Bright We Burn

by Kiersten White

  “But our city…our homes.”

  “Your city and homes were sold by your prince to the sultan. Just as your lives were.” Again Lada looked around. “I see neither your prince nor your sultan here. There is only me.”

  The man nodded rapidly. “Yes. Yes. Come in with me, for food and wine, and I will—”

  A woman nearby stood up. She was gaunt but had a strong face, and a stronger spirit than the man, indicated by the lift of her chin and unflinching gaze. “Do not go into the city,” she said. “Infidel soldiers are waiting to ambush you. I saw them on my way out.”

  The bald man let out a low moan of despair. The air suddenly smelled of piss.

  Lada smiled at the strong woman. “Thank you. I will see to it that you have home, land, and animals to start your new life as a Wallachian.”

  The woman smiled grimly, bobbing her head in a bow.

  Lada examined the wall. There was no one watching that she could see. They were probably all hiding. The city did not have a tower where she could be observed. “Nicolae, secure the back gate. Quietly.”

  He rode away with several hundred men to circle the city. Lada raised her voice. “The offer remains for those who wish to take it.”

  The Bulgars pushed themselves up off the ground. Many carried children. Eyeing Lada’s men warily, they walked past them and onto the road toward Wallachia. She could be generous, too, and word of that would spread. Not as quickly as word of her violence, but both had merit.

  Lada turned back to the man. “Go inside.”

  “I—I am sorry, I—”

  “Go back to your city.”

  He let out a quick, terrified sob, then turned and walked slowly back through the gate. “Close it behind you,” Lada called.

  He did as he was asked, a flash of his eyes, wide with terror, the last thing she saw before the gate shut. Lada gestured toward it. “Let us help them keep it secure.” A dozen of her men hurried forward with hammers, nails, and a few solid planks. Nicolae would be doing the same at the other gate.

  “Send them a warm greeting.”

  As the burning arrows arced overhead into the wooden city, Lada turned to watch the peasants making their long walk toward a new home. One she had given them.

  * * *

  “How many dead?” Lada asked Bogdan five nights later, after hitting every major Turkish stronghold along the Wallachian border. Around her campfire sat Nicolae, Stefan, Bogdan, Iskra—the woman from the wooden city who had warned them and been taken on as a regional advisor—and some of her higher-ranked men.

  Bogdan shrugged. “Two thousand Bulgars. A thousand Ottomans from the first fortress. Five hundred at the second. Anyone’s guess how many were in the city we burned. We shot at least a thousand as they tried to climb the walls to escape.”

  Iskra grunted. “They came from all the garrisons around the city. Probably two thousand, two thousand five hundred.”

  Bogdan nodded, ticking cities off on his fingers. “So in addition to that, we have hit Oblucitza and Novoselo, Rahova, Samovit, and Ghighen. The entire region around Chilia. All told, twenty-five thousand dead? Mostly Turks, though many Bulgars as well.”

  Lada laughed in surprise. Such a number was unfathomable. At least to leaders like Matthias of Hungary, who wanted to play politics, to rule behind walls, to fight with letters instead of weapons. But she had known what she could accomplish with a few thousand men.

  The Ottoman forces were scattered and lazy. Too used to being unchallenged. If the Ottomans had been prepared, Lada’s forces would have been slaughtered. But it had been easy enough to quickly cut their way up and down the border between Wallachia and Bulgaria. She had been lucky.

  No. She had been smart. She knew she would not face such easy odds again, but she would be smarter than her enemy. Do the unexpected at every turn. This had worked once; it would not work again.

  “Is it enough?” Bogdan asked, fingers still extended in calculating the volume of terror they had accomplished.

  It would never be enough.

  It was enough for now.

  “Yes.” She heard Nicolae sigh in relief.

  He dropped his head from shoulder to shoulder, rubbing his neck. “Do you want me to leave men behind?” he asked. “Are we expanding?”

