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First published in the USA by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House
Children’s Books, and in Great Britain by Corgi Books 2018
Text copyright © Kiersten Brazier, 2018
Map illustration copyright © Isaac Stewart, 2018
Cover art by Alessandro Taini
The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-448-19690-6
All correspondence to:
RHCP Digital
Penguin Random House Children’s
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL
To Wendy Loggia, darling sunshine in human form, who saw what these books would be from the very beginning and helped me every step of the way
LADA DRACUL HAD cut through blood and bones to get the castle.
That did not mean she wanted to spend time in it. It was a relief to escape the capital. She understood the need for a seat of power, but she hated that it was Tirgoviste. She could not sleep in those stone rooms, empty and yet still crowded with the ghosts of all the princes who had come before her.
With too far to go before reaching Nicolae, Lada planned to camp for the night. Solitude was increasingly precious—and yet another resource she was sorely lacking. But a tiny village tucked away from the frosted road beckoned her. During one of the last summers before she and Radu were traded to the Ottomans, they had traveled this same path with their father. It had been one of the happiest seasons of her life. Though it was winter now, nostalgia and melancholy slowed her until she decided to stay.
Outside the village, she spent a few frigid minutes changing into clothes more standard than her usual selection of black trousers and tunics. They were noteworthy enough that she risked being recognized. She put on skirts and a blouse—but with mail underneath. Always that. To the untrained eye, there was nothing to mark her as prince.
She found lodging in a stone cottage. Because there was not enough planting land for boyars to bother with here, the peasants could own small patches of it. Not enough to prosper, but enough to survive. An older woman seated Lada by the fire with bread and stew as soon as coins had exchanged hands. The woman had a daughter, a small thing wearing much-patched and too-large clothes.
They also had a cat, who, in spite of Lada’s utter indifference to the creature, insisted on rubbing against her leg and purring. The little girl sat almost as close. “Her name is Prince,” the girl said, reaching down to scratch the cat’s ears.
Lada raised an eyebrow. “That is an odd name for a female cat.”
The girl grinned, showing all the childhood gaps among her teeth. “But princes can be girls now, too.”
“Ah, yes.” Lada tried not to smile. “Tell me, what do you think of our new prince?”
“I have never seen her. But I want to! I think she must be the prettiest girl alive.”
Lada snorted at the same time as the girl’s mother. The woman sat down in a chair across from Lada. “I have heard she is nothing to look at. A blessing. Perhaps it can keep her out of a marriage.”
“Oh?” Lada stirred her stew. “You do not think she should get married?”
The woman leaned forward intently. “You came here by yourself. A woman? Traveling alone? A year ago such a thing would have been impossible. This last harvest we were able to take our crops to Tirgoviste without paying robbers’ fees every league along the road. We made two times again as much money as we ever have. And my sister no longer has to teach her boys to pretend to be stupid to avoid being taken for the sultan’s accursed Janissary troops.”
Lada nodded as though hesitant to agree. “But the prince killed all those boyars. I hear she is depraved.”
The woman huffed, waving a hand. “What did the boyars ever do for us? She had her reasons. I heard—” She leaned forward so quickly and with such animation half her stew spilled, unnoticed. “I heard she is giving land to anyone. Can you imagine? No family name, no boyar line. She gives it to those who deserve it. So I hope she never marries. I hope she lives to be a hundred years old, breathing fire and drinking the blood of our enemies.”
The little girl grabbed the cat, settling it on her lap. “Did you hear the story of the golden goblet?” she asked, eyes bright and shining.
Lada smiled. “Tell me.”
And so Lada heard new stories about herself, from her own people. They were exaggerated and stretched, but they were based on things she had actually done. The ways she had improved her country for her people.
Lada slept well that night.
“Did you know,” Lada said, scanning the parchment in her hand, “that to settle a dispute between two women who were fighting over an infant, I cut the infant in half and gave them both a piece?”
“That was very pragmatic of you.” Nicolae had ridden out to the road to meet her. Now they were side by side, their horses meandering through the ice-glazed trees. This winter was preferable to last, though, oddly, she found herself missing the camaraderie of camping as a fugitive alongside her men. Now they were scattered. All doing important work for Wallachia, but any chance she had to reunite with them, she took. She had been looking forward to this time with Nicolae.
He guided them toward the estate that had formerly belonged to her advisor, Toma Basarab. Before Lada’s rule, Toma had been alive and well, and these roads had been nearly impassable without an armed guard for protection. Now, Toma was dead and the roads were safe. Both of those—death of boyars and safety for everyone else—were patterns of Lada’s rule so far.
The frigid air stung her nostrils in a way she found bracing and pleasant. The sun shone clear, but it was no match for the blanket of ice that Wallachia slept under. Perhaps that also contributed to the safety of the roads. No one wanted to be out in this.
Lada preferred it to the castle with a fierceness that was as sharp and pointed as the icicles she passed beneath.
She waved the parchment with the story of her unusual methods of solving family disputes. “The most offensive part,” she said, “is that the story is unoriginal. The Transylvanians got that one from the Bible. The least they could do is make up new stories about me, rather than stealing from Solomon.” She should print the stories the woman and her daughter had told last night. Spread those rumors instead.
