Radu recoiled. “I do not want this throne. I never have.”
“Which is why you are the right person.” Nazira’s gaze was intense with the confident assurance that carried her through life. “Not because you feel like it is owed you. You would take the throne as a true servant to your people. The prince they both desperately need and deserve. Not a violent warlord, and not a spineless noble. An actual prince.”
Radu shrugged, but his smile was a challenge to her sentiments. “Alas! The position has already been filled. I will do what I can for him and for Wallachia. And then we are going home.” He squeezed Cyprian’s hand and felt the warm rush of reassurance as Cyprian squeezed back. “All of us. Permanently.”
Nazira’s full lips drew down at the corners. “Your people deserve better than Aron.”
“You are my people. My people are the three people in this room with me right now.”
Only Fatima looked pleased by the sentiment. Nazira’s frown did not lift. And Cyprian made a noise in his chest that sounded unsure.
“We will get to Lada before anyone else does. We will send her back to the empire where she will spend the rest of her days in a prison. And then Aron can find his way as prince without me.” Radu spoke with all the authority and confidence he did not feel, willing it to be true. He did not want to have to shoulder the burden of Wallachia. Let it take care of itself as it had never taken care of him.
Hunedoara
LADA SAT ON THE floor, her back to the door. The cell that had been cold and dank was now oppressively warm and humid as spring shifted into summer. “I think I am dying.”
“Nonsense,” Oana chided from the other side. She rapped her knuckles against the wood. “You are not allowed to die. Besides, I have taken one of the cooks as a lover.”
“You what?” Lada sat up straighter.
“The nights here are long. And it seemed an easy way to make certain your food was safe. He is definitely not poisoning you. First, because no one has told him to. And second, because if you died, I would have no reason to stay here. Poor fool adores me.”
Lada did not know whether to laugh or to cut off her ears in an effort to remove the information she had just received.
Oana continued as though none of this was odd. “Now, to be quick. Stefan says there are always at least five guards. The key is kept upstairs in a locked room that also has several guards. He can probably kill the guards on this floor, but he is not certain he can get the key and then come down here and kill them all without raising an alarm. That would make it impossible for you to slip away once the door is opened.”
It was still amazing to Lada that the greatest assassin she had ever known had been working as a cleaner for more than three months. He had made himself a fixture of the castle. No one noticed him; he could do whatever he needed to so long as he kept up his duties. She would never look at her own castle servants the same. Assuming she ever got a castle again.
Lada scratched her head, then stared at her filthy fingernails. “So I need to figure out a way to get the guards to open the door themselves.”
“While Stefan is here. And he cleans this block only once a week.”
Lada wrinkled her nose at the ever-present miasma. “I am aware. Unfortunately, ever since I killed three guards with my bare hands, they have not been willing to open the door.” Lada had to pass her chamber pot out through the small hole in the door. That was also how she got water for drinking and washing, food—which after three eternal months still almost always made her throw up—and anything else they saw fit to send her. Usually more rats. She did not have the energy to bother displaying them anymore.
“You will think of something. When you do, we will be ready.”
“What if this is it? What if I never get out? I will disappear just as he planned, and he will win. Mehmed will win. All the men will win. I cannot bear it, Oana.”
“Who am I speaking to?” Oana reached a hand through the hole and blindly groped for Lada’s head. She found it, tangling her fingers in Lada’s hair. “It feels like my Lada, but it certainly does not sound like her. Will you really let this king with his fine clothes and his oiled beard and his gilded lies get the best of you? You are a dragon.”
Lada nodded. But here, in this sweltering cell, far from her people and her land, she did not feel like a dragon.
For the first time in a long time, she felt like a girl. It terrified her. Because there was nothing in the world more vulnerable to be than a girl.
* * *
These past three months Lada had spoken only to Oana, who was permitted to visit her once a day for a few minutes. She suspected Mara was behind that kindness. For a while she had wondered if Mehmed would send for her. But she had tried to kill him, and if he transported her all the way to Constantinople, word would get out, ruining Matthias’s goal of having her fade from Europe’s consciousness.
So when Matthias came to visit her the next day, Lada was happier to speak with him than she ought to have been.
“It pains me to see you like this,” he said.
“Let me out and I will show you what pain is.”
Matthias laughed. “You are very bad at negotiating. But it is no wonder that my father preferred you over me. You speak the same language. Did you know, he wanted me to marry you?”
“Yes. I knew.”
“You did?” A flicker of confusion passed over his face. Lada assumed it was because he could not fathom any woman passing on the opportunity to wed him.
She yawned, stretching her arms over her head. “I felt it would be disrespectful to your father to marry his son and then murder my husband in his sleep. Though I probably would have murdered you while you were awake, for the satisfaction of watching the look on your face as my knife cut your soul free from your loathsome body.”
