“No. My mother died four years ago. I have meant to go and see her birthplace, but Constantine’s need has been greater than my whims.”
“Is he so demanding, this uncle emperor of yours?” Nazira’s tone was light and teasing. Radu leaned back, wondering how else Nazira would prove he had drastically underestimated her.
Cyprian laughed. “No. That is what keeps me at his side. I would fear for my soul if I had it in me to repay all his kindness by abandoning him in his time of greatest need.” His expression turned dark once again. “I worry for how he will mourn if news of the ambassadors’ deaths reaches him before we do. He will think me murdered, and will blame himself. It was not his fault. I requested to go.”
Radu frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Cyprian took a moment to drain his soup, looking into the bowl like he could make more appear. “I liked my first visit. Edirne seemed to me very beautiful and…intriguing. I did not anticipate how things would have changed.” He looked back up, another attempt at a smile moving his lips but not changing the sad shape of his eyes. “Besides, I had taken all that time to learn Turkish. It seemed a pity to waste it.”
“If I had known, I would have warned you all.” Even as he said it, Radu knew it was not true. He would have wanted to warn them. But he would not have gone against what Mehmed thought best.
Cyprian leaned forward as though he would grasp Radu’s shoulder. Then he sat back. “It is for the best you did not. It would have alerted the sultan to your disloyalty, and you would have died with us. No, it is better this way. I will mourn my companions, buoyed by the hope that you have brought us.”
The soup had turned sour in Radu’s stomach.
“AMBASSADORS ARE HERE. FROM Edirne.” Stefan had hardly finished speaking when Lada ran from their camp to the castle. Radu would be with them. She had a lot to speak with him about, and she anticipated with delight presenting Oana to him.
She pushed toward the throne room, trying to see over heads of others trying to get in. Two guards would not let her past. Hunyadi found her there, arguing with them.
“My brother will be with the ambassadors,” she said.
Hunyadi shook his head. “No, they are all Turkish. But they brought this.” He held a letter addressed to her. Unlike last time, he gave it to her unopened.
Lada clasped Hunyadi’s hand, trying to hide her disappointment and frustration. “It is from Radu. I asked his aid. If there is news of value, I will bring it to you.”
He nodded, smiling. “I know.”
She took the letter and retreated beneath the bridge, where the heavy weeping branches of willows cocooned her and she could pretend to be far from the poisonous castle. There were many reasons why Radu might not have come. He was ill. He was delayed. He was dead. Or he finally had what he wanted, and nothing could tempt him to leave.
Lada only marginally preferred the last option to his death.
She split the seal and opened the letter. It took her a moment to process that it was not from Radu, telling her whether he would join her in her quest for Wallachia.
It was from Mehmed.
Her face flushed as she read and then reread the first few lines, horrified.
I dream of her neck, slender and unadorned as the gazelle,
I long to see her tresses, draping a cloth between us and our nakedness,
Her breasts like smooth mirrors, her legs like slender reeds bent by the water,
At eventide she lightens the shadows, a lamp against the night,
And I will not forswear that fire nor the passion it alights in my body,
Swift and taut as an arrow at the ready, with her, my target.
“What has he shat out on this page?” Lada muttered, scowling at the words. Mehmed had tried to read her poetry before, and she always stopped him. It was a waste of words and breath. Who had ever looked with lust upon a gazelle? And her breasts had nothing like the mirror about them.
She skimmed the rest of the poem. When he had finally finished comparing her body to various objects and animals, he moved on to business.
I know you have not been successful in your attempts at the throne. I wish I could help. However, I have a proposition.
Lada scowled. He did not wish that he could help—he had very clearly demonstrated he wished no such thing. She braced herself for his suggestion that she return to him.
Do whatever you must to persuade Hunyadi to stay out of Constantinople, and I will be able to part with enough men to give you the strength you need to reclaim your throne. Send word back with my ambassadors. Once I have it, I will wait for you in the south of Transylvania, where it meets Serbia and Wallachia.