Nicolae gestured to the bundle of reports he had given her. “Did you see the new woodcut? Very skilled artist. It is the next page.”
She was sorting through as best she could while riding, dropping each page to the road as she finished. None had been anything but slander. Nothing important. Nothing true. Her thick gloves were not suited to manipulating thin sheets, but she shuffled until she found the illustration. “I am dining on human flesh amid a forest of impaled bodies.”
“You are! Meals in Tirgoviste have changed since you sent me out here.”
Lada adjusted her red satin hat, a jeweled star in the middle representing the falling star that had accompanied her ascension to the throne. “He got my hair wrong.”
Nicolae reached out and tugged one of her long, curling locks. “It is difficult to capture such majesty with simple tools.”
“I have missed you, Nicolae.” Her tone was acidic but her sentiment sincere. She needed him where he was, but she missed him at her side.
He gestured to the star in the center of her hat, beaming. “Of course you have. I dare say I am one of the brightest—nay, the very brightest—point of your existence. How have you scrambled in the dark these long six months without me?”
“Peacefully, now that you mention it. Such blessed quiet.”
“Well, Bogdan’s strength never has been conversation.” Nicolae’s smile twisted, puckering his long scar. “But you do not keep him around for talking.”
Lada gritted her teeth. “I can kill you. Very quickly. Or very, very slowly.”
“As long as the Saxons make a woodcut of my demise, I will accept it with grace.” He stroked his chin. “Please ask them to get my face right. A face such as this should never be poorly represented.”
Nicolae was not wrong about Bogdan, though. Bogdan, her childhood companion and now most stalwart soldier and supporter, did not speak often. But lately even that had been too much. A break from him had been one of her motivations in making this trip alone. She was meeting him in Arges, but she had deliberately given him a task that took him from her before then.
Bogdan was like sleep. Necessary, sometimes enjoyable. She needed him. And when he was unobtainable, she missed him. But she liked that she could take him for granted most of the time.
Mehmed would never have tolerated such treatment. She scowled, pushing him from her mind. Mehmed deserved no place among her thoughts. He was a usurper there, just as he was everywhere.
They passed a frozen pond, patterns of frost telling a story she could not read. The trees opened up ahead to rolling farmland softened with snow. “Why did Stefan not stay after delivering these letters? He knew I was due here soon.”
“He wanted to get back to Daciana and the children. And he was probably worried if he saw you before that, you would send him away again and he would not get a chance to stop in Tirgoviste.”
Lada grunted. That was true. She wanted him in Bulgaria, or maybe Serbia. Both were active vassal states of the Ottoman Empire, and likely staging areas for any attacks. She did not expect an attack. But she would be prepared, and for that, she needed Stefan. He had spent the last couple of months scouting in Transylvania and Hungary to get a feel for their political climates, whether there were any active threats toward Lada’s rule. She wanted to speak with him in person. Daciana should not take priority over that. Nothing should.
Daciana ran the day-to-day business at the castle, all the details and mundanity that Lada could not begin to care about. Lada was grateful for her work. It had been a stroke of luck, finding her during their campaigning last year. But there was nothing at the castle that required Stefan’s attention. Daciana was safe and busy. He should know better than to waste all their time.
Lada scanned the neatly ordered reports impatiently. Stefan had written his own observations and coupled them with the woodcut printings. In Hungary, Matthias was king. He did not go by Hunyadi, as his father did, but had styled himself Matthias Corvinus. Lada was not surprised. Matthias’s relationship with his soldier father had been fraught. Of course he would not honor the man who had cut the path to the crown for him. And Lada had helped, in the end. She had betrayed Hunyadi’s legacy and committed murder for Matthias.
And then she had had to do everything by herself anyway, because the aid of men was never what they promised. It always came with hooks, invisible barbs to tug her back when she got close to her goals.
Matthias was not having an easy time of being king, at least. According to Stefan’s report, he spent all his time and money flattering nobles and trying to buy back his crown from Poland. The Polish king had taken it for safekeeping years before when the previous king had been killed in battle. It was an important symbol, and Matthias was desperate for the legitimacy it would give his questionable claim to the throne.
Lada skimmed that information. Matthias was a fool if he thought a piece of metal would give him what he wanted, and she did not particularly care about any of his machinations as long as they were directed toward other countries. It also served the benefit of keeping him distracted. As far as Stefan could tell, he had no designs on Lada despite her refusal to defer to his authority.
The woodcut printings demonstrated Transylvania’s continued opposition to her rule, but aside from the artistic flair, they had no organized opposition. There did not seem to be any attempt to destabilize her militarily. Stefan mentioned the downside to losing them as allies—they had long served as a buffer between Wallachia and Hungary—but there was nothing to be done. She had, after all, spent much of the previous year burning their cities. But if they had not wanted her to do that, they should have allied with her sooner.
All things considered, it was as good of news as she could have hoped for. But she had questions for Stefan. And concerns, now. Daciana was hers. Stefan was hers. She did not like them being each other’s before that.