Matthias leaned closer, peering through the hole. “Why do you make your life so much more difficult than it has to be? You could have been in a house. With servants. With comforts. I would have taken excellent care of you out of respect for what you have accomplished. I am not a fool; I know you have done great things. But you made so many enemies along the way. Does it not trouble you that I have held you these last three months and no one has come looking for you? No one has inquired about your location.” He twisted his face in mock sympathy. “No one cares that you are gone. You have been replaced on your throne without fanfare or struggle. You may have sent the Ottomans out of your land, but this is your reward.” He sighed as though feeling actual pity for her. “I cannot kill you. I do not know if I want to, but even if I did, it would put me at odds with those who admire you. Besides, it is much easier to simply keep you. To let you stay here until everyone has forgotten you. Until your only legacy are the lurid woodcuts and terrifying nighttime stories of the Saxons. You will fade into a monster, a myth. And when that happens, I will be kind. When everything you accomplished has disappeared—and it will not take long—then I will take you out of this cell. And I will let you die.”
He paused, considering. “Or I may let you live. I do not think it matters much, either way. The world was never going to permit you to continue. You should have made someone a repulsive wife, had an heir or two, and lived out your life in quiet misery.”
Lada lifted an eyebrow coldly. “Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Matthias nodded without emotion. “He probably would. I will have to live with that. And I will live. I have my crown. I will rule my people, and my reign will be long and fair and touched with glory. And you will be less than a notation in the triumphant history of my life. Who knows, maybe you will have a few lines in the sultan’s history as well? You can always hope.”
Lada wanted to find words that would do as much damage as she knew her fists could. She wanted to cut this small man to his very core.
But she knew that even though she was better, smarter, stronger, even
though she had already done more for Europe than he ever would, even though she had worked and fought harder than he was capable of, he was probably right. He would be rewarded and remembered and respected.
He might even merit some of that, eventually.
“We could have done great things together,” Lada said. “If you had but a portion of your father’s courage, we could have changed the face of Europe forever.”
“But only one of us wants things to change. How they are right now suits my people’s needs. And be honest, my pearl. Did you really think the world would change enough to accept a woman as prince?” Matthias searched her face for an answer, genuinely curious. Then, with a shrug, he turned.
Lada watched the space go dark as Matthias walked out of view.
She knew perfectly well how to be a girl. She was a girl. People seemed to forget that, or assume she wanted to be something else because of her choices. Hearing Matthias lay out her future in such bleak terms might have sent her into a rage in the past, but she was older than she had been when she got here. She was weary.
She was ready.
* * *
The next time the cruel guard came by with a rodent, Lada smiled at him. She opened her eyes wide and smiled through her long, tangled hair. “I want bigger animals,” she said. “Rats are not satisfying. Bring me rabbits. Larger animals. Men, if you have any to spare.”
His look of gleeful horror confirmed to Lada that he would do as asked, if only to have a new account of her depravity to trade like currency among the other soldiers. She smiled bigger.
* * *
Lada lay in a pool of blood, her skin pale, her eyes closed. The blood was cold and congealed, an inelegantly written story of the end of her life spilled out onto stone floors.
“Devil take her,” a guard at the door muttered. “Hey! Come look at this.”
“Oh, God protect us. What a mess. Hey, you! Stay here. You have quite the cleanup job ahead of you tonight. Josef, go get the keys.”
“Should I send word to the king?”
“No, not yet. We should check on her, make sure she is dead. Then move her out quietly so no one notices. After that we can figure out what to tell him. I better not get in trouble for this.”
“I liked this job,” the second guard said.
“Not me. Look at those animals! She was a monster. Lucifer is dancing happy in his flames tonight to get such a soul for hell.”
After a few minutes, the door opened and two pairs of booted feet shuffled into the room.
“God save us, the smell!”
A boot nudged Lada’s side. Then her wrist was lifted, held gingerly between two fingers as though the guard was worried her death—or perhaps just the smell—was contagious. “Where is the wound? Her wrists are not cut.”
Lada twisted her hand, grabbing the guard’s wrist. She yanked him to the floor. A cry went up but was cut short with the swift application of Stefan’s blade. Lada’s hands around the first guard’s throat prevented him from shouting, and Stefan’s blade silenced the other one.
“What took you so long?” Lada stood, shaking out her arms and legs to restore circulation. The animal blood made her dress sticky and stiff, but she had no replacements and no time to change.
Stefan wiped his knife on the tunic of one of the dead guards. He had slipped in after them. “I had to kill the ones in the hallway first.”
He held out a length of brown cloth, and Lada wrapped it around herself like a shawl. It hid most of the blood. She hesitated at the threshold, and then stepped into the hallway. It felt like a much bigger distance than it was. “Where is Oana? She was supposed to discover my body. I have been lying on the floor for hours!”
Stefan shook his head. “I do not know.”
“We agreed that this was the day!”
“She does not always come when she is scheduled.”
“We cannot leave without her. We will go to the kitchens, and—”
“Lada, we do not have time.”
