It was there that Stefan slid in, silent and anonymous as a shadow. He, too, had been with Lada since the beginning. He had always been the best at gathering information: a blank and unremarkable face making him a half-forgotten memory even as he stood in front of someone. One day, Lada thought, the world would know she was deserving of an assassin such as him.
“What news from Tirgoviste?” she asked. Her throat was still raw from breathing in so much smoke, but her hoarseness did not disguise her excitement. “Did you kill the prince?”
“He was not there.”
Lada scowled, hopes of announcing her rival’s death to her men dashed. His death would not have meant the throne was hers—he had two heirs her own age, and she still needed the damnable boyars to support her claim as prince—but it would have been satisfying. “Then why have you returned?”
“Because he is in Edirne. At Mehmed’s invitation.”
Though Lada knew her internal fire should have blazed to white-hot fury at this information, she was filled instead with cold, bitter ashes. Her pride had not allowed her to ask Mehmed for help. But all this time she had held him tightly in her heart, knowing that somewhere out there, Mehmed and Radu still believed in her.
And now even that was taken from her.
3
January
MEHMED HAD NOT left a letter in the potted plant where they exchanged messages. Radu always took the secret passage—the same one that Lada had run through the night of Ilyas and Lazar’s betrayal. And Radu always wished that this time Mehmed would be waiting in the chamber where Radu and Lada had saved his life. But Mehmed was never there. Radu lived for the few brief sentences he spent in Mehmed’s company. His eyes devoured the aggressive lines of Mehmed’s script, lingering on the few curving flourishes. They never signed or addressed the messages. Radu would have liked to see his own name, just once, in Mehmed’s hand.
But today, the dirt was as empty as Radu’s life. Mehmed had to know that Radu knew about the Danesti prince. Radu had not been technically invited to that party—meeting Suleiman there had been a desperate, last-minute plan—but Mehmed had seen him. And so, rather than leaving his own message about the navy and then slipping away to wait until Mehmed decided to address the matter of Lada’s fate, Radu sat. He hoped that …
Well, he no longer knew what to hope for. He sat, and waited.
As the sun set, Radu tried not to dwell on the horrors this room had held, but with Lada so firmly in his mind he could think of little else. He had been so certain she would take the Wallachian throne, he had not considered the possibility that she might fail. His sister did not fail. Was she even still alive? He could not imagine that Mehmed would withhold news of his sister’s death.
But Mehmed had kept the knowledge of their father’s and brother’s deaths from Lada. Who was to say he was not doing the same with Radu? And if he was, what did that mean? That he was trying to protect Radu? Or that he was trying to keep him focused on their goals with Constantinople and feared what this news would do? Or that Mehmed cared so little that Lada was dead, he had not even found the time to pass along the information …?
No. Radu could not believe the last one.
Unable to settle on any peaceful train of thought, Radu turned to the only solace in his life. He prayed, losing himself to the words and the motion. Whatever else was happening, had already happened, or would happen, he had God. He had prayer.
By the time he finished, a veil of peace had drifted over his harried mind. Drawing it tightly around himself, Radu opened the door and walked into the central hall of Mehmed’s sprawling apartments. He could do nothing to change the past. He could only do what he felt best for the future. And to do that, he needed more information.
All the rooms were dark. Radu found a chair in the corner of Mehmed’s bedchamber. He avoided looking at the bed, which threatened to tear his veil of peace.
Some time later, a girl around Radu’s age came in and lit the lamps, then slid silently back out. Radu was so still she did not notice him.
Neither did Mehmed when he finally walked in. The same girl followed him. Radu would have been afraid of seeing something he had no wish to, but the girl wore the plain clothing of a servant, not the silks and scarves of a concubine or a wife. Mehmed held out his arms and she carefully took off his robes, one luxurious layer at a time. Radu knew he ought to look away.
He did not.
When Mehmed was down to his underclothes, the servant set his robes aside and slid a nightshirt painted with verses of the Koran over his head. Then, bowing, she backed out of the room. As soon as the door shut behind her, the sultan melted away. All the darkness and fear that had nestled in Radu’s heart disappeared along with the sultan. There was Mehmed. His Mehmed, not the stranger who inhabited the throne.
Mehmed rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and unwound his voluminous turban. His hair was longer than Radu had ever seen it. Curling toward his shoulders, it was black in the dim light, though Radu knew it would shine with chestnut colors in the sun. Radu did not know what it would feel like to touch it, but he desperately wanted to.
“Is my sister dead?” Radu asked.
Mehmed stiffened, one hand going to his waist, where his dagger would normally be. Then he relaxed, shoulders sloping downward.
“You should not be here,” he said, without turning.
“You should not be meeting with the Danesti Wallachian prince without telling me what happened.”
Mehmed sighed, rubbing the back of his neck again. “She is not dead.”
Unexpected tears pooled in Radu’s eyes as he let out a sharp breath of relief—relief both that Lada was not dead and that his immediate reaction was not one of disappointment. He was not yet so evil, then, that he would begrudge his sister her life. Merely her place in Mehmed’s affections.
“What happened? I thought you gave her the throne.”
“I did. Apparently Wallachia disagreed with me.”
“And yet you support her rival?”
Mehmed lifted his hands helplessly. He was still facing away from Radu. Radu yearned to see his face, his expression. But he could not cover the distance between them. After this long, he did not trust himself to be close to Mehmed.
“What can I do? You know I need all my borders secure. I cannot fight a war on two fronts. If we are to take Constantinople, we need peace everywhere else. Hungary looms as a threat, with Hunyadi harassing me at every opportunity. I cannot afford to lose any territory in Europe, and I cannot start a war there without risking a crusade. The Danesti prince accepted all my terms.”
It made sense. It was a perfect explanation. And yet … Mehmed still would not look at him. “Is that all? Or do you keep Lada from the throne in the hopes that she will return here in her failure?” All Radu’s frustration and loneliness of the past year climbed out his throat, lacing his words with accusation.
Mehmed laughed, darker than the night pressing against the balcony. “Do you see her here? Have you heard from her even once? If she had asked for help, Radu, I would have sent it. I would have gone to war at one word from her. But she left us. She rejected us, and I will be damned if I follow without an invitation.”
Again, the explanation made sense. But none of the information felt as though it should have been withheld like a secret. “How long have you known Lada was not on the throne?”
Mehmed grunted away the question with a noncommittal sound in his throat. “Does it matter?”
“It matters to me. She is my sister. Why would you keep information about her from me?”
Finally, finally, Mehmed turned to him. In the dim light of the lamp, his face was thrown into sharp relief, nose and cheekbones golden, lips teased into view and then tipped back into darkness. “Maybe I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Afraid that if you knew she struggled, you would go to help her.”
Radu laughed in shock. “What do you think I could do to help her?”
Mehmed tilted his head to one side, half his face in shadow, the other in light. “You are asking sincerely?”
Radu looked at the floor, intensely uncomfortable. He longed for an answer, and feared one. What if Mehmed could think of no reasons that didn’t sound like anything more than empty words?