“You are cruel,” he said, lifting her hair to his nose and hiding his face in it.
“Do you really want to discuss this now?” They had found a sort of peace, come to a truce on the matter of his harem: Lada pretended it did not exist, and Mehmed never acknowledged it. But she still refused to give him all he wanted. Holding her maidenhood to herself was the only way she knew to protect herself, to keep her heart from becoming fully his.
And she was afraid, too, that if she ever allowed him in, he would cease seeing her as Lada and dismiss her the same way he did the mother of his son. She was even more afraid of having a child, of being broken from the inside. She wanted nothing to change. She wanted to live in these sharp winter days, curled together against the evening chill, the two of them forming their own secret society. But she could not deny that every passing day made it more difficult to want him to stop.
She left the warm cocoon of his bed, seized with a sudden panic that if she did not break free right then, she would emerge different, unrecognizable to herself.
“Where are you going?” Mehmed reached out to grab her, but she twisted free of his hands.
“Training.”
“You have the most deadly force in the entire Janissary ranks. What more can you possibly need to do today?”
She did not answer, but instead rushed out of his room and ran to the barracks. There, Nicolae was crouched on the floor, throwing dice with Petru, whose face indicated he was not doing well. “Ah,” Nicolae said, looking up. “She graces us with her presence! To what do we owe the honor?”
“Is that how you address your leader?” Her words snapped Petru to attention. He stood, tall and straight, bowing his head.
Nicolae took his time, stretching his long body before finally standing. “I did not realize you were leading anywhere I would need to follow.” His tone was light, but his meaning lashed Lada to the core. He had been ready to flee with her. And she had decided to stay without any thought of him. Things had not been the same between them since, but she filled her time with Mehmed and pretended not to care.
“When I have somewhere to go,” she said, holding his gaze, her chin tipped up, “you will be the first I want by my side.”
He sighed, raising a scarred eyebrow. “I hope so.”
“Now, we can—”
Mehmed burst into the room, chest heaving, a terrified young boy following him. “Tell her,” he ordered the boy.
The boy, who had a large head and a skinny neck, spoke. “Murad will not survive the week. Halil Pasha means to turn the city against you before you can come claim the throne. Leave now, bring only those you trust absolutely. Enter in secret. He is watching all the gates. I will be waiting for the boy to return with news. My arms are scarred by rosebushes. Yours faithfully, Radu.”
Mehmed stared at her. “What does the last part mean?”
“I have been deceived by someone falsely claiming to be Radu in a message before. But no one else would know about that except us. The message is from Radu, without question.” Lada paused, an unexpected ache for her brother rising in her belly. “Gather the men. We leave now. Bring extra horses to switch out.”
“What about Ilyas?” Mehmed asked.
“Do you trust him?”
“I do.”
Lada nodded. “His force is too big. We need to get you into the palace without notice. I will have him follow with his troops two days after us. For now, we ride hard and fast, and with only my men.”
“We are playing ‘Attack the City’ against Edirne?” Petru asked, eyes lighting up.
Lada could not help matching his anticipation with a smile of her own, showcasing each of her tiny, sharp teeth. “Yes. We infiltrate the capital.”
“But if we split up,” Matei said, crouching near the fire as the rabbits Stefan had caught cooked, “we are more vulnerable. Mehmed is not exactly unknown. We need all the eyes and swords we have.”
Petru, Nicolae, Stefan, and Matei, as Lada’s first Janissaries, sat in on the council. Her other men were sprawled in the woods nearby, trying to sleep in the early-afternoon light. They had made good time, mainly riding at night, avoiding the towns and cities that dotted the roads.
“We cannot enter the city as Janissaries.” Nicolae held his cap out. “We would be stopped, questioned. And no one will fail to notice a troop of Janissaries led by a woman.”
Lada growled, kicking at the ground. “Why must I be a woman?”
“Yes, why must you?” Mehmed said, amusement coloring his voice.
