And I Darken

by Kiersten White

  There was something in his voice that gave Radu pause, made a strange buzzing void come between his heart and his ribs. But then he heard his name being called. He turned to find Mehmed at the far wall of the small practice enclosure.

  “Mehmed!” Radu called, beaming. It still delighted him to see Mehmed after such a long absence. His face was always surprising, like a question Radu had yet to find the answer to.

  Mehmed gestured animatedly, his hands too excited to be still. “Tonight at supper we host a dervish, who has traveled here by way of India. Wait until you see his feet! And his face—he is truly a holy man. Get cleaned up and come to my rooms.”

  Radu nodded, Mehmed’s excitement contagious. Ever since Molla Gurani’s death the previous year, Mehmed sought more and more outliers in the faith: dervishes who took vows of poverty and wandered the earth, scholars who studied to better understand the words of the Prophet, even teachers deemed heretical. He was never content with a simple, unquestioning practice of Islam. It was one of the things Radu loved about him. Studying and learning at his side had always been an adventure.

  Bidding Mehmed a temporary farewell, Radu returned to Lazar, his steps buoyed with anticipation. Lazar’s eyes narrowed, his lips twisted in a back-market imitation of a real smile. “Watch yourself, little brother.”

  Radu paused in picking up the weapons they had left scattered around the yard. “What do you mean?”

  “There are some things it is not acceptable to want, but there are ways around it, and those who will look the other way. And then there are some things that it is impossible to want. Even the mere act of wanting, if noticed by the wrong people, can get you killed.” He gave a heavy, meaningful look at the spot where Mehmed had been. “Be more careful.”

  Radu’s throat constricted, his heart racing so he thought he might die of it. What had Lazar seen? What did he suspect? Could he tell simply by watching Radu that something was very wrong with him, when even Radu did not understand what it was? All he knew was that there was some light, some pull, some fire that Mehmed carried, and Radu only felt truly alive when he was nearby.

  Was that wrong?

  Lazar put his long fingers on the back of Radu’s neck, let them linger for a few impossibly long seconds, the time beating past in the terrified pulse of Radu’s blood. “Let me know if you ever want to…talk.”

  Radu watched him walk away, soaked tunic clinging to his broad shoulders, and knew he would never, ever seek Lazar out again. Because whatever this secret was, whatever this question Radu now knew he did not understand, whatever this aching, secret hollow inside of him meant, an answer felt far more terrifying than any question could ever be.

  Two days later, the conversation with Lazar still felt like sand against sunburned skin, a prickling discomfort when Radu least expected it. He sat in a garden tucked into a far corner of the keep, hidden in the cool, dim shade of a tree overburdened with weeping branches. Maybe he would ask Mehmed to have Lazar sent to another part of the country. He knew Mehmed would. But what if Mehmed asked why? How would he answer? He had told Mehmed how happy he was to be reunited with his old Janissary protector.

  He should stop worrying. Mehmed was his friend. His dearest friend, his only friend. Perhaps Lazar had never had a friend like Mehmed. He could not possibly understand how Radu felt. It was foolishness for Lazar to imply there was something wrong, something dangerous with loving Mehmed more than anyone. Mehmed was the heir to the throne! They should all feel that way about him.

  Mehmed had brought him safety and hope, helped nourish the seed of God planted by Kumal’s kindness when Radu needed it most. Of course Radu valued Mehmed above all others. He even loved him more than he loved Lada, which filled him with guilt. But Lada had let him be hurt on her behalf, all that time ago, by their first Ottoman tutor. Radu had never forgotten the way she sat back, impassive, as he was beaten for her failure to respond. Mehmed would never have let that happen.

  His love for Mehmed made perfect sense.

  Why, then, did Lazar’s look still make him feel strange and wrong?

