What a blow that would strike against Mehmed! Against his treasury, against his faith, against his pride. Lada could taste it. She wanted Wallachia free, yes, but if she could have even more?
She would take it. Gladly. Gleefully, even.
“Matthias wants me to ride to his court so we can plan, and then I will return with his men.” If she left now, she could be there in a couple of days. It would give them time to come up with a strategy and track down allies. She had no doubt Matthias with his noble face and gilded tongue could do better than she. And she would be back in Wallachia before the remnants of Mehmed’s men could set up a good defense in Tirgoviste unchallenged. Mehmed had left, but she was not naïve enough to trust that he was truly gone.
She tucked the letter into her tunic. “I will leave immediately.”
Bogdan nodded. “I will come.”
“No. I need you to go after Galesh and the Basarabs. This information might be a week old. You need to find them now. Send word when they are dead and the men are yours.”
“I do not like you going alone. I do not trust Matthias.”
“Neither do I, but for now our goals intersect. I will not let this opportunity fall.”
“Grigore can handle going after Galesh so that—”
Lada grabbed Bogdan’s arms, cutting him off. “I trust only you to do this.” It was true. So many of her men were lost to her. But Bogdan remained. She knew that, of every man in the world, he would be true.
“I will attend to her,” Oana said with a reassuring pat on Bogdan’s arm. It made Lada realize how little they touched. Oana was far more demonstrative with Lada. So was Bogdan, for that matter. Whether it was because Lada had been Oana’s charge, or because Bogdan had been taken from her at such a young age, Lada was the center of their mother-son relationship. She pushed away a pleased smile at the thought.
Oana threw her shawl over her shoulders and tied it in place. “A lady should not be alone, ever. Not in a foreign castle.”
Lada snorted a laugh. “If someone threatens my honor, will you kill them with your knitting needles?”
Oana grinned, warm wrinkles around her eyes. “Do not doubt what I can do.”
“I never would.”
Bidding farewell to Bogdan, Lada and Oana climbed down the mountain with thirty guards. Horses awaited them at the nearby village, so remote the villagers had not bothered evacuating.
Lada sat straight and eager in her saddle. For the first time, going to Hungary did not feel like a punishment. It felt like victory.
Tirgoviste
RADU COULD NOT TELL if the stench of death lingered in Tirgoviste, or if his memory of it was so strong that he would never be able to walk through the city again without gagging.
The work of clearing the bodies—taking them down, burying them with their heads toward Mecca, and giving them the respect they deserved—was finished. It had been a week of nonstop, wearying work. Because they had no grave markers, and could not identify most of the bodies anyway, Radu had them buried in the sections of forest that had been cleared to make the stakes. They planted seeds and saplings between each grave. Someday, a forest would grow and hide his sister’s abomination from the heavens.
Until then, they all carried it with them.
Radu paused at the castle gates, staring at where Kumal had been displayed. He would never tell Nazira. He would carry the memory himself; there was no reason to burden her. If Radu were still Christian, he would dedicate a church to his brother-in-law. As it was, whenever he prayed, he dedicated himself to Kumal’s memory. It was not enough—it would never be enough—but it was all he had to offer.
“Sir,” Kiril said, inclining his head smartly, then walking at Radu’s side. Radu had promoted him to his second-in-command. “We have finished the last of the cleanup. What now?”
“We need to find my sister. Until we know where she is and what she is planning, we cannot accomplish anything here. No one will return to the capital if the threat of her wrath looms over it. But I cannot see any way for her to retake it with the numbers she has.” Radu had been alert and waiting for attacks, but nothing had happened. Lada had vanished and taken with her everyone and everything they needed to fight. “Just because I cannot see it, though, does not mean she cannot find a way. More likely, though, is that she will try to draw us into the mountains where she will have the advantage. I do not particularly want to stumble into any more welcomes she has designed.”
Radu avoided the castle door. He had no wish to go inside. Instead, he climbed a ladder to the wall that circled the castle. He leaned over the bulwark and looked out at the city. It was still nearly empty. It had been easy to house his men—they had an entire capital to choose from. “We should act less like Ottomans and more like Wallachians.”
“How do Wallachians act?” Kiril was Bulgarian by birth, but did not remember anything of his homeland. He had been with the Ottomans since he was five. He often joined Radu for prayer and meals. They had the easy understanding of two people who had decided to claim the home that had claimed them.
Radu leaned on his elbows, looking back at the castle. In the center of the courtyard, as a child, he had once watched Aron and Andrei be whipped for a crime they did not commit. One he had framed them for. “Wallachians are desperate. Sneaky. Vicious. Or at least, that is how my family line has always behaved. Find a small group of men—those with frontier experience, not city experience. Send them into the mountains for scouting only. The smaller the groups, the more luck they will have in discovering without being discovered. We need to know where Lada is, and where she is hiding the bulk of her forces. Once we have that information, we will be able to move forward. In the meantime, we coronate the new prince of Wallachia, Aron Danesti.”