“I never think of you that way,” Petru said, his sincerity earning a snort of laughter from Mehmed.
“Stefan, give me your breastplate.”
Face as impassive as ever, Stefan slowly unbuckled it. Though most of them wore mail for increased ease of movement, Stefan always opted for a full metal breastplate.
Lada took it and fastened it over her chest. It compressed her breasts, but not unbearably so. She took a stick from the edge of the fire, waited for it to cool, then rubbed the charcoal lightly along her upper lip and jaw line. “If we enter under cover of night, I can be a man.”
“Still a Janissary, though,” Nicolae said.
Amal, tiny and clinging to the edges of their group as always, spoke so softly Lada could barely hear him. “No one looks at servants.”
Lada opened her mouth to argue, but she had barely looked at him this whole journey. Even his horse was old and unremarkable. No wonder Radu had chosen him instead of someone stronger or faster. Amal was the least threatening, most invisible messenger possible.
Mehmed frowned. “So I am to enter my city as a servant?”
Nicolae’s smile was as easy as ever, but Lada knew him well enough to know there was none of his usual warmth behind it. “What is a sultan but a servant to his people?”
Lada handed the breastplate back to Stefan, then turned to Amal. “How quickly can you steal me the right clothing?”
He smiled shyly, then ran, disappearing through the trees in the direction of the road.
After they had eaten, the men stripped free of their uniforms. They left their Janissary caps in a pile that glowed faintly in the twilight, looking like nothing so much as a tumbled stack of skulls. They had brought various articles of extra clothing, ones that had no indication of their rank. Simple turbans covered their heads; in the dark, they would pass for servants. Provided that no one probed too deeply or touched them, discovering an incongruous layer of armor.
Lada, however, owned no clothes other than her uniform and the ridiculous dress she had used to sneak into the harem so many months ago. She had left the dress in Amasya. It was not a role she cared to play ever again, even in defense of Mehmed.
She was about to give up and make plans to scale the walls when Amal returned, breathless, holding a bundle of dull brown cloth.
“Well done,” Lada said, covering her armor with a simple dress and draped sash. She tied up her hair and pulled a scarf low over her forehead.
Nicolae coughed to cover up a laugh. “You may want to shave.”
She frowned, then remembered the charcoal she had neglected to clean from her face. “I suppose a bearded woman would draw notice,” she said drily, wiping it away.
It was dark by the time everyone was ready to go. They had stopped half a league from the city and would go on foot in groups of three or four, meeting at an inn they all knew. Lada watched as her forces dwindled until she was left with Stefan, Nicolae, and Mehmed. Amal had gone ahead to alert Radu that they were on their way. His code phrase was to remind Radu that only an ass pulls a shield for a sled.
“I feel like a thief,” Mehmed said as they crept along the trees parallel to the road, waiting until the last moment to emerge into the open.
“We are thieves,” Lada answered. She stopped, the walls of the city coming into view. “Now we steal your city.”
A MAN MELTED FREE FROM the wall behind the inn. He was tall, with a face so blank and eyes so lifeless they ma
de Radu shudder.
“Radu,” the man said, a statement rather than a question.
Radu nodded. He had left Amal behind to keep the boy out of any further danger. “I think I am being followed.” Though the path he had taken was wandering and he had walked with casual, aimless ease, an echo of footsteps—a hint of a cloak—had shadowed him the whole way.
The man pointed to Radu’s own finely woven cloak, worn with a hood against the evening’s chill. Radu unfastened it and handed it over. After two quick knocks on an unobtrusive door, the man threw the cloak over his shoulders, adjusting his posture and gait to match Radu’s, and walked to the end of the alley. The door opened, and Radu ducked inside. Nicolae pulled him into a quick embrace, his smile a bit tighter than normal but still a relief after the strain of the journey.
“Come, we have a room.” He led Radu up an uneven flight of stairs along the back of the building, the bright sounds of fireplace and food growing and then fading as they passed behind a kitchen. “We have a man in the main hall to watch the entrance.”