Lada dropped the letter in her lap. Whatever she had thought Mehmed might write, whatever sly attempts to lure her back or to remind her she had made the wrong choice, they were not there.
She did not know if that disappointed her. But she had found something she had not expected. Support. He wanted her to succeed. And he was offering her help.
Her way to the throne had opened up again. All she had to do was betray Hunyadi.
It was dark by the time Lada walked in a daze back to camp. Her men still lived outside, with no room for them in the barracks. It suited them fine, and it suited her as well. She preferred a tent to the stone prison of Hunedoara.
When she entered her tent, she found Oana sitting on the rug next to a lamp, mending in her lap. As a child, Lada had sometimes wondered if her nurse came with sewing supplies permanently attached. Lada collapsed onto her bedroll with a sigh. “What are you doing in here?” she asked Oana.
“Bogdan snores. This is my reward for carrying his great weight for nine months and nearly dying bringing him into the world. My beautiful little boy turned into a great hulking man who sounds like a dying pig when he sleeps.”
Lada could not help laughing. “Have you walked the camp at night? An army of boars would make less noise than my men do.”
Oana nodded, squinting, then set aside her work. “It is too dark for my old eyes.”
“Sleep.” Lada stripped some of the furs from her bedroll and tossed them at Oana. “Or, if you want, I can probably get you a bed in the castle.”
“Lada, my dear one, you got me my Bogdan back. You do not need to get me anything ever again.” The nurse sounded dangerously close to crying. “Though,” she said, her voice turning gruff, “I would very much like to get out of Hungary. They all have marbles in their mouths. I cannot understand one word in five.”
“You may get your wish soon enough.”
“Back to Wallachia?”
Lada let out a breath heavy with the weight of the future. “No. Hunyadi plans to defend Constantinople.”
“Why would we go there?”
“Because he thinks it is the right thing to do.”
The nurse made a derisive sound. “The devil take Byzantium and all its glory. It never did anything for us.”
Lada listened as the nurse lay down and shifted around, making all the small noises tired bodies make. It was annoying, but there was also something comforting about having another woman present. Someone she knew cared for her.
“Which way is the wrong way?” Lada asked. “How much should I give if it means getting back to Wallachia?” She could lie to Mehmed, tell him she had persuaded Hunyadi to stay out of Constantinople. He would not discover her duplicity until she already had the troops. There would be hell to pay after, though, and her castle was already filled with enemies.
Hunyadi’s love and trust was a valuable thing; it meant more to Lada than she had thought possible. But he could not get her the throne. And she did not feel the pull of Constantinople that all the men in her life seemed to. Hunyadi, she cared about. Constantinople was only a city.
Wallachia, though. Wallachia was everything.
As though hearing Lada’s thoughts, her nurse echoed, “Everything. There is no cost too high for your people, for your land.”
“Even if it means
betraying someone who trusts me? Or making deals with the empire that took your son from you?”
“You brought him back. You brought yourself back. Wallachia needs you, and you deserve Wallachia. Let your loyalty be only where your heart is. Everything else can fall by the road and be trodden underfoot as we pass to our home.” Oana patted Lada’s arm. “My fierce little girl. You can do anything.”
Lada did not know if it was permission or prophecy, but she believed it either way.
Though manipulating people was Radu’s area of expertise, Lada found the opportunity to do so handed to her with all the poetic grace of a gazelle’s neck.
Hunyadi paced in front of her. He had called her to the meeting room in the castle, but this time only the two of them were present. “What about Serbia?” he asked.
Lada shook her head. “I know for a fact Mara Brankovic, one of Murad’s wives, made a new treaty for Serbia. If you go to Constantinople, you will fight against Serbians, not with them.” Lada wondered briefly what Mara Brankovic was doing with her cleverly purchased freedom. Mara had taken an offer of marriage from Constantine himself and used it to forge a deal between Mehmed and her father, the Serbian prince—creating a new, permanently single life for herself.