“So we act as though the country is ours, when our enemies are still out there and everything is in turmoil?”
“Lada will be furious. She antagonized Mehmed—” Radu caught himself and corrected. “Antagonized the sultan to get him to meet her where she had the advantage. We will do the same. I do not count on her storming out of the mountains, but I also would not be surprised by it. She has a terrible temper when you take what she thinks is hers. And even if it does not bait her, it serves a purpose. Sometimes, the best way to achieve power is to pretend like you already have it. We coronate a new prince, and we begin ruling. The country will fall in line. Lada changed too much, too fast. Change is hard. It requires a tremendous amount of time and willingness to endure discomfort. Going with what one has always known is easy. Add that to the sheer destruction of Lada’s tactics and the suffering that will cause? Wallachia will choose us, because we are the way to survive.”
He hoped they would gladly accept a return to what had always been if it came with peace and stability. Even if, perhaps, they deserved more.
Much like he had returned to Mehmed again and again. He had finally decided that the lonely unknown was preferable to the lonely known. He would not go back to Mehmed. Not as he had before. He prayed that Wallachia had not been pushed so far that its citizens, too, would realize they deserved better than what they had always had.
Radu would do his best to improve the country for as long as he was here. But he could only do that if it was stable. And, for now, it could only be stable by resettling into its old shape.
Kiril nodded. “I think that is a good plan, sir. And—this may be out of place—but I am glad to serve under you. Doubtless you know the rumors of why you have command. But Mehmed does not give power out on whims or as favors. You deserve your place here, and I am honored to follow you. All your men are.”
Radu laughed. “That compliment is a bit like a rose. It comes with a lot of barbs and thorns.”
Kiril raised his hands, a flush of embarrassment covering his cheeks.
Radu put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “No, no, I understand. And thank you. Your con
fidence in me means more than you can know. I will always try to do right by my brothers.”
Radu excused Kiril with one last warm smile. It was a good plan. He would put on a show of power. Boyars would flock to him as the only safe option. And, if he was lucky, Lada would be so angry at being replaced as prince that she would come down to meet them where they had the advantage. Funny that after so many years of doing everything he could to avoid her ire, he was now in a position of using all that history against her.
* * *
Radu had to ride out of the city quite some distance to answer Aron’s summons. He had wrongfully assumed the Danesti brothers had taken their family manor. He had been too busy to notice that they had not, in fact, settled in Tirgoviste.
Aron and Andrei had a few hundred men of their own that had been with them since the siege at Constantinople. The men’s camp was disorderly, bordering on slovenly. Radu rode through it with a critical eye. He would not have tolerated such lack of discipline among his men. No one in the Ottoman Empire would.
Aron was waiting for him, pacing impatiently inside his tent. Andrei sat in a chair, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. “Here you are,” Aron said. “It took you long enough to get here.”
Radu opened his mouth to apologize, but cut the words off before they could escape. He owed them no such thing. “I was unaware you had not relocated to Tirgoviste. When will you?”
“We cannot live there!” Aron stopped pacing, horrified. “It is unhealthy. We would catch our deaths.”
Radu lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think being impaled is contagious?”
Andrei gave him a darkly wry look. “Your sister is still free.”
He had a point. “Fair enough. But it is important that we consolidate. You are vulnerable out here.”
Aron had begun moving again. “We are going to our family’s countryside estate. We need your men to go ahead and make certain it is safe.”
They had not invited Radu to sit. He clasped his hands behind his back. “I do not think that is wise.”
Aron stopped, frowning. “Why?”
“I doubt the Danesti family estate is fortified. If Lada found out you were there, you would be slaughtered.”
“We will have your men as well.”
“No.” Radu spoke slowly and carefully. He was not certain how so little had been communicated. Had it been neglect on his part, or negligence on theirs? “My men are setting up to defend the capital. It is vital that we hold it as our seat of power as a signal to all of Europe who the true prince is.”
Aron looked deeply suspicious. “The true prince?”
“You,” Radu prodded. “Of course. You are to be crowned prince. But to be prince, you need to rule from the capital.”
“I would not feel safe there.”
“It is not about feeling safe. It is about appearing to be strong. If we cannot fool others that we are confident in your rule, why would they trust us enough to stand at our side? We pretend at strength until we have actual strength. It is a lie that will become truth.”
“You seem an expert in these matters,” Andrei said drily.
Radu was. He had pretended his way into Murad’s favorites. He had pretended his way through enemy territory in Constantinople. And he had pretended his way through a lifelong friendship that he had wished was ever so much more.
And now? He would have to pretend in order to rebuild the country that never even so much as pretended to care whether he lived or died.
Aron shook his head. “I would still prefer to run things from my estate. You can divide your men.”
“I will not.”