  “No, we are deterring. I have no interest in conquering. Only in letting others know the borders of Wallachia are inviolable. No one will attack my villages again. Not unless they want war.”

  Nicolae grinned wearily. “I think that message has been sent.”

  “Good. I have new messages to send now.” Lada stared into the fire, watching it devour the darkness around it.

  Constantinople

  RADU STILL FOUND PEACE in prayer. During the siege, he had missed mosques, missed praying in unison with his brothers all around him. It was a comfort returning to that routine.

  He could not bring himself to go to the Hagia Sophia, though, even now that it was a mosque. He had too many memories there to truly lose himself to praying. Instead, he visited other mosques through the city. They were mostly converted Orthodox churches, though a few new mosques were being built. His brother-in-law, Kumal, joined him for most prayers, and, as promised, Radu also joined little Murad and Mesih in prayer.

  Coming back with them from afternoon prayer, Radu was surprised to meet Mehmed. The sultan was so rarely in the streets. Radu bowed low. Mehmed gestured for him to join them. One of his Janissary guards dismounted, offering Radu the horse.

  “Where are we going?” Radu asked, careful to keep his horse a step behind Mehmed’s for appearance’s sake. He had been in Constantinople for a week, and while in private they were as close as ever—when Mehmed had time to see him—in public Radu knew the importance of maintaining distance. Mehmed needed to be apart, needed to stand above. Radu would not disrupt that.

  “Urbana has some new hand cannon designs she wishes to show me. I am certain she would be happy to see you, too.”

  Radu snorted a laugh. “You do not know her very well, do you?”

  Mehmed turned his head, smiling at Radu over his shoulder. “I cannot imagine anyone would ever be unhappy to see you.” His gaze lingered on Radu’s face. It felt almost as though he was watching for Radu’s reaction more than wishing to continue to look at Radu.

  Mehmed did that more and more often lately. He would say some little shining thing, or touch Radu on the shoulder or the hand or even the cheek, always watching, studying. Cataloging what actions or words triggered which reactions. Radu did not know what to make of it. He offered Mehmed a smile now, which seemed to satisfy him.

  Over their past week together, though, Mehmed had not spoken again of Lada. Whether he had discussed her “message” in private with other advisors, Radu did not know. But it seemed as though, for the time being, Mehmed was content to let the issue be buried alongside the bodies of the men Lada had sent back.

  Envoys were often casualties of aggression between countries—Mehmed had killed Emperor Constantine’s envoy a year ago, Cyprian spared only because he had taken Radu and Nazira out of Edirne—but Mehmed had to be bothered by the loss and the intent behind it. Maybe he was planning something and thought Radu would object. Or maybe, with Constantinople so recently settled, Mehmed did not want to antagonize Lada until he absolutely had to.

  Either way, the memory of what Radu had seen in the box stayed with him, wriggling beneath the surface of his skin. The spike. The face frozen in agonized death. His sister had done that. And she would have to be answered. When she was, Radu did not know how he would feel, or what he would want to happen.

  He had chosen Mehmed’s side the year before when Lada asked for his help. He would, it seemed, have to make that choice over and over again for the rest of their lives. He had changed his faith, his life, even his name, but he could not change or escape his sister.

  R
adu was still thinking about the problem of Lada when they arrived at their destination. The world swirled around him. Frozen atop his horse, he stared at the foundry where he and Cyprian had spent a long night melting down silver and making coins.

  “Radu?”

  Startled, Radu blinked rapidly and turned toward Mehmed.

  The other man stared expectantly at him. “You look as though you have just woken up.” Mehmed gestured to the foundry. “Do you know this place?”

  Radu nodded silently, hoping Mehmed would not inquire further.

  “What did you do here?” Mehmed leaned eagerly toward Radu. “You have told me so little of what you did in the city during the siege! You were a stranger to me those months. I want to hear all of it. Did you sabotage their attempts at building an arsenal?”

