#1 – The Janissary Tree
Istanbul, 1836. Ten years after Sultan Mahmud II destroyed the Janissary corps, four officers of the modern New Guard disappear shortly before a major military review. Yashim, a eunuch intelligence agent whose position lets him move between the palace, markets and private households, is ordered to…
#2 – The Snake Stone
Istanbul, 1838. Sultan Mahmud II is dying while rumours about the future of the empire spread through the capital. A French archaeologist arrives claiming to search for lost Byzantine antiquities, unsettling the city’s Greek community because his knowledge suggests a purpose beyond scholarship. Yashim is asked…
#3 – The Bellini Card
Istanbul, 1840. The new sultan hears that Gentile Bellini’s lost portrait of Mehmed II may have resurfaced in Venice. Because an expensive purchase would provoke opposition inside the Ottoman government, Yashim sends his friend Stanislaw Palewski, ambassador of a Poland erased from the map, to investigate…
#4 – An Evil Eye
Istanbul, 1839. Mahmud II is dead, a young sultan is installing a new household and the Ottoman fleet has been taken to Egypt by its commander, Fevzi Ahmet Pasha. The admiral once trained Yashim and remains the one man he truly fears. Yashim is ordered to…
#5 – The Baklava Club
Istanbul, 1842. Three young Italian liberals living in exile receive orders to assassinate a Polish prince but fail to carry out the killing, kidnapping him instead and hiding him at an abandoned farmhouse. The conspirators believe they are serving the cause of national liberation, unaware that…