Lada wondered if she had mistranslated. The man looked nothing like a gardener, and there were no plants in the empty square.
Halil Pasha kept his eyes on the courtyard. “As a further favor to you, our court will oversee the education of your children.”
The blood drained from her father’s face. “You are too generous. I could not accept such an offer.”
“It is our pleasure to teach them.”
Vlad looked at the square, where the two bound men had been stripped of their clothing. He met Lada’s questioning eyes, and his own widened with an expression she had never before seen in them.
“Radu, then,” he said, hurriedly. “The girl is due for a convent. She is far too willful and contrary to be taught, and anyway, education is wasted on women.”
Normally such a statement would have enraged Lada, but she was unnerved by her father’s face. Last year she had wandered out to the slaughterhouse, drawn by the noise of the pigs. She had expected them to scream only when being killed, but instead they began screaming, their eyes rolling back in terror, at the mere scent of their littermates’ blood.
That was the expression flickering beneath her father’s composed features, betrayed by the whites showing around his dark irises.
“Hmm.” Halil Pasha stroked his thick beard thoughtfully. “We would hate for an unfortunate marriage to shift your allegiances westward. You have a history of forgetting your promises. Besides, the girl speaks perfect Turkish; I have noticed that she understands all our conversations. Time and attention has been put into her education. A great deal of care. Our children are our most precious possessions, are they not? The sultan wanted Radu, but I insist we educate both of them.”
Her father swallowed roughly, eyes lingering on Lada’s. Then he turned away and nodded.
“It is settled, then,” Halil Pasha said. “We will keep Radu and Ladislav here with us so they will be safe while you remember to serve our interests on the Wallachian throne.”
Radu looked to Lada, trying to put together what he was hearing. Lada understood perfectly well what this man was saying. Their lives were valuable only insofar as their father did what he was told. And instead of just taking Radu, Halil Pasha had known what her father valued the most.
All those years working toward her father’s love and approval had led her here.
It had made her a prisoner.
The Ottomans held all the threads, and they had looped Vlad’s around his own neck. Lada had known that her marriage, her future, was a tool for bargaining, but she had never considered that the very spark of life itself was something to be traded and bartered. And that her father would be so willing to do precisely that.
“Ah! They are ready. Your education starts now, young ones. Behold, the gardener, pruning treason.”
They watched as the head gardener slit an opening into each man and then, with practiced efficiency, inserted the long, thick wooden stakes. The men were lifted into the air, and the stakes planted into the holes in the ground. Lada saw how the men’s own weight would slowly pull them down, forcing the stakes higher and higher along their spines until they finally exited through the throat.
She did not stop staring, but something behind her eyes shifted and changed the scene. She needed to see it differently. These men were not real. They did not matter. It was not real. Their screams were distracting. She was trying to think. She needed to focus on her threads. She clutched the pouch around her neck and stared at the men until they blurred into indistinct shapes. There. They were not real.
She felt Radu squeezing her hand, heard him gasping for breath through sobs. She saw the anguish written across their father’s face. Whatever underhanded dealings he had anticipated with this new treaty, he could no longer act. He had made the critical error of loving his children—or Lada, at least—enough that they could be used against him.
Love and life. Things that could be given or taken away in a heartbeat, all in the pursuit of power. She could not avoid her own spark of life. Love, however…
Lada let go of Radu’s hand.
She took a step away from him and watched as the head gardener finished his work.
Lada hated herself for it, but she loved the food. Delicately spiced meats with cool, contrasting sauces, roasted vegetables, fresh fruits—every bite she enjoyed felt like treason. She should miss everything about Wallachia. She should hate everything about Edirne.
But oh, the sweetness of the fruit. Perhaps she had a bit of Eve in her after all.
The clothes, too, were infinitely preferable. A light entari robe was worn over flowing skirts and woven tunics. Everything was bright and soft, far less restrictive and binding than the fashions in Tirgoviste. Easier to move in. Easier to breathe in.
It should be harder to breathe here, with the air of her enemies surrounding her. Lada rebelled where she could, wearing her hair loose instead of elegantly wrapped as was the fashion, holding on to her shoes from Wallachia, and always keeping her precious tiny pouch around her neck and tucked against her heart.
Because food and clothing could never replace what she had left behind, and she would not forget.
She picked through a bowl of dates, sucking on them as noisily as she could to annoy their tutor. He was currently instructing them on the military structure of the empire. Which was better than religious instruction, but still odious.
“How are spahis different from Janissaries?” Radu’s forehead wrinkled as he tried to sort through the information they were receiving.
The tutor looked bored. He always looked either bored or angry. It was the only thing Lada felt they had in common. “Spahis are local garrisons, citizens of the Ottoman Empire. They are not regular troops; they are called up when we have need of them. Local valis of small areas, or beys of larger cities, lead them as appointed by the sultan. Janissaries are a standing force, their only role to be soldiers.”
“Slaves,” Lada said.
“They are educated, paid, and the best-trained soldiers in the world.”
“Slaves,” Lada said again, her inflection never changing. Radu squirmed next to her, but she refused to look at him.
“Janissaries can rise to meteoric heights. We recognize and reward the exceptional. Some Janissaries even become beys. Like Iskander Bey, who…” The tutor trailed off, blanching as though a bad taste were in his mouth.
Lada sat forward, finally intrigued. “Who is Iskander Bey?”
“A poor choice of example. I had forgotten about recent events. He was a favorite of the sultan, promoted to bey and given the territorial city of Kruje, in his homeland of Albania. He has…not been cooperative since then. It is a deep betrayal and shameful to the highest degree.”
Lada laughed. “So your sultan educated and trained him, and now he is using that knowledge to fight you? I think he is a perfect example.”
Their tutor sat back in disgust, glaring at Lada, while Radu toyed nervously with his quill. “Let us move on. Repeat the five pillars of Islam.”
“No. I like this other subject very much. I want to know more about Iskander Bey.”
The tutor pulled out a wooden switch and tapped it menacingly against his leg. Lada’s hands were purpled with bruises, yellow in the spots that had not yet been covered by fresh bruises. Doubtless they would be soon. She leaned back, stretching languorously.
“Perhaps we should visit the dungeons,” the tutor growled.
“Perhaps we should.” Lately the tutor had been taking Lada and Radu on frequent tours of the prisons and torture chambers in addition to viewings of public executions. It seemed that they spent more time in the damp, airless corridors of the prisons than they did in their own rooms.
Radu was constantly ill. His eyes were dark and sunken. He could barely eat, and he was plagued by nightmares.