  Radu rubbed his eyes, leaving his fingers covering them for a few seconds too long for the gesture to appear casual. “No. They never had a hope of amassing enough cannons to meet you that way.”

  “Then what did you do here?”

  Radu straightened his shoulders, staring at the door behind which he had spent a deliriously hot and confusing night with Cyprian. He remembered the shape of the other man’s shoulders, the lines where his torso dipped down to his trousers. The feelings in Radu’s own body that he had hidden behind the table between them. But before that, the laughter, the pure devious fun of it all, sneaking around with his beloved false wife and the friend they were already betraying.

  “We stole silver from the churches and melted it down to make coins.”

  “You and Nazira?”

  “And Cyprian.”

  Mehmed abruptly straightened in his saddle, no longer leaning toward Radu. The eagerness in his voice had shifted, just like his posture. “What were you making coins for?”

  Radu sighed, letting the memory slip away. “To buy food. People were starving.”

  “How did that help our cause?”

  Radu dismounted and paused, stroking his horse’s flank. He did not look to see if Mehmed was studying him. “It did not help. Not you, and in the end, not them. But it felt right at the time.” Radu walked inside the foundry, blinking at the sudden dimness. His conflicted past, confusing present, and unknown future were all harsher and more difficult to breathe through than the blistering air inside.

  Just like silver melted down, its impurities burned away, Radu felt himself as molten and unformed. He could pour himself into any shape. He could fill a mold as Mehmed’s dearest friend and confidant. He could fill one as Radu Bey, powerful force in the Ottoman Empire. He could probably even return to Lada and fill one as the lesser Dracul once again.

  But the mold he found himself longing for, the shape that felt truest, could not be formed. Because the people he wanted to form it around were lost to him. Maybe forever.

  Lada had always known exactly what shape she would take. She had never let it be determined by the people around her. But Radu could not escape the need for love, the need for people in his life to help him see what he should—and could—be. Lada shaped herself in spite of her environment. Radu shaped himself because of it.

  He would stay in the city because Mehmed still shaped some part of him. But he could not become what Mehmed wanted or even needed him to. And he feared that a refining fire would reveal he had never been silver to begin with; he was simply dirt and impurities, burned away to ash while desperate to become something worth valuing.

  Tirgoviste

  LADA ENTERED HER RECEPTION room with Bogdan at her back and Nicolae at her side. Two men were waiting for her. One, the king she knew. And the other, her cousin.

  Matthias Corvinus stood and threw a sheaf of parchment on the stone floor. “You monstrous little fool,” he snarled.

  Lada smiled.

  “Now, now,” said the other man, Stephen, King of Moldavia. He leaned casually in his chair, one leg stretched in front of him, and eyed Lada with curiosity. “Cousin.”

  Lada acknowledged him with a dip of her head. “Cousin.” She did not know much about him, other than his penchant for picking fights and winning them. She already liked him better than Matthias.

  But as much as she would have preferred to meet only with Stephen, it was good that the two kings had arrived at the same time. It made things quicker.

  Stephen sat up straight. “It is good to finally meet you. Your mother is—”

  “I care nothing for my mother.” She did not want to bring that woman—and her weakness—into this discussion. Stephen needed to see she was nothing like the woman who had given birth to her. Lada took the chair opposite the two men. She sat as a man did, back straight, legs apart, arms crossed over her chest.

  Matthias sat back down, anger in his stiff posture. He had probably hoped for more of a reaction from her. She was determined to give him nothing that he hoped for. When they had last been together, he had been almost a king, and she, fighting for the chance to be prince. Now she was prince. She would not let him forget it.

  “I assume you got the same letter I did,” Matthias said to Stephen.

  Raising an eyebrow, Stephen pulled out his own sheaf of parchment. He cleared his throat, then read aloud. “ ‘I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia….’ ” He paused, looking up. “How is Chilia this time of year?”

