Constantine scratched at his beard. This close, Radu could see that the skin beneath his beard was red and irritated. “May we all meet such mercy at the hands of our enemies,” he said, his voice so quiet he might have been speaking to himself.
The sound of boots racing down the stairs drew their attention to the door. A soldier burst into the cell, out of breath. “The boats,” he said. “The boats we sent out. They have returned.”
“And?” Constantine stepped toward the soldier.
The soldier shook his head, his face devoid of hope. “No one is coming.”
Constantine dropped to his knees, hanging his head in the same pose Timur had been in when Radu arrived. There were no chains on Constantine, but he had only the same option of release as Timur. Radu watched as though from a great distance, and time seemed to slow, the space between heartbeats stretching out to eternity.
If Lada were here, Radu asked himself yet again, what would she do?
The door was right there. Giustiniani and Cyprian had turned away out of respect for Constantine’s grief. Radu could jam the knife into the emperor’s neck the same way he had into Timur’s. He could end Constantine right now. The emperor held Constantinople together through sheer force of will. With his death, the walls meant nothing. The city would surrender immediately.
Lada would do it. She would have already done it instead of standing around, wondering. Radu was certain she had never in her life asked herself what he would do in her situation. He closed his eyes, despair washing over him. Mehmed had sent the wrong sibling into the city. Because he could end it all, right here, right now, and maybe even get out alive. Even knowing Constantine, even respecting him, Radu could do it. He had killed Lazar, after all. He had stuck his knife into his best friend to save Mehmed.
If he did the same now, it would end the siege. It would be almost a kindness to a man suffering under a burden too large for anyone to bear. The city would surrender and fall without looting or further damage.
The broken body of the child in the street loomed before him. Accusing. Pleading. If he killed Constantine, no one else had to die.
But as Radu ran through what he could do, what he should do, he kept pausing on another image—the gray eyes that would never look at him the same if he did it. Radu was looking at Constantine, but all he could feel was Cyprian’s presence.
Maybe if Cyprian were not here, maybe if Cyprian were not Cyprian, Radu could have done the right thing. Instead, he watched, impotent and useless.
The emperor wept, the innocent died around them, and Radu was incapable of offering anyone mercy. It was with this guilt looped like a noose around his neck that Radu followed the other men out of the dungeon and into the palace.
A visibly trembling servant shuffled up. “There is someone here for you, my lord.”
Constantine waved them all to accompany him. It was doubtless the captain of the boat, ready to make a full report of his findings. Radu did not want to go. But there might be important information he could pass to Amal to atone for not killing Constantine when he had the chance.
The door opened to reveal no weary sailors. Instead, Halil Pasha stood in the center of the room.
TOMA BASARAB LOOKED THROUGH letter after letter, smiling or humming thoughtfully depending on the contents. “Sit down before you pace a hole into that rug. It is worth more than anything you own.” He paused for effect. “But then again, you do not own anything, do you?”
Lada glared at him, but she stopped prowling. “Well?”
Toma leaned back in his chair. They had taken residence in another Basarab family boyar’s home. The study might as well have always belonged to Toma. His letters covered the desk, his wine next to his hand. Only Lada’s sword was out of place.
They were close to Tirgoviste. So close Lada could not stand being cooped up in this house with these people, knowing how near her throne was.
Toma held up a letter. “The prince knows what we are up to.”
“And?”
Toma smiled, the expression transforming him from a well-mannered boyar into something Lada understood far better: a predator. “And it does not matter. We have all the support we need. More than half the boyars are on my side.” He paused, his smile shifting generously. “Our side. Most that are not will do nothing until they see where the advantage falls. He will not be able to draw a significant force in time to save himself. His sons and all the men he could ask for help are fighting at the walls of Constantinople at the sultan’s request.”
Lada closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. “I can go to Tirgoviste.”
“Yes, my dear, you can,” Toma answered, as though she had been asking permission. “I will follow.”
“But not too closely.” She opened her eyes and raised a knowing eyebrow.
He laughed. “No, not too closely. But you take all my hopes and prayers with you.”
Lada picked up her sword where it leaned against a chair. “Keep your prayers. I do not need them.”
They had made it only a couple of hours before the scouts ahead of them shouted a warning. Lada spurred her horse to a gallop, quickly closing the distance between herself and her scouts.
It was too late. The two men, who had been with her since Edirne, were bleeding their lives out into the dirt. A band of a dozen dirty men surrounded them, pawing through their clothes.
They looked up at Lada. Their faces twisted with cruel pleasure, dead eyes greeting her. She drew her sword and killed two before the rest could react. By the time they realized she was no easy prey, Bogdan and a score of her men had caught up.
Several of the robbers scattered for the trees. “Kill them all,” Lada said. She paused, thinking. One of the robbers had curled into a ball on the ground, arms over his head. “Leave this one.”
She dismounted. Kicking him in the side, she pushed him over so he was forced to look up at her. His face was covered with the angry red spots of youth. He was probably only a couple of years younger than her.
“Are there any other thieves?” she asked, jerking her head down the road.
“No. No. Just us in this part.”
“And in other parts?”
