“Can faith take me back to Wallachia?”
“Faith can show you there are more important things.”
Lada scoffed. “If you want someone to listen to your inane ramblings, go find Radu. I have other things to do.”
She pulled the door open, but Mehmed ran forward and shoved it closed. “We are not done speaking!”
Lada’s blood turned to ice. “Would you command me to stay? And if I refuse? Will you have me beaten? Whipped? All that and more I have faced in your father’s courts. I did not bow before your god or your sultan then, and I will not now. Why did you bring me here, Mehmed? I will not be ruled.”
Mehmed’s face fell. He lowered his hand, and the line of his back—so straight—curved. “I have never wanted to be your master. I have servants. And teachers, and guards, and a father who despises me. I want you…to be my friend.”
This was not the answer Lada had expected. She grasped for a response. “Why would you want that?”
“Because.” Mehmed looked at the ground. “Because you do not tell me what you think I want to hear.”
“I would more likely go out of my way to tell you something you do not want to hear.”
Mehmed’s dark eyes flashed up to meet hers, something deep and hungry in them. He grinned. It was an off-center smile, pulling back his full lips and reshaping his face from arrogance to mischief. “Which is precisely why I like you.”
Lada huffed, exasperated. “Very well. What exactly does a friend do?”
“I have never had one. I was hoping you would know.”
“Then you are even stupider than you look. Radu is the one who makes friends. I am the one who makes people want to whip me.”
“I recall you giving me advice that helped me avoid being whipped. That seems a good foundation for friendship.” He held out a hand.
Lada considered it. What threads would be woven from this arrangement? She had given her heart to a friend once before, and losing Bogdan had nearly broken her. But Mehmed was no nursemaid’s son. “Your father would object to our friendship. He showed us no kindness in Edirne.”
“I do not care what my father thinks. If you have not noticed, no one cares what I do here. Amasya is ignored. As am I. I am free to do as I wish.”
“You are fortunate.”
“But am I fortunate enough to call you friend?”
“Oh, very well.” Some of the tightness left Lada as she at last realized that the punishment she had been waiting for all this time was not coming. They were not free of Murad, but they were far from his eye. For now, that was enough.
“Good. In the spirit of friendship, I must tell you that I am bitterly jealous of the time you spend in the Janissaries’ company. I want you to stop training with them.”
“And, in the spirit of friendship, I must tell you that I do not care in the slightest about your petty jealousies. I am late for my training.” She hooked her foot behind Mehmed’s ankle, then slammed her shoulder into his, tripping him and throwing him to the ground.
He sputtered in outrage. “I am the son of the sultan!”
She pulled the door open, slicing her sword through the air in front of his throat. “No, Mehmed, you are my friend. And I am a terrible friend.”
His laughter made her steps—always purposeful and aggressive—seem almost light.
AUTUMN REFUSED TO COOL down. The stone walls of the fortress trapped the sun’s brutal rays, holding the heat. Radu imagined the shimmering air was an oven; soon he would be cooked alive. Molla Gurani, who always seemed more than human, now neared godlike status: He did not even so much as sweat as he walked back and forth in front of them, reading aloud from a book about the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him.
But it was blasphemous to think of anything as being like god except God himself. Radu closed his eyes and expunged the thought, trying to bring his mind back in line with his tutor, with God, with what he loved learning.
When it was not so damnably hot.
Mehmed fell off his stool, collapsing to the floor. Radu rushed to his side, along with Molla Gurani. “Are you unwell?” their tutor asked, hands against Mehmed’s cheek and forehead.
Mehmed’s eyes fluttered open. “We must continue my studies.”
“No.” Molla Gurani straightened, helping Mehmed to his feet. “You are overcome with the heat. We should guard against further illness. I insist you go to your bed and remain there the rest of the day.”
Mehmed nodded weakly. “Very well.”
“I will call for a guard to help you.”