She tucked the papers into her saddlebag. “And how have you managed?”
“I sleep well at night, and my appetite remains consistent. Some days I feel a touch of melancholy, but I combat it through long walks and deep barrels of wine.” He grinned at Lada’s exasperated look. “Oh, were you not asking about me, personally? I was born to be a lord. This much authority suits me nicely. My crops flourished, the fields are ready for the thaw, and the people on my land are happy. Revenues should be robust this year. Good news for the royal treasury, which is—”
“Still empty. And the men?” Along with the farmland, they had set aside a portion of Toma Basarab’s estate for training Lada’s soldiers. Princes had never been allowed to have a standing army. They were expected to depend entirely on the boyars and their individual forces. It was a disorganized, messy system. And a system that saw prince after prince dead before their time.
But Lada was like no prince before.
Nicolae tugged down his hat. In the cold, his nose had gone bright red, and his scar almost purple. “You were right to send us out here. It is easier to control the men and instill discipline when there are no city temptations. And everything I learned from the Janissaries is being put to use. This will be the greatest group of fighting men Wallachia has ever had.”
Lada was not surprised, but she was pleased. She knew her methods were better than what had always been done. Power was not split among meddling, selfish boyars. It flowed in a direct line of command to her. She rewarded merit, and she punished disloyalty and crime. Both with very public efficiency. And she knew from her stay the night before that word was spreading. Her people were motivated.
They passed two frozen bodies hanging from a tree. One had a sign that said DESERTER. The other, THIEF. Nicolae grimaced and looked away. Lada reached up and straightened one of the signs.
She had been focusing on making the roads safe and preparing for the spring planting. She had also been pruning the boyars. But Nicolae’s work was just as important for the future of Wallachia, and she would invest whatever she had to. It was a different type of seed to nurture.
Nicolae stretched, holding his long arms above his head and yawning. “How are things in the capital? Any problems with the boyars? I heard rumors that Lucian Basarab was angry.” Nicolae’s casual tone was as artfully constructed as a Transylvanian woodcut. Lada knew he had not forgotten nor forgiven her choices at the bloody banquet.
Though she had mostly killed Danesti boyars, the family most directly responsible for the death of her father and older brother, Toma Basarab had also been eliminated. It did not go over well with the Basarab family, including his wealthy and influential brother, Lucian. She was not sorry. The fewer boyars alive to betray her, the better. They had outlived far too many princes. This had made them comfortable and lazy, assured of their own importance. If boyars now lived in constant fear for their lives? She did not think that was a problem. They needed to know they were the same as all Lada’s citizens: they served Wallachia, or they died.
But Nicolae always wanted more delicacy. More mercy. It was part of the reason she had sent him out here, even though he was one of her best. She had no use for his counsel on moderation and placation. Neither of those were skills she had any interest in cultivating. If boyars served a purpose, they could remain. But they so very rarely did.
Mercy was a luxury Lada’s rule was not yet stable enough to afford. Perhaps someday. Until then, she knew what she was doing was both necessary and working.
She breathed in the sharp, cold air, the scent of woodsmoke beckoning them toward warmth and food. They rode across the fields, through the Wallachia she had carved free from the failure of the past. “I addressed Lucian Basarab’s concerns. It is all taken care of. I am a very good prince.”
Nicolae laughed. “When you are not busy cutting babies in half.”
“Oh, that takes almost no time. They are such small things, after all.”
A few days later, satisfied that Nicolae had her troops well under control, Lada rode along the same banks she had traveled twice before. Once, as a girl with her father discovering her country. And then with her men in an attempt to take that country back.
This time she rode alone. She paused at a bend in the river where a hidden cave contained a secret passage down from the ruins of the mountain fortress.
But they were ruins no longer. There was no solitude to be found here today. Lada listened to the chisels, the shouts of men, the clinking of metal chains. Here, at last, a promise fulfilled: she had come back to rebuild her fortress.
She rode slowly along the narrow switchbacks leading up the steep mountainside. This morning, she had dressed in her full uniform, complete with her red satin hat marking her as the prince. Where she passed, her soldiers bowed. And the men and women working cowered, ducking out of the way.
Near the top, as the new walls of her fortress loomed gray and glorious from the peak, Bogdan came out to meet her. She let him help her down from her horse, his hands lingering at her waist.
“How is it?” She devoured the walls with her eyes. Her silver locket, given to her by Radu and filled with the flower and tree clipping she had kept with her all their long years away, felt heavy around her neck, as though relieved to be home, too.
“Nearly finished.”
A man in chains staggered past, pushing a cart filled with stones. His clothes were ragged and stained, only a hint of their former finery showing through. She much preferred Lucian Basarab this way. Behind him, his wife and their two children pushed more carts. The children were dead-eyed, trudging numbly along. Lucian Basarab looked up, but did not seem to see her. He collapsed on the side of the path.
One of her soldiers hurried forward, a club in his hand. Lada did not know whether Lucian Basarab was dead. It did not matter. There were more to take his place. Just like the rest of her Wallachia, the fortress was being remade at remarkable speed thanks to the unwilling efforts of those who opposed her.
