An Evil Eye

51

“Never mind about the sandwich,” Yashim said. “I’ll buy another.”

He smiled as the boy got warily to his feet.

Yashim smiled. “You won’t run away when my back’s turned, will you?”

The fisherman eyed them both suspiciously as they returned to his boat.

“You owe me for the mackerel,” he said accusingly, as though it had been Yashim who had made it vanish.

“Here I am again; and we’ll have two more, if you please.”

Yashim paid for the sandwiches and led the way along the shore. After a hundred yards or so they found a small jetty and he invited Kadri to sit down.

“As good as any kiosk in the palace,” Yashim remarked comfortably, swinging his legs over the water. He liked the view over Pera, especially at night, when the streets were lit and the lights from the new apartment buildings sought their reflection in the still water. The outline of the old Genoese fire tower was distinct against the stars.

Yashim watched from the corner of his eye as Kadri tore into the mackerel with the appetite of a boy who hadn’t eaten all day. He was small but well proportioned, dark-skinned, with clear dark eyes and a shock of black hair that stuck out in comical tufts around his face.

“Have the other one,” Yashim suggested, holding out the untouched sandwich.

He could see the pale disk of Kadri’s face in the dark, but not his expression.

“Thank you,” the boy said. “I have eaten.” And then he added, “Thank you for the sandwich, efendi.”

“Take it, I’m not hungry,” Yashim said.

After a decent pause, Kadri’s hand came out and took the sandwich.

“I expect you’re wondering who I am,” Yashim said. “My name’s Yashim. Your tutor called me in to find you. It’s the kind of thing I do.”

“You find people?” There was a tone of disbelief in Kadri’s voice. “I didn’t know there was such a job.”

“No, well. I don’t live entirely on that kind of work, to tell the truth.”

“Because people don’t disappear often enough?”

“That, or I can’t find them often enough.”

The boy’s laugh was pleasant and unforced. “You found me, though, efendi.”

“I knew where you’d go.”

“In the whole of Istanbul? How?”

“Because it’s the same place I went when I ran away from the palace school myself.”

The boy was quiet for a moment. “You, efendi? You ran away?”

Yashim smiled ruefully in the dark. Kadri had been about to say something else-surprise that he’d been to the same school. Like the cadet at the gatehouse.

“Do you want to go back?”

“I–I don’t know, Yashim efendi. When I was hungry, I thought about it. But really I just wanted to get away. Or…”

Yashim imagined his face, screwed up with the effort to express what he felt.

“Or to be somewhere else, for a change?”

“That’s it, efendi. I just wanted to go into the streets. The ordinary streets.”

“And the ordinary rooftops, I imagine.”

“You know?” Kadri almost gasped.

“I think so,” Yashim said. “I guessed, when I saw the window on the landing.”

The boy leaned forward and put his chin in his hands.

“I think, Yashim efendi, that you find your people every time.”

Yashim laughed. “I try, Kadri. In the meantime, it’s getting late. If you aren’t going back immediately, we’re in danger of running out of options for the night.”

“Where will we go?”

Yashim was getting up. “I have an idea. Come.”