“You made good time.” Radu reached for more to say to block the painful lump growing in his throat, the breathless flutter of his chest, but nothing came to him.
He was about to see Mehmed.
And Lada.
Nicolae opened a door on the second floor to a sitting room filled with men like trees growing too close together. As one, they looked in his direction, hands on weapons. The men relaxed when they saw Nicolae, and the door closed behind them. Radu could not see any of them, not really, not with how hard he was looking for—
Mehmed. Leaning over a roughly made table, a lamp’s light catching his face so that even his eyes seemed to glow soft and warm. He pointed at a piece of parchment spread against the table and weighted down with various weapons, long fingers tracing intrigues and plots in the air over the map.
And next to him was Lada, scowling, shortest in the room and still somehow taking up the most space. She wore women’s clothing, which seemed incongruous on her.
She glanced up first. Something flashed across her face, and Radu instinctively curled his shoulders inward, bracing for a blow. Only after she looked back down without acknowledging him further did he have time to process that her expression had been one of rage, and then of sadness.
But everything else was forgotten when Mehmed straightened up and caught sight of him. A relieved smile transformed his face as he crossed the distance between them and hugged Radu. Radu closed his eyes, answering the embrace for only the briefest moment. He feared if he held on longer, he would betray himself. Instead, he pulled back, keeping his hands on Mehmed’s shoulders to separate them. “Are you well?”
Mehmed nodded, gesturing to a low bench built along one entire wall of the room. He sat, and Radu followed, turning toward him.
“My father?” Mehmed asked.
“I will be surprised if he is still alive by the end of tomorrow. He has not been conscious for three days.”
“What are we fighting?” Lada asked, standing nearby. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and she looked over Radu’s head when she addressed him.
“Halil Pasha’s forces are scattered through the city, watching all the entrances. The palace is guarded as always. It will be a problem getting Mehmed inside without being noticed.”
Lada’s frown deepened. “What does Halil think he can do? He has no claim. Even if the people here are wary of Mehmed’s rule, they will not hand the throne to a pasha.”
“There is the brother,” Radu said.
“He is still an infant!”
“If something were to happen to me,” Mehmed said, “Halil Pasha could designate himself the grand vizier and rule as regent on my brother’s behalf until he came of age. Probably after he came of age as well. I do not know the boy’s mother well, but she is not powerful enough to make herself his regent.”
“But if Halil Pasha cannot kill you, he is out of options,” Lada said.
Radu shook his head. “No. He will have another way.” He leaned back, closing his eyes, scouring his memory for any hint of what Halil Pasha’s larger plan could be. And then he remembered—that night, that horrible night with Salih. There had been a letter from Constantinople. What was the name it mentioned? Radu put a hand to his forehead, trying to re-create the words when all he could think of was the kiss he had wanted but not received, and the kiss he had not wanted but gave anyway.
Then it came to him. “Orhan! Does the name Orhan mean anything to you? I saw it in a letter from Constantine to Halil Pasha.”
Mehmed’s eyes tightened. “He is a pretender, allegedly an heir to my throne from another line. We suspect he is not even related, but Constantine has held him against us for years. My father pays a yearly tax for his upkeep so that Constantine does not send him here to stir up trouble. Halil Pasha means to set the city against me and bring in Orhan as sultan. If he can keep things unbalanced enough, he can hold Edirne and trigger a civil war, and keep Constantinople out of harm’s way. I wonder how much they have paid the snake.”
Radu blanched. “So many Ottomans would die. How can he not care what the cost of a civil war would be?”
Lada picked up a dagger from the table. “The solution is simple. We kill Halil tonight; Ilyas arrives with his Janissaries in two or three days, and the city is ours.”
“It is not that simple,” Radu said.
Lada let out a derisive huff, but Mehmed had turned away from her to face Radu. Lada recoiled as though struck, her face darkening.