At last she had found something that boyars were good for.
“Show me my fortress,” Lada said, striding past her foes and into her triumph.
SOMEDAY RADU WOULD not long for a time when he was certain things were terrible but had no idea just how much worse they were about to get.
This day, however, he was plagued with memories of riding this same road to Constantinople with Nazira and Cyprian at his side. He had been so nervous, so frightened, so determined to make something of his time there. To prove himself to Mehmed.
He pitied the man he had been on that ride. And he missed him. Riding toward the city today, all he felt was the absence of Nazira and Cyprian. The absence of his assurance that he was doing the right thing. The absence of his faith in Mehmed. The absence of his faith in faith itself.
It was a very lonely road.
He had not planned to return to Constantinople. The city was haunted for him, and forever would be. After Mehmed took it, Radu had returned to Edirne at the first possible opportunity. Both to escape, and to be with Fatima. The guilt he carried was nothing compared to the debt he owed her for losing her wife, and so, to ease some of Fatima’s suffering, he endured his anguish at being around her. There was nothing else he could do for Nazira.
All his letters—joined by Kumal’s and even Mehmed’s efforts—had yielded no news. Nazira, Cyprian, and the servant boy Valentin had disappeared. He had watched them sail away from the burning city, swallowed up by smoke and distance. He had sent them away so they could live, but he feared he had simply found another way for them to die. Every day Radu prayed that they had not joined the thousands sent to anonymous graves. He could not bear the idea that the people he longed for might not exist anymore.
And so he sent more letters, and waited at their home in Edirne, where he would be easy to find.
But then Mehmed had written. A request from the sultan was never a request—it was a command. Though Radu considered rejecting Mehmed’s invitation to join him in Constantinople, in the end he did what he always did: he returned to Mehmed.
Fatima had enough faith for both of them that all would be well. She waited at the window of their house in Edirne every day. Radu imagined her there now, in the same place she had been when he left. Would she wait there fruitlessly for the rest of her life?
A passing cart startled him from his gloomy reverie. The road to Constantinople had been empty last time, cleared by the specter of war hanging over the countryside. Now traffic flowed to and from the city like blood through a vein. Carrying life in and out in a constant pulse. The city was no longer a dying thing.
Like arms reaching out to welcome—or drag—him in, the gates were open. Radu tamped down the panic that arose at seeing them that way. He had spent so long both defending them and praying they would fall, his body did not know how to respond to seeing them function as city gates should.
Much had been done to repair the walls he had fought on. Shiny new rocks re-formed sections that had fallen during the long siege. It was as though the events of last spring had never occurred. The city healed, the past erased. Rebuilt. Buried.
Radu looked at the land in front of the wall and wondered what had been done with the bodies.
So many bodies.
“… Radu Bey!”
Radu crawled out of his memories of darkness, thrust back into brilliant day. “Yes?”
It took a few confused moments for Radu to realize that the young man who had addressed him had been only a boy a few months ago. Amal had grown so much he was nearly unrecognizable. “I was told you would be arriving sometime today. I am to escort you to the palace.”
Radu reached out his hands to clasp Amal’s. His heart swelled to see the young man here, alive, healthy. He was one of three boys Radu had been able to save from the horrors of the siege.
“Come,” Amal said, grinning. “They are waiting. We will ride between the walls and go straight there.”
Radu did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He had thought about riding through the city, but he knew where his heart would take him. An empty house where no one waited for him. Better to go straight to Mehmed.
“Thank you,” Radu said. Amal took the reins of Radu’s horse and led him through the space between the city’s two defensive walls. Radu did not want to be here. He would have preferred to visit ghosts that were, if melancholy, at least tinged with sweetness. Here at the walls there were only the ghosts of steel and bone, blood and betrayal.
Radu shuddered, dragging his eyes from the top of the wall and toward the gate they were heading for. The gate Radu had unlocked in the midst of the final battle, sealing Constantine’s fate and bringing the city down around himself.
Amal gestured to the walls on either side. “They finished repairs only last month.”
Radu glanced up at the nearest Janissaries. He wondered if these men had been part of the siege. If they had flooded the wall, spilling over it. What had they done when they got into the city after so many endless days of anticipation fueled with frustration and hatred?
Radu swallowed a bitter, acidic taste, unable to look at the walls any longer. “I would like to go the rest of the way alone.” Radu took the reins back.
“But I am to—”
“I know the path.” Radu ignored Amal’s panicked expression and turned his horse around. He entered at the main gate amid the press of humans, the crush of life. It was something, at least.
Once inside, he let his horse meander, guided by the crowds. He was desperate not to be alone. There was much to be distracted by. This portion of the city had been nearly abandoned before. Now windows were thrown open, walls repainted, early flowers planted in tiny pots. A woman beat a rug, humming to herself, as a child toddled on unsteady legs after a dog.
Where the spring had been unseasonably cold, the winter was moderate and pleasant. It did not feel like the same desperate, starving, suspicious city. Everywhere Radu looked, things were being built and repaired. There was no evidence of fire, no hint that any tragedy other than age had ever befallen this city.
