Radu sighed. “Of course he does.” He gave the servant a beleaguered smile, and the boy’s face lit up with the shared understanding between them. “Do you get any sleep these days?”
The boy shook his head. “None of us do. He wants every candle burning, constant singing, food and wine at all hours.” He darted a look over his shoulder, torn between excitement over the deviousness of speaking of the sultan in this tone and fear of being caught at it.
Radu smiled to show the boy he was not worried. “I think he fears the dark. Who attends him when I am not there to keep him company?”
The boy made a face. “Halil Pasha, often. He hit me last week for spilling a drop of soup on his shoe.”
“Oh, I hate him. He is a terrible man.” Radu pulled out a coin from a purse beside his bed and handed it to the boy. “What is your name?”
The boy bowed, voice squeaking. “Amal.”
“Amal, I am sorry you must work so hard for so little. Whenever Halil Pasha is here, find me and I will give you an extra coin to make up for the pain of enduring his presence.”
Radu feared Amal’s big head would fall right off his thin neck, he bobbed it so eagerly.
If Halil Pasha was perched like a carrion crow, waiting to seize on the moment of Murad’s impending death, Radu needed to beat him to it.
LADA LAY SPRAWLED ACROSS Mehmed’s bed, her head hanging over the side. “No, no, no.” She pushed his hand away from where it pointed at a map of Constantinople and the surrounding areas. “Your father could see only the wall, and that is where he failed.”
“But if we cannot take the wall, we cannot take the city!”
“Ignore the wall. The wall is your last step. If you want the city, what do you need first?”
Mehmed scowled at the map, fingers unconsciously tracing the wall surrounding the city. But then his gaze shifted, his expression turning thoughtful. He moved his finger from the outline of the wall to the Bosporus Strait. It was the point through which all ships carrying supplies, soldiers, and aid from Europe had to pass. “We need to cut the throat,” he said. He threw himself off the bed, grabbing an inkwell and pen. On one side of the narrow stretch was a tower built by his great-grandfather Beyazid, the last point of Ottoman holdings before Byzantium land. He drew a matching tower on the other side, the side that was Byzantium territory. And then he slashed his pen across the water between them.
Lada clapped her hands together, the sharp crack echoing through the room. “Deny them aid. Meet them on the sea and the land. Make them fight you on all fronts—stretch them as thin as they go—and somewhere they will snap. Knock on every door; you need only one of them to open.”
Mehmed’s smile dropped away, his hands hovering reverently above the map. He touched Lada that way, sometimes, and it stirred a strange jealousy in her breast to see him look at a city with the same worshipful hunger.
“If I fail,” he said, “it will be the end of me.”
Lada laughed. “Then do not try, little sheep. Tend to your flock. Patrol your borders. No one ever said you had to take Constantinople. It is only a dream.”
Mehmed’s eyes burned when he looked up at her. “It is not simply my dream.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know all about your precious prophet’s dream.”
“That is not what I am speaking of. My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader—my ancestor—Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world. He knew then that his posterity, his wandering, homeless people, would rule the world. Is how far we have come not a testament to the truth of his vision? I have inherited that, Lada. It is a calling and a dream I cannot deny. The tree is mine to spread, and I must.”
Lada wanted to mock him, wanted to argue, but her soul would not allow it. She understood that idea of something bigger than you, all encompassing, impossible to ever truly leave behind. She knew Mehmed would never be whole without the city that demanded his conquest, just as she knew she would never be whole without her country.
Mehmed leaned closer to her. “I can do this. We can do this. Together.”
“We cannot always have what we want, no matter how much we want it,” she whispered.
Misreading her mood, Mehmed leaped onto the bed, nuzzling his face against her breasts and trying to sneak his hand lower along her stomach. As always, she caught his fingers, twisting them until he cried out in pain and gave up his attempt.