  “Quite pleasant,” Lada said, not failing to notice Stephen’s pointed question. Nor had she forgotten that Moldavia had a vested interest in Chilia. She had mentioned it specifically for that exact reason. Over the years it had shifted between Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Now it was hers, because she had taken it.

  Stephen lifted an eyebrow in amusement. “I am happy to hear it. Continuing, more locations, following the Danube, ah yes, this is my favorite part: ‘We killed twenty-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four Turks without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose heads were cut off by our soldiers. Thus, your highness, you must know I have broken the peace with Mehmed.’ ” Stephen lowered the letter, laughing. “I should say you have.”

  “Why would you do this?” Matthias demanded. “We cannot afford a war with the Ottomans!”

  Lada met his intensity with a cool gaze. “We cannot afford not to have war with them. They take our fortresses, they take our villages, they take our land, they take our children. I, for one, cannot bear the cost of their stewardship any longer. I will have Wallachia free of them. And I have proved it is possible. They rule because we allow it. No more.”

  Stephen tapped the letter on his knee. “Your numbers are impressive.”

  “I did it all with only three thousand men of my own.”

  Matthias grunted in disbelief. “You exaggerate on one end or the other.”

  Lada pulled out a dagger and cleaned her fingernails with the tip. “We moved fast and surprised them, fortress by fortress. We never faced more than a thousand men at a time. So, no, I do not exaggerate, and you know it is the truth. Do not pretend you are not aware of precisely how many men I have at my disposal, Matthias. And do not do me the dishonor of implying I would falsify my accomplishments. Those of us who actually do things have no need of falsehoods.”

  Matthias rose like a storm once again. Stephen stood, too, holding out a hand. “Calm yourself. Think it through. She has handed a devastating loss to the Turks. And, as she pointed out, she has proved that such a thing, however surprising, is possible. So tell me, Cousin: Why are we here? What else do you have planned?”

  “We are going to crusade,” Lada said.

  Matthias sat yet again. His chair groaned in protest of so much movement. “Constantinople has already fallen. Even you cannot be so delusional as to think you can take it back.”

  “I care nothing for the woes of Greeks and Italians. Let Mehmed have wh
at he has taken from them. But let him never again take anything from us. We crusade for Europe. We crusade to prove our borders are our own, immovable, inviolable, that never again will he take Christian land from us.”

  Matthias was listening, his eyes narrowed. “I will not fight for Wallachian land.”

  “I am not asking you to fight for Wallachian land. I will fight for my own land. I am simply asking you to fight your own battles for once in your pathetic life.”

  Matthias’s sword was half drawn before Bogdan was at his side with a knife pressed against the king’s neck.

  Lada let the knife stay there for the time being. “This is what we do. Antagonize Mehmed. Harass him. If Stephen does the same, we give Mehmed three fronts, three battles he does not want. His empire depends on stability. He will not risk everything for borders he does not need. We force him to withdraw from our lands.” Lada waved one hand, and Bogdan moved the knife but did not back away from looming over Matthias.

  “So you want to work together? Coordinate?” Stephen asked.

  “No. If we give him a single front, it is that much easier for him to defeat us. I want us to do everything separately. No clear target, no attainable path for defeating us. I used a small, unexpected force to slaughter his men up and down the border. Our best plan is to defy plans.”

  Matthias rubbed his throat, his glare as sharp as Bogdan’s blade. “But Mehmed is not in Hungary. I am not going to attack other countries. What good will I do you?”

  “Deal with the Transylvanians. Convince them to work with me. I need their numbers.”

  Stephen laughed, idly spinning an empty wine goblet on the arm of his chair. “I have read some of their work on you, Lada Dracul. Very creative.”

  “Did you see the one about the picnic?” Nicolae asked.

  Stephen nodded. “Oh, yes. Charming. King Matthias will have his work cut out for him.”

  “I am certain he is up to the task,” Lada said. She was certain of no such thing. “And your other role is far more important, Matthias. We need money. The only person who can give us the funds we seek is the pope.”