Radu was so distracted that he missed the road he was supposed to follow and ended up in the Jewish sector. He had not spent any time there before. It, too, was humming with activity. He paused in front of a building under construction.
“What is this?” Radu asked a man carrying several large wooden beams.
“New synagogue,” the man said. He wore a turban and robes. He passed the beams to a man wearing a kippah on his head and ringlets at his ears.
Radu rode through the sector, then found himself in a more familiar area. Boys surrounded a giant building that had been a derelict library. They lounged on the steps, talking or playing. A bell clanged, and the boys jumped up and rushed inside. Radu wondered what their lives were like. Where they had come from. What they knew of what had happened to create a city where they could play on the steps of their school, safe. At peace.
Radu stared down the street. If he went farther this way, he would reach the Hagia Sophia.
He turned and headed for the palace instead. The ride had been enough to clear his head a bit. He had anticipated how difficult it would be to see the walls again. But seeing the vitality of the city was a balm to his senses. He would not risk that by revisiting the Hagia Sophia so soon.
Amal was waiting near the palace entrance, nervously wringing his hands. Doubtless Radu had complicated his day by taking a detour. It was not Amal’s fault Radu felt the way he did, and Radu really was glad to see Amal alive and well. He dismounted and passed his reins to his former aide. “Forgive me,” Radu said. “Coming back has been … emotional.”
“I understand.” Amal smiled, and suddenly he looked even older than the young man he had grown into. Radu had shielded Constantine’s two young heirs from the horrors of the city’s fall, but Amal had been in the thick of it before Radu pulled him free. “I will see to your horse. And, if you do not mind, I have asked to be assigned as your personal servant while you are here.”
“I would like nothing more.” Radu watched as Amal led the horse away, putting off his own entrance into the palace.
A small bundle of motion rushed toward him. Radu barely had a chance to hold out his arms before a boy threw himself into them.
“Radu! He said you were here!”
Radu pulled back, looking into the saintly face of Manuel, one of the two heirs to the fallen emperor Constantine. Radu had stayed behind when Nazira, Cyprian, and Valentin left so that he could save Constantine’s child heirs. They were his attempt at redemption for all he had done during the siege and everyone he had betrayed. He had fallen far short of redemption, but holding Manuel—alive, healthy, happy Manuel—in his arms, Radu felt joy for the first time in months. Laughing, Radu pulled him close, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
Of all the life he had seen return to the city, this little life was the best he could possibly have hoped for. “Where is your brother?”
Manuel squirmed free, adjusting his clothes. He wore silk robes in the style of the Ottomans. It was a far cry from the stiff and structured Byzantine clothes he had worn before. “Murad is inside, waiting. He is too old now to run, he says.”
“Murad?” Radu asked, puzzled. It had been Mehmed’s father’s name.
Manuel beamed. “Yes. And I am Mesih. The sultan let me choose it myself.”
“You have new names.” Radu frowned.
“We thought it was best. It is a new empire! A new start. A rebirth, we decided.”
“We?” Radu asked.
“Yes, Murad and me. And the sultan.”
Mehmed had meant what he said, then—that he would make the boys part of his court. Radu was glad to hear that this promise had been kept. And he supposed renaming them made sense. He himself had finally been able to adjust and accept his new life when he felt like he truly belonged. It was probably best for the boys to remove themselves from who they had been, to forget the trauma and loss of the past. Manuel—Mesih—certainly seemed happy enough.
If only Radu Bey’s new name had had the same effect.
Mesih took Radu’s hand and pulled him deeper into the palace. He kept up a steady stream of chatter, telling Radu what they could expect for dinner and asking whether Radu would join them for evening prayer at the Hagia Sophia or if he would be praying somewhere else. Then he went on to speak of his lessons, which tutors he liked best, how his writing was much better than his brother’s. “And you have noticed how good my Turkish is, I am sure.”
Radu laughed. “I have. I could listen to it all day.” And he suspected he would, until they were separated. Something nagged at Radu, though, as Mesih continued describing his lessons.
He realized with a pain both happy and sad what was different: This boy was receiving a true education with no cruelty. There were no visits to the head gardener, no instructional trips to the prisons and torture chambers, no beatings. This was not the same childhood Radu and Lada had experienced under a sultan.
Mehmed was not his father. He had taken the city and made something better. He had taken the heirs of his enemy and made them his family. The dread Radu had felt about seeing his oldest friend dissipated. There was still much distance between them, but at least Radu had not been wrong to believe in Mehmed’s ability to do great things.
“Are you well, Radu Bey?” Mesih asked.
Radu sniffed, clearing his throat. “Yes, I am well. Or at least, I think I will be.”
IF LADA HAD known the sheer volume of parchment she would be buried under, she might have taken a title other than prince. She had returned revitalized from her visit to her fortress, only to find mounds of letters waiting for her.
Lada groaned, leaning her head forward. The brush Oana was working through her hair caught on a snarl.
“Sit up straight,” Oana snapped.
“I do not want to do this.” Lada gestured weakly toward the table covered with demands for her time and attention.
“Well, I would help, but I cannot read.”