Lada tried to hurry down the hall. She wanted to feel triumphant, but a wave of dizziness washed over her. It had been so long since she had felt well, since she had been able to move enough. She leaned against the rough wall. Marveled that after so many weeks, it was a different wall than the four she had become accustomed to.
Stefan walked ahead of her, checking for other guards. “We do not have time, and you do not have the strength. If you want to get out, we need to leave now.”
“You can go get Oana, then.”
“If I leave you, you will not make it out.”
Lada’s heart raced in her chest. There had to be another way. A way to escape with Oana.
“If I go and pull her out of the kitchens, someone is bound to notice,” Stefan said. “I cannot keep both of you secret.”
“She would not leave me behind.”
Stefan shook his head. “No, she would not.”
Lada had to make a decision. And she had to make it now. “She would not leave me behind, but she would tell me to leave her.” If Oana was in the kitchen, she had witnesses and an alibi. No one could hold her accountable for the dead men in the cell. But they could hold her as prisoner. Forever.
Lada was trading her freedom for Oana’s.
Accepting Stefan’s elbow for support, she fled from the prison building and out of Hunedoara, hating herself with each step. Hating Matthias more. And hating the world most of all, for taking the people she cared about and making her choose between them and Wallachia every time. Oana had once told her at this very castle that no sacrifice was too great in the cause of their country. Lada prayed that Oana still felt the same, would still feel the same when she discovered their abandonment of her.
But another day in that prison might kill Lada. And she would not go back for anything.
Snagov Island Monastery
“TELL ME AGAIN WHY Aron sent you to an island monastery far from Tirgoviste on a seemingly unimportant task that could have been done by anyone else?” Nazira batted her eyelashes innocently. Fatima shushed her reproachfully. Cyprian laughed.
Radu sighed.
Their ride here had been peaceful. Too peaceful. The entire area between Tirgoviste and Snagov was still almost empty. Would the whole country hide in the mountains forever? It made Aron’s task of ruling them far more difficult. How could he tax or command a populace he could not find?
Radu corrected his sturdy mare’s direction, guiding her back in line with the others. In front and behind were Janissaries, but it was easy to feel like it was just the four of them. “Aron is sending me because Mehmed was not able to take Snagov—attacking the island was too logistically complicated and not worth the time. We need to make certain that the monks there are loyal to the throne, and also invite one of them to take over the cathedral in Tirgoviste. No one has been willing to so far.”
“Yes, and that entire plan makes perfect sense. But the reasonable course of action would be to send someone to do it other than the man in charge of all the military forces currently in the country.” Nazira shushed Fatima before Fatima could shush her this time.
Cyprian twisted his mouth to the side and drew his eyebrows together. Radu loved every single expression Cyprian’s face was capable of, though his genuine smile was still—and always would be—his favorite. “I am inclined to agree with Nazira. Aron is trying to push you to the margins, decrease your visibility. You are already a threat.”
Radu could not deny it. Things had become increasingly tense between himself and the Danesti brothers. Radu rubbed his forehead, gazing at the dock they were drawing closer to. “Aron has nothing I want. I wish he could see that. Still, we are close to being finished. By the time we return I should have all my scouts back. It has been over three months with no word of Lada. I cannot imagine anything she might plan that would require this much silence and inaction. I suspect
something else has happened.” He did not like thinking about what might have ended her aggressions. After everything she had done, he still did not want her to suffer. He only wanted her to fail. “Regardless, I am confident we can move forward very soon.”
“Forward to where?” Fatima asked.
Radu dismounted and offered a hand to help her off her horse. “Somewhere out of Wallachia.”
“I do not know,” Cyprian said. “This area is quite nice.” He patted his horse and stretched his broad shoulders. Radu quickly looked away—and then remembered he did not have to. He let his eyes linger, drinking the other man in. Cyprian caught him staring. His answering smile was sharper than normal. Sharper, and more devious.
The Janissaries gathered and dismounted as well. Radu had left Kiril in charge in Tirgoviste, trusting him to keep an eye on things there. The guards who had accompanied them would cross over to the island with them, in case they encountered any hostility. In an effort to appear nonthreatening, Radu had dressed Wallachian-style. He had left his beloved turban at home and wore a rather absurd hat instead. He wanted to return to flowing robes and beautiful fabrics, leave behind these layers of breeches and vests and coats. Not only were they ugly, they were damnably hot in the heavy summer air.
Nazira and Fatima, too, had shifted their dress. They did not look quite Wallachian, but they did not look Turkish, either. As with everything, Nazira prettified whatever she wore simply by virtue of being in it. Radu suspected she could wear the dirty wool right off a lamb’s back and make it look deliberate and fashionable. Fatima’s clothes were serviceable and plain. Though Radu told her she did not need to play at being a servant here, she preferred to go unnoticed. Looking like a maid was an easy way to become invisible to anyone who had no use for you.