  He was distracted by the sound of feet stomping gracelessly along the gravel path. Well hidden, he peered through the curtain of leaves. Lada was prowling up and down, turning in one direction before jerking herself back in the other, as though her body were engaged in an argument that neither side was winning. After a few minutes of furious indecision, during which an entire generation of flowers was mercilessly decapitated, Lada went suddenly and shockingly still. Not her usual type of watchful stillness, but a dreamy, placid cessation of movement. Her limbs, normally so rigid, looked almost soft as she lifted a hand and traced her lips, eyes closed.

  Radu held his breath, watching, wondering what was going on in his sister’s head. It had been a long time since he wished he could understand what she was thinking. Most of the time he knew and wished he did not. But in this moment she was transformed from his determined, brutal sister, into…

  A girl.

  That was it. Lada looked like a girl.

  He exhaled sharply, holding back a wondering laugh. In a flash, his sister turned from a girl back into a predator. Her eyes found the source of the noise, and a dagger flashed in either hand.

  “Who is there?” she demanded, feet spread, stance low and balanced.

  “Please do not kill me.” Radu pushed aside two curtains of branches, holding his hands out in mock supplication.

  “Were you spying on me?” Her voice was shrill, panicked, as though she had been caught at something devious.

  But no—that was not it. Radu had caught her doing terrible things during their childhood. Once he found her in the stables, choking Vlad Danesti, an insufferable son of rival boyars. When Radu shouted in surprise, Lada had merely looked up and calmly informed him that Vlad had told her she was worth less than the bastard son of their father. She was punishing him, and wondered how long she would have to choke him until he fainted.

  Interrupted, she released the red-faced, coughing boy, who ran away sobbing and never played with them again. But thinking about the focused, thoughtful look on Lada’s face, Radu had occasionally wondered whether, if he had not happened upon the scene, she would have continued to see how long it took for the boy to die.

  Comparing her unruffled reaction then with her rage now, Radu’s curiosity grew tenfold. He hid it with a placating look of combined fear and confusion. “I did not know you were here until you shouted,” he said. Big eyes, round mouth, palms up. It was an expression that had gotten him out of trouble too many times to count. His eyes were so large anyhow, when he widened them like this, no one believed him capable of guile. Stealing food from the kitchens, being caught eavesdropping, forgetting Janissary protocol: the big eyes and confused apology worked for everything.

  Lada should have known better than to fall for it, but her shoulders relaxed and she tucked the knives away. “What are you doing skulking around?”

  He held the branches for her. She hesitated, then climbed under the tree with him. It was snug, but they both fit, backs curled against the trunk. The air was cooler, damp with the smell of young green things and old wizened growth. “It is nice here,” he said.

  Lada nodded, her mouth grim with the concession. “It feels…secret. Safe.” She spoke in Wallachian as she toyed with the small leather pouch she always wore around her neck. Radu had heard her speak their language with Nicolae, but after she let him be beaten by their first Ottoman tutor all those years ago, he almost always refused to speak it with her. They spoke only other tongues to each other. Hearing the language of their shared childhood now was a strange and startling intimacy.

  “I have never been to these gardens,” she said.

  Radu tapped the dagger strapped to her wrist, trying to keep the gesture light to avoid puncturing this precarious and precious moment that had descended between them. “Well, it is good you came prepared, because the gardens are frequently populated by assassins and thieves.”

&nb
sp; Lada elbowed him sharply in the ribs. From her, it was almost like a hug. They had grown closer in the months of Mehmed’s absence. Now, wrapped in leaves and the language of their childhood, Radu wondered at how they had let so much space expand between them, and whether it was possible that they were finally closing it.

  A voice drifted along the path.

  “Mehmed,” Radu whispered.

  Lada glared in exasperation, switching to Turkish, their moment gone. “Of course it is Mehmed. But where is he going? He told me he had a council today about province taxes.”

  Radu frowned. “He told me he was meeting with the Janissary leaders to go over budgets.”

  They waited, two pairs of eyes peering out, searching for the object of their desire. He walked past in the company of a man Radu did not know. But he recognized the clothes, the white robes and the shaved head. A eunuch. Mehmed laughed as he drew even with the tree, and for a breath Radu thought he had spied them and was amused at the strangeness of their hiding spot. But he continued on with the eunuch, the comfortable match of their paces and the ease of space between them speaking of familiarity.