“Count yourself fortunate.” Lada sat on the floor next to the table, sweeping a pile of missives onto her lap. “Go find Stefan. I want to speak with him if any of these prove interesting.” Lada began sorting.
Boyar asking for redress for the loss of life of a relative—tossed in a pile in the corner.
Boyar asking for a meeting to address the conscription of land for Lada’s own purposes—same pile.
Letter from her cousin Steven, the king of Moldavia. This, she read carefully. She had never met him, but he had a fierce reputation. He wrote to congratulate her on taking the throne, and to commend her on the reports of order and peace in her country. He said nothing of her mother. It gave Lada a dark thrill of vindictive pleasure. Her mother had talked almost obsessively of his yearly visits. He was one of the highlights of Vasilissa’s sad, solitary life, and she did not so much as register in his own.
But then the end of the letter soured some of her pleasure. Please take care to avoid antagonizing our neighbors. Let me know when you have new terms with the sultan. I am most curious to hear them.
Glowering, she threw his letter in with the boyar demands.
“From Matthias Corvinus,” Stefan said, passing her a slender letter.
Lada did not know when he had entered the room, but would not give him the pleasure of reacting to his stealth. She was still cross with him for failing to meet her at Nicolae’s estate. “Read it. I do not care to.” She picked up another letter, more nonsense from a wheedling boyar.
“Matthias wants to meet. He says you have much to discuss.”
“I have nothing to say to him. We both got what we bargained for. As far as I am concerned, our relationship is over.”
Stefan held out the letter to her. “We want him as an ally.”
“‘We’? I do not want him as anything.”
Stefan did not lower his hand or change his impassive expression. Growling in frustration, Lada snatched the letter and set it next to herself, but not in the pile for burning. “Very well.”
Stefan picked up another letter. “This one is from Mara Brankovic. She is—” He paused, eyes scanning the air as he retrieved one of the thousands of bits of stored information he carried at all times. “The daughter of the Serbian king. Widow of Sultan Murad.”
Lada opened this letter with more curiosity than she had felt about any so far. Mara’s handwriting was perfect and elegant. There was not so much as an ink spot out of place. Lada read the letter twice to make certain she understood it. “Mara has gone to Constantinople and joined Mehmed’s court as one of his advisors. Have you ever heard of such a thing? She was so eager to escape Edirne, and now she goes back to the empire of her own free will?”
“I have never heard of a foreign woman advising a sultan.”
Lada frowned, looking over the words. “It is smart of him, though. She is brilliant. And, as Serbian royalty, she has connections and can deal with Europeans better than he could. She is a perfect choice for soothing relations.” Lada leaned back, tapping the letter against her leg. Mehmed obviously benefited, but Mara was not the type to get into any situation she did not want to. Her marriage to Murad had been forced, but she had made of it what she could. And she had gotten out, to return to her family.
Ah. There was her motivation. She was still young enough to be enticing for a political marriage. This move and position put her entirely out of her father’s power. She was, for all intents and purposes, free forever now. Clever woman!
“What does she want from you?” Stefan asked.
“Hmm?” Lada looked up, stirred from her memories of meals with Mara, during which the older woman advised her how to use society’s demands to create a position of stability. Lada did not care for her methods, but she could not deny that Mara knew what she was doing. “Oh, she asks me to visit Constantinople. She makes it sound like a social call. ‘Come and visit the palace! We will eat, take a walk around the gardens, discuss the ways in which you should let Mehmed and his horrible empire continue to dictate your life!’ I wonder if she thought of this on her own, or if Mehmed asked her to write, thinking our past connection would sway me.” Lada did not know which she preferred to believe: that Mara was trying to manipulate her—she would not doubt it, or be bothered by it—or that Mehmed was trying to get to her through any means possible.
But if that were the case, surely Radu would have been sent. Or at least written. She had not heard from him since his letter telling her of the fall of Constantinople and his new title of Radu Bey.
Maybe his absence meant that Radu was finally out of Mehmed’s control. Because Mehmed would never neglect an advantage like Radu—not if he had a choice.
“We should write my brother,” Lada said, picking up another letter.
“To ask him to come back and help?”
“No.” She threw the letter aside without looking at it. “I have learned how to handle the boyars on my own. I do not need him for anything. But he may be a useful source of information about Mehmed.” Lada could accept that as the reason. The other, smaller reason was that she missed him. She had feared for his life in Constantinople, and wondered what had happened to him there. She did not like feeling this way. Radu was the one who missed, who mourned.
“From the pope,” Stefan said, passing her another letter. “He curses the infidels and calls down destruction from heaven on their empire. And then he urges peace.”
“He should make up his mind.” Lada tossed the pope’s letter into the pile for burning. “Would that I had a country without borders. Would that I had an island.” She stood and looked at the rest of the letters. Demands and requests, alliances and enemies, the subtleties of politics of a dozen countries and an encroaching empire screaming for her attention.
She gathered them all and threw them in the fire. The remains of parchment dust and sealing wax were easily wiped away on her breeches. “I am going to the stables. It is a lovely afternoon for a ride.”
