“No, no. Radu can take me.” Mehmed held out an arm; Radu draped it over his shoulders and put an arm around Mehmed’s waist.
Molla Gurani watched them go, concern pinching the skin around his glasses. When they were in the hallway, Radu turned in the direction of Mehmed’s chambers, two doors down. He walked as slowly as he could, shouldering most of Mehmed’s weight as the other boy leaned against him. When they were nearly to the door, Mehmed looked behind them. And then pulled away from Radu so quickly that Radu stumbled from the absence of his weight.
Mehmed’s eyes turned up in delight. “Run,” he said, sprinting down the hall.
Radu ran after him, finally catching up as Mehmed burst through a side door leading to a balcony that overlooked the wilting garden. “What are you doing?” he demanded, frantically searching Mehmed’s face for signs of madness. “You need to rest!”
Mehmed laughed, shaking his head. “No, I need to get out of this horrible, hot prison.”
Radu gasped. “You lied to Molla Gurani!”
Shame colored Mehmed’s face. “I did. But if I had asked to be excused, he would have been so disappointed in me. I will study all night to make up for it. You can study with me. But right now it is too hot, and my brain is melting, and we have to get out of here.”
He climbed onto the stone railing, then in a breathless leap, threw himself onto a nearby tree. Grinning at Radu, he clambered down.
Radu looked over his shoulder at his responsibilities. He did not want to misbehave, or draw attention, or do anything that would bring punishment down on his head.
But it was simply too hot for worry.
He copied Mehmed’s movements, surprising himself with the ease of his own descent. Lada always made him feel weak and clumsy, but Mehmed expected him to keep up, which made it easy to do so.
They ran, hunched over and low to the ground, stifling laughter as they went. Not far from them was a spot where a tree had grown over the wall. Radu knelt, boosting Mehmed up to grab a branch. Mehmed scrambled on top of the wall and reached back down to help Radu climb. They both jumped to the ground on the other side, where it was noticeably cooler, the heavy stone of the mountain and the crowding trees doing their part to defeat the sun.
They had escaped only a short distance when they heard a soft thunk, followed by a string of cursing.
In Wallachian.
“Lada,” Radu whispered.
Mehmed put a finger to his lips, and they crept forward with exaggerated stealth. Lada stood in the middle of a small clearing, her back to them, a quiver of arrows next to her. She had marked out targets on a tree some distance away, ambitious even for a practiced bowman. She pulled back the bowstring, then released it. The arrow flew wide of the tree, landing two arm lengths away.
She stomped her foot, berating herself in meaner, more foul terms than any Radu had ever heard. Mehmed could not understand what she was saying, could not hear the hatred and recrimination Lada spat out on her own head. Radu could, though, and he wondered when his sister had decided that nothing less than perfection was acceptable. He stood, wanting to go to her, to hug her, to tell her that it was okay. She still had time to learn, and she was good at so many other things. He wanted her to stop saying those horrible things, to stop thinking them.
Mehmed had other ideas. He crept forward, then grabbed the quiver and, whooping loudly, ran.
Lada spun, murder in her eyes.
Radu ran, too.
He passed Mehmed, motivated by knowledge of what awaited them if Lada caught them. The two boys sprinted headlong through the trees, dodging low branches and leaping over logs, Lada close on their heels.
Radu burst out of the trees and skidded to a halt. He threw out an arm to stop Mehmed. They were on the edge of a drop, a deep green pool a body’s length beneath them flanked by sheer rock on one side and tumbled boulders on the other. A slender creek sang down the boulders, feeding the pool. Everything was still and quiet, the only sound their labored breathing.
Lada caught up to them, fists raised, momentum set to carry her straight into them.
“Stop!” Radu said. “There’s a drop into a pool!”
With a shout of triumph, she shoved both boys over the side and into the water.
Radu spluttered to the surface, immediately looking for Mehmed. The pool was not deep—his feet had touched the bottom—and he was terrified that Mehmed might have hit his head or broken his neck, or suffered some other grievous injury.
Instead, Mehmed floated on his back, arms behind his head as he laughed. “Why, thank you, Lada. This is quite the miracle on a day like today.”