  When the two men passed out of the garden, Lada lunged out from under the tree and followed. Radu ran to catch up with her. He had never been through the gate at the far side of the gardens. Lada paused, peering carefully over, then opened the gate. A path wound along the back of the fortress, still walled in but narrow and unusually private.

  They turned a corner and Lada stopped so abruptly that Radu ran into her. Ahead of them was a building, one Radu had never seen before. Judging from Lada’s expression, he assumed she was equally surprised by its existence. The walls around it were high and crawling with ivy, but the two heavy entrance gates were thrown open. Through them they saw a section of sumptuous garden, vibrant to the point of garishness, trees dripping fruit and flowers painting every surface in a riot of color.

  Radu felt a flare of resentment that Mehmed had kept the most beautiful part of the grounds from them, until he realized that waiting in the garden were several women. They mirrored the flowers, petaled and swirling with color, beautiful with the same temporary vibrancy. And one of them, standing in the center, held an infant.

  In the time it took Radu to process that it was Mehmed who walked confidently forward and took the baby, Mehmed who laughed and held the infant up as though it were a piglet at a market, Mehmed who placed a wondering kiss on its forehead, the gates swung closed and sealed them off from the bright dream within. Radu could not say whether the gates actually made a deep clanging sound, or if he merely felt it inside.

  “Did you know?” Lada’s voice came from far away, from underwater, from a cavern the depths of which would never see the light.

  “No.”

  It was an age before Radu realized the sun was setting and he was alone, still standing, staring at the gate and the mystery of the Mehmed he had seen inside. The Mehmed who had left him behind.

  That night, Radu and Lada sat alone in Mehmed’s chambers, waiting far past the normal time when he usually met them for a late meal. Neither spoke nor looked at the other. Radu was cloaked in a suffocating blanket of misery and hurt. How could Mehmed have done this? How could he be a father?

  Radu was hurt because Mehmed had not told him of this development. That was why. That was the reason for this horrible, clawing feeling.

  Lazar’s knowing smile.

  The door opened, and Radu cried out with relief. Mehmed was here, he would explain, it would make sense, and things would go back to how they had been. Radu would know how to feel again.

  Lada, too, stood, leaning forward. Her face was a mask.

  Mehmed’s face, however, was like the desert during a windstorm. Everything in his features was ripped away to one raw expression of rage. He threw a heavy piece of parchment onto the floor in front of them.

  Lada picked it up. She frowned, etching her own trails of rage. “What is this? Are you mocking me?”

  Mehmed shook his head. “I assure you, I am as surprised as anyone.” He held a hand up and out toward her, as though calming a spooked horse. Radu looked from one to the other. There was something off there, something new. Something he had missed while lost in his own swirl of confusion. What was it? What had happened?

  Panicked, Radu tried to snatch the parchment from Lada, but her grip held tight.

  A smile twisted Mehmed’s lips as his words came out in the same manner. “From my father. Apparently, I have been invited to my own wedding.”

  Edirne, Ottoman Empire

  THERE WAS GOLD EVERYWHERE.

  Gold on fingers fat and thin, gold in noses long and stubby, gold in ears and on foreheads and necks and wrists, gold on arms, gold on ankles. The most gold on a pair of delicate ankles peeking out from beneath silk trimmed with gold threads, weak ankles that could never carry their owner in a fight or keep up in a race.

  Sitti Hatun, Mehmed’s bride, had detestable ankles.

  They were two days into the monthlong wedding celebrations, and already Lada had a headache from the perfume, the rich food, and the incessant music. She wanted to use the harpist’s instrument as a bow and fire arrows of burning incense into the beating gold hearts of everyone here.

  She had not had even a moment to speak with Mehmed, had not been alone with him once since the pool, since the kiss, since everything became tangled and confusing. And Mehmed smiled and laughed and sat with his slender-ankled bride, his achingly beautiful bride, leaving a charred hollow where he had ignited something deep inside Lada.