“Tell me, then,” Mehmed said. “What do you think we should do?”
Radu rejoiced. “I have an idea.”
“I have always thought red was a better color for me than blue,” Nicolae said, his mouth and nose obscured by a veil as he plucked at his flowing skirts.
“We speak of this to no one.” Mehmed’s voice was a growl. If anyone looked too closely at the new concubines, they would doubtless be terrified of the murder they saw in their faces.
Lada said nothing, simply waited for the last of her men to finish scaling the wall and dropping over it into the winter-dimmed gardens of the harem complex. All told, she had brought only four: Matei, Nicolae, Stefan, and Petru. Radu could not get more women’s clothing than that, and the smaller the party, the less likely they were to draw attention. The others left the city to await Ilyas and inform him of the plan.
When everyone was over the wall, Lada pulled the rope back, coiled it, and tucked it beneath her sash. Though Radu did not want to, he could not help seeing the way Mehmed continuously observed her movements.
“They will be watching Huma,” Radu said. He had lied about a meeting with the ailing Huma to get into the harem, but in truth they were not involving her. She was too volatile, too unpredictable, and too obvious a choice. “The shortest distance between here and the palace is the sultan’s chambers. That may be our best entry point.” Radu rubbed his chin, then smiled. “I am well known to be a favorite of Murad’s. Follow me. And try to look like women.”
“How do I do that?” Petru grumbled.
“Watch Lada?” Matei suggested. Fortunately, the snorts of laughter were smothered by the veils, and Lada pretended not to notice. Something in the way her eyes tightened made Radu wonder if perhaps it bothered her, though.
“Short steps,” Lada said. “Make your body curve wherever you can. Shoulders rounded, hips swaying. Walk as though you have nothing between your legs, which should not be a problem for Nicolae or Petru.”
More gruff laughter.
“And perhaps stop laughing or speaking,” Radu said, shaking his head. He strode ahead, walking confidently in front of the procession. When they got to the gated entrance, he nodded at the guard.
The eunuch peered over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows.
“The doctors have suggested we try to arouse Murad’s senses in an attempt to wake him. I thought, well…” Radu gave a sheepish grin, gesturing back at the women.
The eunuch opened the gate, and they filed through. Radu prayed silently that the eunuch would not look too closely at the “women” or their feet. He had been unable to find slippers for them, and their leather boots were hardly standard for women who spent all their lives living in a single building and its surrounding gardens.
The next door was an entrance to Murad’s private apartments, manned by several Janissaries. Sweating profusely beneath his clothes, Radu gave the same explanation with the same knowing-but-embarrassed smile. He was met with shrugs, the Janissaries obviously bored with their role of guarding a nearly dead man.
And then they were inside.
“Do you want to see him?” Radu asked, pausing outside Murad’s chamber doors. He looked nervously down the hall, certain that at any moment the Janissaries would realize their mistake and storm in, swords drawn. Or a doctor would come, calling an alarm. Or Halil Pasha himself would be waiting.
But they were alone, for now.
Mehmed considered his father’s room, then shook his head. “I have no reason to.”
Radu was strangely tempted to go in and pay his respects. Whatever else he was, whatever else he had done, Murad was the reason they were here. And Radu would not change that. Murad had taken much, but he had also given him Mehmed and Islam.
Radu put his hand on Mehmed’s shoulder, squeezing once. Then he led the group through the sumptuous rooms to a little-used side chamber. It was too small to entertain, and with Murad dying, visitors were few and stuck to the main rooms.
With the door safely closed behind them, the men stripped off their disguises, some with more urgency than others. “I prefer your face veiled,” Nicolae said to Petru as the young man ripped his outer clothes off.
“I prefer your mouth shut,” Petru retorted.
There was an ease between them, a safeness that stemmed from knowing so much about one another. Perhaps not even liking each other, but being certain that if it came to it, they would defend one another with their lives.
And I Darken Page 29