“Damn.” Hunyadi leaned back with a sigh. “What do you think of the Danesti prince? I know you hate him, but will he aid us? Maybe he will die at the wall, which would be very convenient for you.”
Lada dragged a knife along the tabletop, scoring the wood deeply. “He is a worm. And not long ago he was in Edirne, delivering his loyalty to Mehmed in person.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had someone in Tirgoviste trying to kill him at the time.”
Hunyadi shook his head, but his expression was more amused than shocked.
“Besides,” Lada continued, “he cannot commit troops without the boyars giving him support. They will bide their time and twiddle their thumbs until any usefulness has passed, and then they will send their condolences.”
“The Wallachian boyars like me, though.”
“Yes, and they fear Mehmed. Which do you think will be a stronger motivator among that pack of cowards?”
Hunyadi nodded grudgingly. “I have some support, though. Elizabeth encourages me to go. And I have you and your men. It will be good for you to have something to do.”
Lada already had something to do. She respected Hunyadi, but he could not give her the throne. Mehmed could. He could also take it from her afterward, if she failed to uphold her end of their bargain.
“Elizabeth is exactly why you need to stay,” Lada said, working her knife back and forth along the gash she was carving into the table.
“What do you mean?”
“Hungary is in turmoil. Ladislas will not live long, and Elizabeth knows you are a threat to her power. Matthias has a chance at the throne. Your son could be king.” She paused, letting the word hang in the air between them. “He will never have a better chance at the throne. If you go to Constantinople, Elizabeth will maneuver him out of the castle. You must see how much your strength and reputation buoy his popularity. All your toil and blood will be wasted if you shed it for misplaced loyalty to the emperor of a dead land.”
The lines in Hunyadi’s face deepened. “But I go for Christianity.”
“Serve Christianity here. Protect the borders. Keep Mehmed from pushing farther into Europe. He will not be satisfied with taking Constantinople. As soon as the city falls, his eyes will turn toward Hungary. You cannot leave it under a weak child king and his conniving mother.” Lada paused, as though thinking. “Besides, you will not make a difference at the walls.”
She knew that was false. If Mehmed was willing to trade troops for the promise that Hunyadi would stay out, he understood that Hunyadi’s experience and reputation were both weapons that could tip the city out of Ottoman reach forever. Hunyadi would absolutely make a difference to the defense of the city. And Lada could not let that happen.
“But the infidels—”
“If even the pope does not see this as a threat to Christianity, I hardly think you need worry about it. Cities fall. Borders change. God endures.” Lada finally dared look at Hunyadi, and what she saw nearly destroyed her resolve.
He looked older than he had when he began speaking, and infinitely more tired. “I already told Emperor Constantine I would fight for him. He depends on my aid. Matthias can manage without me.”
Lada saw her opening, and she struck deep. “Then you are no better than my father. He sold our future for his own selfish desires, just as you would sell Matthias’s to satisfy your soldierly pride.”
Hunyadi held his hands apart, palms up, and looked down at them. They were thick and callused hands, with knotted joints. Then he dropped them to his sides, his shoulders drooping. “You are right. It is selfish of me to seek glory elsewhere. My duty is here.”
Lada wanted to embrace him. She wanted to offer him comfort. She wanted to confess that she cared nothing for Matthias or Constantinople, but that she did care for Hunyadi. And she had manipulated him anyway.
Instead, she let him walk away, alone. Then she drafted her letter to Mehmed. His ambassadors were leaving the next day and would carry it to him. They would deliver her betrayal—and her future—to Mehmed.
Wallachia was waiting.
THE NEXT DAY THEY passed Rumeli Hisari, Mehmed’s new fortress. Radu strained his neck to see as much as he could from the road. The fortress loomed, three soaring towers watching over the Bosporus. Cyprian regarded it with sad, solemn eyes. Valentin spat in its direction. They paused as a series of stakes came into view. Lining the banks of the Bosporus, decapitated bodies stood sentry.
