But it was only a matter of time. The door to her and Radu’s tiny joint rooms had no lock.
Still, Lada never cried.
Radu thought his crying was a secret, but every night she heard him through the thin wall that separated them. Sometimes she hated him for crying, and sometimes she hated him because she could not join him.
He looked happy only when he sneaked off to pray, an act that enraged Lada. She picked at him mercilessly for it, but he never acknowledged her anger. Finally, she resigned herself to sullen silence. If she ignored it, maybe he would stop.
The days passed in a desolate blur of lessons and lessons. Today, they were watching a highway robber being hung by a large metal hook inserted between his ribs. Did you know, her history tutor intoned in her mind, that there is very little crime in the Ottoman state? Our highways are safer, our homes more secure than those in insignificant and tiny countries such as your own. Our people love their sultan.
Lada should have conceded that there had been a great deal of crime in Tirgoviste and the surrounding towns. Instead, she remarked that perhaps the Ottomans’ devotion was a result of their turbans being wrapped too tightly and strangling their brains.
When the robber had finished the long, agonizing process of dying, his body was taken down to be displayed on the highway with a sign proclaiming his crimes. Lada’s feet hurt. She was tired of these lessons. There was nothing else to learn. The sultan controlled everything. If you crossed the sultan, you died. People obeyed not out of love but rather because punishment was swift, severe, and extremely public. It was effective justice. Admirable, even. The sultan cowered to no one, did not have to play games and bow to the whims of people beneath him, as her father so often had.
Radu looked as though he was going to lose his stomach again, so when they were excused Lada dragged him through the corridors and out into the streets. She had already explored as much of the palace grounds as they were allowed to. They passed the mosque, swirling minarets reaching up to pierce heaven itself. She wished they would—wished they would poke a hole through the sky and shower God’s wrath on this whole city. Then they would see whose god was real.
But perhaps not. She was not in Wallachia. Even the god she had been raised with was absent here. Perhaps the sky would consume her in the wrath of the Ottoman god.
They passed a high wall surrounding a lush garden, trees drooping their heavy green boughs over as an invitation. Lada saw a fig tree laden with ripe fruit just out of reach. Her stomach growled. It was Ramadan, and she and Radu were expected to observe the fasting. Lada stole food and secreted it away whenever possible, but most days she went hungry from dawn until dusk. In the corner, where the wall met the side of a small building, a sprawling, ancient grapevine clung. She climbed it, hoisting herself onto the wall.
“We should go back,” Radu whined, looking around. He rubbed his ribs anxiously, no doubt imagining a hook tearing through his muscles and organs. Radu had lost weight since they arrived, and not simply from the fasting. His cheekbones stood out starkly, making his eyes appear even larger.
“Fine. Wait there. By yourself.”
He scrambled up after her, almost toppling over the wall in his haste. They crawled onto a branch, working their way down a tree until they could drop to the ground.
The smell was not right. The green scent was too pungent, the sweetness of some flower a shade off. The mosque loomed overhead, watching. But the serpentine paths bordered by trees and wild hedges that Lada wandered made the garden feel secret. She picked several figs, offering one to Radu. He refused, so she threw it at his head.
Biting into her fig, she trailed her fingers along the rough, waxy leaves of an untrimmed hedge and pretended she was in Wallachia.
Radu heard it first. “Listen,” he whispered. “Someone is crying.”
“And it is not you. What a wonder.”
He glared at her, then strode forward with purpose. Hissing, Lada chased after him. For all Radu’s fear that they were trespassing, he was a fool and would get them caught. She turned a corner and grabbed his vest, only to stop at the sight of a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, curled up on the edge of a reflecting pool, weeping.
“Are you hurt?” Radu asked.
The boy looked up, his black eyes framed with lashes so thick they caught his tears and held them. His hands were covered in marks, vicious and purple. His face, too, had been punished. A bruise was forming on one cheek.
Radu peeled off his vest and soaked it in the pool. He placed the wet cloth gently over the boy’s hands to soothe the hurts. Lada had never let him do the same for her, and she had certainly never done it for him.