“Salih?” a deep voice lined with disapproval asked. “What are you doing in here?”
Radu glanced back to see Halil Pasha. The older man was out of breath and sweating. He glanced once toward the desk reflexively, then looked back at his son.
“We were looking for a book,” Salih said.
Halil Pasha finally noticed Radu. He took in everything, realization moving slowly across his face as his lip curled in disgust. Radu’s out-of-place tunic. Salih’s raw and red mouth. Radu felt as dirty as he ever had, the evidence of his manipulation of Salih written all over both of them.
“This is my private study,” Halil Pasha growled.
“I know! I am sorry. I thought— You were at the garden reception. Is it over so early?”
Halil Pasha waved a hand dismissively, but his tone was strained. “There was a murder. Some whore of Mehmed’s killed one of the guests.”
Radu dropped the book. Halil Pasha glared at him, but Radu could not react how he was supposed to. There could be no other woman there who would kill someone. No one but Lada.
“Wait. I know you.” Halil Pasha’s eyes narrowed as he finally looked at Radu’s face instead of merely registering his guilt. “You have grown. You were Mehmed’s friend, when he was sultan.” The realization finished clicking into place. “Your sister. I remember her now.”
Radu swallowed. “I must go. My apologies for interrupting your night.” Radu dipped his head, not looking at Salih, and fled.
He went to Lada’s room first, but it was empty. The vast hallways of the palace were empty as well, ominous with their lack of activity. Radu turned a corner, heading for Mehmed’s chambers, when he nearly ran into Lazar.
He grabbed the soldier’s arm. “Where is Lada? What happened?”
Lazar frowned. “She is in a lot of trouble. You should stay out of it.”
“Where?”
He sighed. “Come with me.”
They hurried down the hallways until they reached one of the rooms that, two days before, had been overflowing with food and drink and light.
Now, it held a trial.
Lada stood, straight and solid in defiance, in one corner. Murad, surrounded by several guards, stood at the other end of the room, nodding as an enraged man dressed in Italian finery screamed and gesticulated in Lada’s direction.
Mehmed stood in the center, watching his father with a mixture of veiled fear and simmering rage. To anyone who did not know him, it would have appeared he was merely bored. But Radu knew every expression, every change of his face.
Radu’s stomach turned, and he crossed his arms over his chest, as though he could keep his heart from eating itself with bitterness and loathing. Lazar put a hand on his shoulder. “We should go,” he whispered. “This is a dangerous time to draw attention to yourself.”
“Not yet.” Radu slid along the wall, disappearing into the milling crowds of whispering people. It looked as though most of the wedding party was here, waiting to see how the evening’s unexpected excitement would play out.
Lada was alone. The hem of her skirts was stained a rusty dark brown. One of her hands, too, bore the proof of her guilt. She made no attempt to hide it or rub the dried blood away. Instead, she stared steadily out at the room, looking as though she would like to continue the work of killing as soon as possible.
In her place, Radu knew he would have been a sobbing waste of a man. And he had seen her, the first time she had killed, how hollow and shaken she had been. He could see a hint of the same displacement in the way her eyes focused on nothing, but, as with Mehmed, no one who did not know her would realize how upset she was.
Radu knew her. He understood.
He still hated her.
“Enough.” Murad waved his hand to cut off the increasingly loud discourse of the Italian. “Mehmed, tell me what happened.”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “I do not know, Father.”
“Why were you in that part of the garden?”
“I needed to breathe. Sitti Hatun’s perfume turns my stomach.”
There was a ripple through the crowd as various people reacted to Mehmed’s cruelty toward his bride. Murad’s eyebrows descended lower. “And why was she in that part of the garden?”
Mehmed’s lips twitched tighter and he raised his eyebrows in a challenge. There was a sudden intake of breath as everyone in the room came to the same conclusion.
Murad’s face purpled with rage. He stalked across the room to stand in front of Lada. Several inches taller, he loomed over her. She did not move. “What were you doing that deep in the garden?”
Radu wondered why Murad would direct his anger toward Lada and not Mehmed, when it was his son who was embarrassing him.
Radu bitterly wanted the truth, even as he desperately wished for something else. Lada, however, said simply, “Following Mehmed.”
“And why would you do that?”
“To protect him.”
“At his own wedding party? What harm did you think could befall him?”
She finally changed her stony expression, raising a single eyebrow in disgust. “A knife in the dark. The exact harm I prevented.”
“We found no knife on the man you killed.”
Mehmed spoke. “Several people got to the body before the Janissary guards did. Anyone could have removed the weapon.”
Murad turned toward Mehmed. “Did the man attack you?”
“He was looking for me.”
“And no one could have been looking for you at your own party with anything other than murderous intentions?”
“I am not that popular,” Mehmed answered, his voice dry.
Murad’s face turned a deeper shade. He jabbed a finger toward Lada. “Why did you kill that man?”
“I saw him stalking Mehmed. I saw a glint of metal in the darkness. I acted without hesitation to protect Mehmed, just as I have done before.”
Murad tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
Radu cringed at her error, and saw Lada blanch. The attempt on Mehmed’s life during his time as sultan was secret. She could not claim it now. She shook her head, stammered, “I—I mean, just as I have been trained to.”
“Trained to?”
“I am a Jani—” She stopped, as shocked by what she was about to say as everyone else was. All the training in the world would not make her a Janissary. And it left her without a clear reason for taking it upon herself to kill a man.
“You are not a Janissary. Who are you?”
Lada looked at Murad with cold fury, her voice trembling with pain. “You do not remember?”
Radu leaned heavily against the wall, a bitter laugh trapped in his throat. The man who had stolen them, the man they had lived in terror of all these years, the man who had destroyed their lives did not even remember them. The secret to their survival, then, revealed: not Mehmed, not the grace of God, but rather an oversight by a man who could not be bothered to keep track of them.
“I know who she is.” The crowd parted to let Halil Pasha through. He looked around, and Radu knew whom he was searching for. He shifted and Lazar casually stepped in front of him, blocking him from Halil Pasha’s view. “She is Ladislav Dragwlya, daughter of Vlad, the treacherous vaivode of Wallachia. The treaty breaker. Was it not part of the terms of his princedom that he maintain loyalties to you? In exchange for the lives of his children?”
Mehmed stepped forward. “That is not at issue here! We are talking of the attempt on my—”
Halil Pasha waved a dismissive hand and continued talking. “How many times now has Wallachia gone against our interests? Should we not take this opportunity to remind Vlad of the consequences of disloyalty?”
A cold clarity fell on Radu like the first frost of autumn. Just as it signaled the coming winter, he could see what was happening. Halil Pasha did not want further inquiries into the incident in the garden. He was distracting Murad by bringing up a larger issue, that of their father’s betrayal. And in doing so, he was eliminating the girl who had twice disrupted what Radu suspected were Halil Pasha’s own attempts at ensuring Mehmed never ruled.