“What happened?” Nazira whispered.
Cyprian’s gaze darkened. “Someone must have tried to get through the blockade. This is the sultan’s warning that the strait is closed.”
They rode on, silent and disturbed. Radu remembered all too well his first lesson in Mehmed’s father’s court. He and Lada had been forced to watch as the head gardener had impaled several men. It was the beginning of many such lessons in the absolute rule of law. Radu had been able to forget them—mostly—since being taken under Mehmed’s wing. But apparently Mehmed had received the same tutelage.
It was not long before they saw the patrol riding from Rumeli Hisari. One of the ironies of a secret mission was that Radu was as liable to be killed by his own side as he was the enemy.
Cyprian drew his sword.
“No,” Radu said. “Let me talk to them. I think I can get us past.”
He scanned the soldiers’ faces desperately as they got closer, but he knew none of them. Radu sat as straight and commandingly on his horse as he could manage after three days on the road. They were not in open war with Constantinople yet. He could make this work.
He had to.
“Who is your commander?” he asked, his tone both lazy and imperious, as though he had nothing to fear and every right to make demands.
The men slowed, fanning out to surround the small group. Their horses trotted a slow circle around them. “What business do you have in the city?” asked a man in front. Missing teeth beneath his clean-shaven lip gave him a lisp. Under other circumstances, it might have struck Radu as funny. But the man had his sword drawn, which dampened any humor.
Radu lifted an eyebrow. “I bring a message to Constantine from our glorious sultan, the Hand of God on Earth, the Blessed Mehmed.”
“What message?”
Radu curled his upper lip, channeling Lada. “I was not aware you had been made emperor of Constantinople.”
The man jutted out his chin angrily. “How do I know you are telling the truth?”
“By all means, detain me and take the time to send word to the sultan. I am sure he will look kindly on you interfering with his express wishes.”
The soldier looked less sure of himself and pulled his horse back sharply. “Who are you, then? I will send a message that we have seen
you.”
“My name is Radu.”
The man frowned, then a mean smile revealed all the gaps in his teeth again. “Radu the Handsome? I have heard of you.”
Radu pretended he was not surprised by this unusual title. “Then you know you should get out of my way.”
The man gestured to the other soldiers, and they moved to the side. The gap-toothed soldier spoke in a low, ugly tone as Radu rode past, “Are you sure you are not a gift for the emperor? Maybe he has a taste for pretty boys, too.”
The soldiers laughed, the sound hitting Radu’s back like blows. But he did not cringe and he did not turn around, riding straight and steady toward the city.
“Well done,” Cyprian said, alongside him. “I thought we were all dead.”
“There are some benefits to being notoriously handsome, after all,” Nazira said. She tried to pass it off as a joke, but Radu heard the strain beneath her voice.
He was more troubled by the soldier’s insinuation. How had he heard of Radu? And what did he mean, that the emperor might have a taste for beautiful boys, too? The implication was that Radu had been the beautiful pet of another man.
He could think of only one man this rumor might be directed at. He tried to shake the thought off, but it lay heavier across his back than his winter cloak.
“Look,” Nazira said, pointing. “Ships.” The road curved and a view of the Bosporus strait opened up. Seven large, beautiful ships were sailing at a brisk clip toward the twin fortresses. Radu wondered where they were going, and envied the sailors’ obvious skill. He had not seen such masterful maneuvering among their own navy. It planted a seed of doubt deep inside.
Cyprian cried out. “No!”
“What? What has happened?” Radu whipped around, certain his lie had been revealed and the gap-toothed soldier was coming for them. But the road was empty. Cyprian looked out at the water.
“Those are Italian ships. They must have hundreds of men aboard. They flee the city.” Cyprian’s shoulders fell, his head hanging heavy. “They abandon us. News of war has outpaced us. Come. We must hurry to console my uncle.”
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