer, and assured her they had no wish to meddle in the outcome of any race but needed only time with the faceless ghost; she asked them not to interfere, and afterward — once the disruption had run its course — told Jean-Zera she had a commission for them, and that Chique Manu would be in touch to arrange a fresh race. Meanwhile Sidra and Miray stole into the stabling-area as the racers re-coalesced and found the Blue Rider, who would not turn to face them and spoke in sorrow, asking what had brought Sidra to "this cursed place." He sought, he said, only the death of Justinian; and when Miray told him plainly that Emperor Justinian had died centuries since, the rider was stunned, murmured that he might have been laid to rest long ago, and quit the races upon the instant. Before he departed he told Sidra that the item the cats coveted — the Crown of Sargon — might be reached "below the Maiden Tower." The next heat opened with only Green upon the track, for Blue never appeared; the officials cancelled and rescheduled amidst a backstage panic, and the company carried the tidings of the Maiden Tower to a friendly cat near Papa Mert’s, promising the cats they would pursue the Crown themselves.
Thus armed with intelligence, the company kept their appointment with the Ghost of March. They reported that Alexander was placed and would lend his help, and pressed Alemdar Mustafa Pasha for confirmation of Osman's fate. But at the name "The Shahmeran" the paşa started sharply, and explained that the entity is a thing of extraordinary power and danger, bound beneath the Basilica Cistern since the days of Justinian and Theodora. He agreed to bend his efforts to learning what had become of Osman, and asked in return that they retrieve the very blade lately used in an attempt upon his own life — the sword of Yakub Agha — which he described to them, and which the party recognised as the twin of one displayed at the Janissary Headquarters.
The retrieval led them to a Coastal Manor Garden fallen into disrepair, its stones bearing scorch-marks and the plain evidence of old looting. As they searched, shadowy and but half-corporeal Janissaries rose up armed about them and closed in. Gizem set upon the nearest shade in the melee, striking again and again until she had destroyed one — and noting, as she fought, how the creatures shrugged off the bite of honest steel. Sidra called down radiant fire upon a shadow and laid a disadvantage upon another's next stroke. Miray raised a storm and brought lightning down upon two of them at once, and after would restore Gizem with healing and staunch the party's slow bleeding away. Jean-Zera assailed the shades from a distance, undoing some with a chill-breathing spectral force and enchanted bolts. Yet one shadow's strength-draining touch overwhelmed Gizem and dropped her limp to the ground, until Miray revived her and gave back a measure of her sapped vigour. And as the fight wore on, the Shades’ Commanding Officer himself came forth, bearing the very blade Alemdar Mustafa Pasha had described, and confronted the company — who, in the end, put down the shades and claimed the sword.