The Venetian Contract by Marina Fiorato Read Free Book Online

I see Timurhan every day, in you.’ The mention of her old love roused her a little, and her voice became a little louder. ‘You must nottell him any of this, promise me. It is very important that you do not, for he is a player in this tragedy of my son’s.’ She raised a swollen hand, with a visible effort, and cupped Feyra’s cheek. ‘If I were to wish for one thing, I would wish you a little less beautiful. It is well that you are to leave the city.’
    Feyra felt a thrill of fear. ‘Why must I go?’
    ‘My son has conceived of the most evil plot against Venice …’ The hand that held Feyra’s cheek began to shake. Feyra moved her fingers up to the wrist with concern. Anger was her mistress’s enemy for it made the blood rush and the humours churn, the spores would be crowding to her organs now.
    ‘Calmly. Say on.’
    Nur Banu pulled the wrist away and began wringing her hands – but no, she was working to loosen a ring from her distended finger, the crystal band that she always wore, ‘Take this,’ she said, her eyes closing and her speech beginning to clot. ‘Tell my uncle the Doge, tell
him
. And if you need sanctuary, there is a house with golden callipers over the door. A man named Saturday lives within. He will help you.’
    Feyra took the ring, without looking at it. She had barely listened once she had heard the name of the Doge. She propped herself on her elbow, drenched with dread. ‘Tell him what?’
    But Nur Banu’s eyes were blank and staring.
    ‘Take the ring
where
?’
    Cecilia Baffo’s eyes widened before they closed. She spoke with her eyes shut. ‘To Venice, of course.’
     

     
    Feyra leaned down and laid her cheek to her mistress’s lips. She could not yet think
Mother
. The Valide Sultan’s breath was short but regular: she still lived, but Feyra knew there would be no benefit in rousing her. A shock would possibly be too much for her beleaguered heart.
    Feyra looked out of the window across the sea that led to Venice. The sun was high in the sky, the boats crowding the mouth of the Bosphorus. Some alchemy had turned the lapis water to gold. Little black boats broke the light; some crossing the sound to Pera and back, some setting sail for distant shores. How heartless, thought Feyra. How can trade continue, how can people still need silk and salt and saffron while a human life ends here?
    Feyra had been at the bedside of death many times, and knew that when the dying had something to say, they rarely choked out their last word cleanly and then expired, whatever the Osmanli storytellers might say. Feyra’s one, faint hope was that Nur Banu would rally one more time before the poison claimed her, as her body made one more desperate effort to fight the spores of the Bartholomew tree. But she could not expect that Nur Banu would be as lucid as she had just been. Feyra was thankful that she had had the time to hear her mother’s story – and her own – but now she needed to hear what her mistress would ask of her; and the meaning of the ring.
    She turned the ring on her finger in the morning light. It was beautiful, the craftsmanship exquisite; the crystal band very clear, with some sort of coloured pattern on it. Now she saw that the colours were not a pattern, they were tiny horses, four of them, galloping around the band. She peered at them: they were beautifully rendered, in glass, enamelled on the clear crystal of the band with some tool that musthave been the size of a pin’s point. Each horse was of a different hue: one was black, one red, one white and one the greenish colour of bile. Having contemplated, not one hour ago in the Samahane, the prospect of fleeing with her father, Feyra knew now she could not quit her patient. She had to know everything. She did not have to wait long.
    ‘Feyra, Feyra …’ It was little more than a whisper.
    Feyra wrapped her hand around the older woman’s again. ‘
Come and see
.’ The breath was foul now, as if death were crawling