He nodded desperately. “Yes, miss. All over.”
She leaned close, resting her sword against his throat. “Would you like a job?”
He could not nod. He could not even swallow. He whispered a tortured “Yes.”
“Go down this road ahead of us. Find every thief, every robber, everyone preying on my people, and give them a message. These roads belong to Lada Dracul now. I declare them safe. And anyone who defies that will die.”
She eased her sword away. The boy scrambled to his feet, bowing. “Yes. Yes, miss. I will.”
She thought for a moment. Words were one thing. Evidence was another. She bent down and cut the ears off the nearest bodies. The first she mangled. The second she found the right place to slice. Nicolae blanched. The sound and sensation was unpleasant, but Lada rolled her eyes at him. “Take these.” She held the ears out to the boy.
He looked as though he would lose his stomach, but he took the ears in trembling hands.
“Tokens of my sincerity. If you run, if you fail to deliver my message, I will know. And I will find you.”
The boy squeaked an assurance that he would not fail, then, stumbling once, ran down the road away from them.
Bogdan returned a few minutes later, wiping his sword clean. “We got them all.”
“Good.” Lada stared at the quickly receding silhouette of the fleeing boy. It was a good message. But it was not quite enough. She had spent years in a land where every road was safe. The Ottomans were free to travel and trade, and their country flourished. She had not forgotten her lessons on the subject.
She had learned something from her tutors there, after all.
“These roads need clearer directions. Hang the bodies from the trees. Write ‘thieves’ on them.” Several of the recent recruits looked worried. Most of them could
not read or write. “Nicolae will write it,” she said.
“This all seems excessive.” Nicolae paused, halfway through dragging one of their scouts’ bodies to the side of the road, where another soldier had started on a shallow grave.
Lada shrugged. “They are already dead. They may as well serve a purpose in death, as they did nothing with their lives.”
After a full day on the road and with Tirgoviste within reach on the morrow, they set up camp. Daciana had not yet moved into Stefan’s tent, but Lada had no doubts it would happen soon.
Stefan watched Daciana move around camp with a sort of confused fear tightening his eyes. He was so twitchy and nervous that Lada worried about sending him ahead to scout. Daciana paid him only the barest attentions, occasionally pausing in her work to comment to him, or to straighten his vest, or to remark on the color or length of his stubble, casually brushing her hand against it.
Lada did not understand the strange dance Daciana was performing. It seemed deeply inefficient. But seeing the way Stefan watched the girl, Lada became twitchy herself.
The place between her legs nagged at her at the strangest times, reminding her of how it had felt and could feel again in the future. She cursed Mehmed for introducing her to those sensations. Before, she had not known they existed. Now, she longed for them.
Daciana leaned close to Stefan, whispering something in his ear and then laughing.
Bogdan joined Lada at her fire. He was thick and menacing where Mehmed was lithe. Bogdan was a hammer to Mehmed’s graceful sword. But hammers had good qualities, too. Lada looked at him, narrowing her eyes. “You would do anything for me.” It was not a question.
He looked at her as though she had taken the time to inform him the sky was blue. “Yes.”
“Come with me.” She stood and walked into her tent. Bogdan followed.
It was much more efficient than Daciana’s methods. And if she did not feel the same with Bogdan as with Mehmed, if the spark and the fire and the need were not overwhelming, Bogdan was as he had always been: loyal and serviceable.
Their second day on the road they met with no further thieves. They found evidence of campsites, hastily abandoned. Lada felt a stirring of something like what she imagined maternal pride to be. Her little robber boy was obeying her.
Bogdan rode closer to her than before, and occasionally in the midst of his inelegant protectiveness she caught a hint of newfound tenderness. It made her deeply uncomfortable. She knew Bogdan felt more for her than she did for him. She had always accepted it as natural, good even. He belonged to her, but she did not belong to him. Perhaps she had crossed a line she should not have.
Her discomfort was soon replaced with an inconvenient relief when she felt a gush of warm blood between her legs. She nearly prayed, she was so grateful. But she doubted that God cared one way or the other about the continued emptiness of her womb.
Lada pulled her horse to a stop and dismounted. In her bag she had extra strips of cloth. She peeled off her chain mail and draped it across her saddle.
“What is it?” Bogdan asked, halfway through dismounting.
“No!” She gestured impatiently for him to stay. “I will be back.”
“You should not go alone,” Nicolae said.
Lada glared at all of them. She could feel the blood still flowing. If she did not catch it soon, her trousers would be stained. Daciana, who rode on Stefan’s horse with him, looked at how Lada walked with stiff legs. “Let her go. Lada is more frightening than anything in the forest.”
Lada turned her back and marched toward the trees. “God’s wounds, you are all ridiculous. Rest. Eat. I will be back.”
She moved quickly through the trees, putting as much distance as possible between the massive party of men and her immediately pressing, deeply private needs.
She found a clear stream and squatted next to it. The water was freezing, but at least there was some warmth in the air. While she cleaned herself, she cursed the fact that she had to deal with this at such an important time.