Two weeks later, the Turkish ambassadors showed up unannounced and uninvited, complete with a Janissary escort. Lada had her own men line the room for a show of power. They outnumbered the Janissaries three to one. Her men, several of them former Janissaries, looked on coldly.
Lada lounged on her throne, one leg draped over its arm. She tapped her foot impatiently, bouncing it through the air. She could see in the puzzled looks and shuffling posture of the ambassadors that her lack of decorum made them nervous.
She smiled.
“This is Wallachia. Remove your hats out of respect.” Neither the Janissaries in their cylindrical caps with white flaps, nor the ambassadors in their turbans, made any move to follow her order.
The lead ambassador, an older man with a silver beard and shrewd eyes, raised an eyebrow dismissively. “We bring terms of your vassalage from our sultan, the Hand of God on Earth, Caesar of Rome, Mehmed the Conqueror.”
Lada tapped her chin thoughtfully. “What a burden, to be the hand of God! Which hand is it, I wonder? God’s right hand, or God’s left? If Mehmed cleaned his ass with the hand that is the hand of God instead of his own hand, would he be struck down for blasphemy?”
Many of her men in the room laughed raucously, and Lada flushed with pleasure. But Bogdan had his eyes averted. He hated it when she spoke this way about God. It was a good reminder. She had no use for God, but most of her people did, and anything that held faith and belief was a source of power. She had seen what Mehmed had accomplished because of his steadfast faith. She had seen that same faith steal her own brother from her. Faith was power. She knew she should not dismiss anything that gave her power over others. She sat up straight. “Our god, the true God of Christianity, is without form and thus without hands. We reject your sultan’s title and his authority. You have no purpose here. Leave.”
“There is something else.” The Janissary captain stepped forward. He was compact and broad, years of training evident in every move. She had almost forgotten how perfect the Janissaries were. It made her uneasy, thinking back on the men she led now. They were nothing compared to these soldiers, who were trained from childhood to be weapons of the sultan. The captain continued, “On our journey here we passed through Bulgaria. It appears there have been some conflicts along your border. Several Wallachian villages were burned.”
Lada could not believe she was hearing about this now, from an enemy instead of her own people. She hated that he was showing her he had more information than she did. “I have not had reports of this yet.”
He did not change his expression, which was as sharp and unyielding as steel. “All the Wallachians were dead. It is unfortunate. Most likely due to a misunderstanding. But once your terms of vassalage are secure, Bulgaria will be a powerful ally and such conflicts will cease. The sultan protects his vassals.”
This man, this Ottoman, thought he could come here and tell her about attacks on her own country—slaughter of her own people—as a method of forcing her to agree to Ottoman rule? As though dead Wallachians somehow argued in favor of allying with those who killed them? And it did not make sense that he would have news of this before her.
Unless he had come directly from doing it himself. Lada leaned forward, her voice cold. “You killed my people.”
The Janissary captain flashed a smile that did not touch his eyes. “No. Bulgarians killed your people along a chaotic border. The sultan’s terms eliminate such chaos. A solid treaty, respectfully followed, will protect your people.”
Lada bared her small white teeth. It was not a smile. “I protect my people. I avenge them, too. And you have nothing to teach me about respect. After all, none of you showed me the respect of removing your hats.” She stood. “Bind them.”
Her men sprang into action. The Janissary captain and his soldiers put up a fight, but they had not been allowed to bring weapons into the throne room. Everyone was subdued, though not without a struggle and several broken noses.
The lead ambassador glared murderously at Lada. “You cannot harm us. You do not want to risk what it will bring.”
“You did not worry about what risk killing my own people would bring.” Lada seethed with rage. They had come into her land. Slaughtered Wallachians under her protection. Unlike letters, such a thing as this could not go unanswered. She would send a message the likes of which would echo through Mehmed’s empire and all of Europe.
She prowled in a circle around the ambassador, then tugged on the edges of his turban. “I am going to help you. If it was so important to you to leave your heads covered in my presence, so important that it was worth disrespecting a prince, then I will make certain you never have to uncover your heads again.” Lada turned to Bogdan. “Bring me nails and a hammer.”
Finally, the lead ambassador trembled. Finally, he saw how Lada answered disrespect and the deaths of her own people.
Lada stood in the corner of the throne room as her men drove nails into the heads of the Ottomans. As always, she made herself watch. It would have been easier to do in private. In some hidden dungeon. But no. She would bear witness to the things that had to be done for Wallachia to be secure. This was her burden, her responsibility.
Their screams were loud. In a bright, bloody flash, she remembered one of her many childhood trips to watch the sultan’s torturers’ brutal work. The price of stability was always paid with blood and flesh and pain.
She watched, but as though from a great distance.
They were not men. They were goals accomplished. They were not men.
A sudden wave of relief that Radu was not here washed over her. She did not like to imagine the look on his face if he were. She had always tried to protect him because he was her responsibility. Now all of Wallachia was. She would do whatever it took to protect her people.
The screams stopped. Which was good. She had other things to do.
“Send them back to their Hand of God,” she said, glancing over the bodies. Some were still alive. It was unfortunate for them but would not last long. “Tell him I will have his respect.”