  A young man, as curved and gleaming as a Janissary sword, stood on a dais nearby, reciting poetry. His voice was a river, pulling her along, slipping her under the current and spinning her until his tales of valor and love and triumph felt like they were drowning her lungs so she could not breathe.

  She grabbed a goblet from a meek-eyed servant and drank the sour wine as quickly as she could, trying to wash away the taste of the poet’s passion. It surprised her that Mehmed would have wine served at his wedding, when he refused to drink on religious principle. But she was very, very glad to have it.

  On the other side of the cavernous room, beneath a shimmering drape of silk, propped up on velvet pillows, Mehmed and his bride reclined. Everyone pulsed out from them in streams. The beating heart of the empire, fed by the love and adoration of the vessels in the room.

  Lada would rather bleed out than pretend to be happy for him.

  “Lada!” Radu’s face was as bright as the lamps overhead. “May I have this dance? We should talk.”

  “I would sooner let the head gardener take me for a walk in the courtyard,” she snapped.

  Radu’s face fell. “But I had something I wanted to ask you about.”

  A young woman passed deliberately close, looking up at Radu through her eyelashes and smiling so demurely it was almost obscene. Lada realized she had seen Radu dance with nearly every woman present. He had never pursued anyone in Amasya, but there had not been any opportunity. She felt the wine slosh sickeningly in her empty stomach.

  If Radu wanted advice on courting Ottoman women, he should know better than to come to her. “I am sure you can manage perfectly well on your own,” she said, sneering.

  Radu looked hurt, but then his jaw set and he walked away. Frustrated with him, frustrated with herself, Lada turned to flee and found herself face to face with Huma. Her lips were stained a deep red that matched the cloth she was draped in. She looked like a glittering wound.

  “Walk with me,” Huma said, holding out a hand.

  Scowling, Lada let Huma take her elbow and lead her to the far edge of the room, a corner not quite blazing with light from the dangling chandeliers. So many burned so brightly that the ceiling was obscured by a haze of smoke, the patterns there shifting and blurring.

  Or perhaps Lada had finally had too much to drink.

  “You seem troubled, little one.”

  Lada laughed bitterly, picking at her clothes. She had been dressed
by servants every day this week. Though she had tried to insist that she wear the same style of clothes as the Janissaries, she had been provided with draped dresses and silk shoes. Tonight her dress was a red so deep it looked nearly black, cut lower than she cared for, with a white sash. Her hair had been tamed and pulled back into a series of braids and curls that trailed down her back. She wore her boots, at least.

  Huma traced a finger along Lada’s collarbone. “You ought to have a necklace here, to draw attention.” She pointed at Lada’s breasts.

  Lada would shoot an incense arrow at Huma first.

  But looking at the older woman’s face, Lada realized Huma was not pleased to be here, either. Lada had assumed Huma would be thrilled—in her element as the mother of the groom, preening and parading her new power. She had not wanted Lada to marry Mehmed, and here he was, married to another.

  Instead, Huma surveyed the room with narrowed eyes.

  “I have not offered my congratulations,” Lada said.

  Huma huffed, waving a hand sharply. “Let us not pretend. I was not consulted on any of this. It is a political alliance chosen by Murad to secure the eastern borders. An odd move if he was planning to abdicate the throne again soon, now that Mehmed is older.”

  Lada looked at the room through new eyes. None of Mehmed’s teachers were here, none of his favorite holy men. No one he had worked with during his brief time as sultan. And yet Kazanci Dogan, who had been the head of the revolt, was here. Surely Mehmed would not have invited him. The veins of power were not, as she had thought, radiating out from the beating heart of the newlyweds. They were radiating out from…Murad.

  “But I thought with the marriage, and Mehmed having an heir…”

  Huma laughed darkly. “A baby with a concubine is hardly a guarantee. And a marriage to a Turkmen tribe we are already allied with? This is a move of strengthening, not building. Not expanding or creating power and connections for Mehmed. This strengthens Murad and gives no benefit to Mehmed. The baby and this bride mean nothing. They change nothing.”