But the blood was a welcome sight. Perhaps Bogdan had been a lucky thing, dislodging whatever had blocked her since being with Mehmed. She took it as confirmation that Daciana’s thoughts were correct. Her body was not made for carrying babies. She hummed to herself as she rinsed out her underclothes and set them on a rock to dry next to her trousers. She took care to place the extra strips of cloth in her new underclothes to absorb the blood. Then, because she was happy and the day was warmer than any had been for a long time, she pulled off her tunic and rinsed it as well.
That was when she heard the sound of furtive footsteps. She froze, ready to curse Bogdan or Nicolae or whoever had disobeyed her. And then she realized the footsteps were coming from the opposite direction where her men were. For a moment the memory of other trees in another place, of another man sneaking up on her, paralyzed Lada. Her breath would not come. The memory of Ivan’s weight on her, his hands…
She snatched her tunic out of the water, looking around desperately for somewhere to hide. The trees were too thin to climb, the stream was open and exposed. And she was alone, because of her stupid woman’s body. She looked down at her arms clutching the dripping tunic against her chest. Her woman’s body. Ivan had seen it as a weakness, as something he had power over.
The footsteps were getting closer.
Ivan was dead. Her body was a weapon. She could kill whoever approached, but…Unbidden, Huma drifted across her mind’s eye. The way she draped herself across furniture. The way she moved. Lada tried to recall everything about it, because Huma had been a weapon just as much as Lada was.
Lada picked up a knife where it lay next to her boots, holding it hidden behind her back. And then she let her tunic fall as three men appeared at the opposite end of the stream. Their tense grips on their weapons relaxed as their jaws dropped in shock.
“Oh!” Lada squealed, a poor imitation of what she thought a girl would sound like in this circumstance. She drew one arm across her unwieldy breasts.
One of the men averted his eyes, blushing. The other two had no such decency. “What are you doing here?” one of them asked, a puzzled smile on his face.
“I…” Lada leaned down, picking up her tunic and hiding the knife beneath it. “I live there”—she gestured vaguely to her right—“and I was washing.”
“You should not be here.” The blushing soldier looked behind himself at something she could not see. “There are a lot more men coming.”
“Oh! Oh no.” Lada gathered up her trousers and her boots, feigning embarrassed clumsiness. She was grateful she had not put her trousers back on. Bundled as they were, it was not obvious that she did not have skirts.
“Go home,” the man said, his voice tense but gentle.
The leering soldier grinned even bigger. “We will visit you after we take care of some trouble.”
Lada did not know how to smile demurely, but she gave it her best shot. Then she hurried in the direction she had told them she lived. As soon as she thought it was safe, she yanked on her boots, shoving the rest of her things in her bag. She cut back toward the road, running as fast as she could. Her men would not be ready. They had gotten too used to being unchallenged. She had no idea how many soldiers were in the trees, but if they had the element of surprise, she did not like her forces’ odds.
She burst onto the road much farther ahead of the troops than where she had left. Sprinting toward them, she waved her trousers in the air. She could not shout for fear the enemy was close enough to hear.
Nicolae noticed, waving tentatively back.
She pointed frantically toward the trees. Nicolae did not move for several agonizing seconds. Then he acted with all the practiced efficiency of a true soldier. Before Lada reached her men, they had all slid from the road and onto the opposite side, leaving an open expanse between themselves and the trees that hid the enemy. Lada joined them there, out of breath. She drew her sword from where it hung from her saddle.
&nb
sp; “Lada,” Nicolae hissed.
“Men. From Tirgoviste, I think. They are looking for us. I do not know how many, but they will be here soon. Spread word down the line. Crossbows first. We will surprise them.”
“Lada,” he said again. “Your…” He gestured wordlessly toward her chest. Bogdan moved so he was blocking Lada from view of anyone else. She looked down at where her breasts, still uncovered, moved up and down with her breathing.
Glaring, she yanked her tunic out of her bag and pulled it on. “Well, you can thank my”—she gestured wordlessly toward her chest as she tugged on her trousers—“for saving us.”
Nicolae did not have time to inquire further about how, exactly, Lada’s breasts had saved her men. The first enemy soldiers had begun coming out of the trees, moving with exaggerated stillness. Still believing the element of surprise was theirs, they looked up and down the road, then gestured for the others to join them.
It was not as big a force as her own, but if they had been able to use the cover of the trees and catch her men unaware, Lada did not want to think how it might have devastated her numbers. She lifted a fist, then lowered it. Crossbow bolts sang through the trees onto the road, cutting down half the men. The other half scrambled to load their own crossbows and form a rank, but by then it was too late. Lada’s men roared out of the trees, an unbreakable wave of swords and strength.
When it was over and only a handful of their enemies remained, Lada joined them on the road. The men sat in a miserable circle, stripped of their weapons. Some bled. Bleeding was not always a weakness, though. Lada laughed to herself.
One of the soldiers on the road was the man who had had the decency to blush and look away. Lada pointed to him. “That one lives. Kill the rest.” She ignored the messy work going on around the blushing man. “Did the prince send you?”
He cringed at the sound of sword separating soul from body. “Yes. We were supposed to kill you.”
Now I Rise Page 28