She turned to Bogdan, whose hands were slick with blood. His mother, Oana, would be the one to clean it up. Some things never changed. “Send for Nicolae and our forces. We have business to attend to in Bulgaria.”
RADU WAS NOT sitting as far from Mehmed as he had in Edirne, when they had pretended Radu was out of favor. But no one sat next to Mehmed here. He lounged at a table on a dais, at the head of the room and separate from everyone.
Radu was grateful he had not spent much time in the palace under Constantine, so this room was new to him. Dazzling blue and gold tile covered the walls in floral patterns growing up to the ceiling, which was ringed with gold leaf. A heavy chandelier hung overhead. It, at least, looked original. But Radu suspected that beneath the tile were the more Byzantine-favored religious murals. Mehmed was claiming every inch of the city, one mosaic at a time.
Radu had come in late—his detour into the city had made him miss the beginning of the meal—so after washing, he took a spot next to his old friend Urbana and a woman he vaguely recognized from Murad’s court. It was unusual for this many women to be at a formal dinner. Murad had excluded them entirely. But Radu was comforted and pleased to sit by Urbana. She had not been changed by the siege, other than the shiny burn scar that disfigured half her face. She smelled faintly of gunpowder and had black scorch marks on all her fingers.
Unchanged also was Urbana’s distaste for Ottoman food. She kept up a steady stream of complaints in Hungarian to the other woman. Radu stared determinedly at his plates, avoiding looking at Mehmed. Why had Mehmed called him back to the city? What would it feel like to talk to him again? When Radu had left six months before, Mehmed had been so busy with planning and rebuilding that they had scarcely seen each other. Had Mehmed missed him?
Had Radu missed Mehmed?
Glancing up, his stomach clenched and his pulse raced to see the other man. Yes, he had missed him. But it was not the same easy longing he had experienced before.
Mehmed was swathed in purple. His turban, gold and fastened with an elaborate gold-and-ruby pin, haloed his head. He was twenty-one now, and his features had settled into adulthood. His eyes were sharp with intelligence, his eyebrows finely shaped, his full lips static and expressionless. Radu longed for them to curve in a smile, for Mehmed’s solemn eyes to wrinkle in delight.
But Mehmed his friend had become Mehmed the sultan. It was like looking at a drawing of someone beloved. He both recognized Mehmed and felt that something was disturbingly altered and lost in the process of being captured on paper.
A servant knelt beside Radu. “Allow me to deliver the sultan’s welcome. After the meal, I will show you to his reception room, where you can await your audience.” The servant bowed, then backed away. Radu was startled. He had never had audiences with Mehmed. Particularly ones scheduled by servants.
This was nothing like how Murad had run his court. Favorites had always been allowed to swirl around him, to sit next to him. He had been at the center of everything, reveling in parties and close relationships. But even this meal was evidence that Mehmed ruled in a much more formal capacity. No absconding to the countryside to dream with philosophers. No allowing advisors like Halil Pasha—publicly executed months ago in a demonstration Radu had not attended—and his ilk to gain favor and therefore power.
Radu wondered whether the distance Mehmed had created in public would continue even in private. Or would he simply communicate with Radu through messengers, remaining forever separate?
“How is your sister, Radu Bey?”
Radu looked up, surprised. The woman who had been part of Murad’s court had spoken. She was a paradox of harsh elegance. Everything about her was precisely fashionable by European standards, her elaborate dress and hair acting as a barrier between herself and the world. She sat up straight, her skirts awkwardly pooled around her, rather than leaning on an elbow like many of the other diners.
“I am sorry, I do not remember your name.” Radu smiled in apology.
“Mara Brankovic. I was one of Murad’s wives.”
“Ah, yes! You negotiated the new terms of Serbia’s vassalage.” It had been her parting move, using an offer of marriage from Constantine to negotiate her own freedom and better rights for her country. Mehmed had admired her for it.
Without conscious thought, Radu found himself staring again at Mehmed. He dragged his eyes back to Mara. “What brings you to the empire?”
She turned her gaze toward Mehmed. Her look was affectionate. “A leader who recognizes my value. I am here as an advisor on European issues. I help with handling the Venetians. The Serbians, obviously. And a troublesome little country you are quite familiar with. And familial with.” She laughed lightly at her own joke.
“So you are not asking after my sister as a social courtesy.”
“Oh, I am! Social courtesy is the heart of my role here.” Her tone was pleasantly wry. “It is amazing what one can accomplish through polite inquiry. Besides, I quite liked Lada. Though she was foolish to pass up a marital alliance with Mehmed. She would have done quite well.”
Radu looked at his plate, now filled with tiny pieces of flatbread he had torn apart. “Quite well would never have been enough for her.”
Mara laughed. Urbana snagged her attention to point out how much worse unleavened bread was, and Radu was again left to his own thoughts. Which, to his surprise, did not linger on the person on the dais. “Mara,” he interrupted. “Do you have any contacts in Cyprus?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “Not personally, but I am certain I know someone who will. Why?”
“I am looking for news of my wife and my … friends. They