Andrei sat up a bit straighter, and Aron stepped closer. He was smaller than Radu, though, and his attempt to loom fell short, literally. “I am here with the support of the sultan, am I not? What did he leave men for, if not to do my bidding?”
Radu smiled benignly. It was a good thing he had so much practice pretending, because if he were to be honest, he would laugh in Aron’s face. “The sultan left his men here to provide stability. He left them under my command, and I will use them as I think wisest. Which, right now, is protecting Tirgoviste and reestablishing it as your capital.”
“I am your prince,” Aron said, lifting his chin proudly.
“Actually, you are Wallachia’s prince. I am a bey of the Ottoman Empire, and am only here as a personal favor to you. I owe you no allegiance.”
Aron and Andrei shared a look that was alarm on Aron’s part and menace on Andrei’s. “We want money,” Andrei said. “We know the sultan left you with funds. As prince, my brother should be able to dictate where those funds go.”
“The money is for fighting my sister.”
“And by becoming prince, is my brother not fighting her? Therefore, he should be able to decide how best to put it to use.”
“You can see,” Aron said, holding out his hands in a placating gesture, “how it is concerning that, while I am prince, you seem to control all the men and all the gold.”
Perhaps Radu had been wrong to assume these two had outgrown their childishly aggressive competitiveness. They had always been polite to him while among the Ottomans. But Radu had more power than they did there. Here, in Wallachia, they were determined to prove they mattered more. It was like the forest games they had been forced to play as children all over again. Only this time, Lada would not jump out of hiding to beat them for hitting Radu.
And this time, he did not need her to.
“I can understand that,” Radu said. “The sultan has donated my men’s time and resources. I have never seen him so generous with another vaivode prince. Our fathers certainly received no such level of support from Sultan Murad. I think that provided you follow the sultan’s wishes by setting up in the capital and beginning your rule with absolute confidence, you can look forward to a beneficial lifelong relationship with the Ottoman Empire. And I can ask him to forgive the debts that Wallachia is several years behind on paying.”
Radu did not voice what would happen should Aron decide he was not satisfied with Mehmed’s generosity. But he could see in the shift from aggression to overly demonstrative smiles that he did not have to.
“Of course,” Aron said. “We want the same things the sultan does. I am sure you will communicate that.”
Radu had no desire to play politics with the Danesti brothers. He wanted them to have the country. But he had a job to do, too. Regardless of how he felt about Wallachia, about Lada, about Mehmed, he would discharge his duties here to the best of his ability. He owed that much.
Radu inclined his head. “Please let me know if there is anything we can do to ease your transition into the castle. It has been thoroughly cleaned. The whole city is clear and ready for life to resume its natural pace. While you are settling in, I will find the remaining boyars and bring them back as your support system, so that, with their help, you can begin reestablishing order. I know—as does the sultan—that you are the prince Wallachia needs.”
Aron nodded as though everything Radu proposed had been his plan all along. “Very good. I will consider our return and send word when we are ready.” He paused. “If we are going to pretend, though, I will need to put on a better show. I need new clothes more befitting my throne, as does my brother. We should also have livery for our servants with our family crest. And new horses, as well.”
Radu could practically see Aron holding out his hand for gold. And if Radu agreed to this, he could only imagine the vital needs Aron would generate in the future. But he had to make some sort of concession, and it did play into the image they were trying to project. Aron was clever.
Radu was cleverer.
“It would be an honor to arrange that. I will have it waiting in your castle for your return.” Radu bowed to cover the smile threatening to break free. He had missed playing court games a bit, after all.
&n
bsp; Carpathian Mountains
THOUGH LADA WANTED TO get her business with Matthias done as quickly as possible, there was one stop she had to make on the way.
“Where are we going?” Oana asked.
“Detour.” Lada directed them up a mountain pass that had been patiently carved by a tributary stream. The land was unforgiving, no clear path showing their way. But they had not made it very far before a woman emerged from behind a clump of trees, crossbow pointed right at Lada.
“My prince!” the woman said, lowering the crossbow.
Lada nodded to her. The guard went ahead of their company, alerting several other women posted on watch. Lada was pleased to see they had not relaxed their discipline in maintaining a lookout.
When they arrived at the camp, everything was clean and orderly. There were more than a thousand women here, those too old to fight or pregnant. They shared care of the children. It was one of three such camps, but Lada suspected it was the best one. Makeshift tents huddled between trees, each with a carefully cleared fire pit in front. A group of several hundred children sat in a meadow as women leaned over them, pointing to things.
Daciana smiled with unfeigned delight. “Lada! We did not expect you.”
“It was on my way.” Lada dismounted, peering past the nearest children to see what they were doing. Each child had a small stick and was scratching in the dirt with it. It was an odd game.
“We are learning how to read and write.” Daciana pointed to the nearest woman. “Maria teaches us the letters at night, and then during the day we teach the children.” Daciana’s face glowed with pride. “I know the entire alphabet now. I am working on writing a letter to Stefan.”