For the next mile, Radu tensed, waiting for an arrow to find the center of his back, but none came. He said a silent prayer of gratitude for the kindness of Kumal, which had once again saved his life.
Murad had not ceased drinking. Everyone was so constantly consumed by avoiding remarking on it that they may as well have spoken of nothing else.
Radu walked through the streets of Edirne late one night. The winter chill had settled deep into the stones of the city, radiating outward and stealing the warmth from his bones. People imitated the buildings, huddling into themselves, peering out through shuttered eyelids, suspicious and bitter with cold.
He stopped in at every gathering place he could—the mosques, the inns, the markets. Everywhere the tone was the same. The Janissary barracks, normally boisterous at mealtime, were as silent as the frost-covered trees. Radu slipped in wearing a Janissary cap and sat at the end of a table, head bent over his food.
“…gets to keep his land and income? After all the ways the spahis failed during the siege? And our pay remains the same. He should have his wages garnished to give us a portion of what…”
“…ill, my girl says he will not last much longer. Where are we then? If we could not take Skanderberg’s city, imagine what a siege on Constantinople would do to our ranks. I will walk away before I will serve under the little zealot….”
He was learning nothing new. With a sigh, Radu pushed away his food and walked back into the night, staring up at the sky. Low-hanging clouds pressed down on Edirne, looming and cutting the city off from the stars. Perhaps it was just as well. Radu did not think any portents found in the stars tonight could be good ones.
When he arrived at the palace, the air tasted as sour and close as a tomb. He stepped lightly as he stole past doors where his presence would be desired, and found his goaclass="underline" his own room.
His boots fell heavily to the floor in front of the hearth. The fire was low, but strong enough to warm the room.
He was so tired.
Murad requested his presence at all hours of the day and night, oftentimes demanding they stay awake until dawn. Radu had performed his poem so many times he often awoke, head aching and mouth dry, reciting it in his sleep as he had once joked he could do.
If there was any mercy in the world, tonight Murad would forget him.
A stack of letters had been left on his bedside table. He sifted through them, discarding the invitations from various acquaintances that were still pretending his return was a cause for celebration. After Kruje, he no longer had the spark for pretending to enjoy himself at gatherings. He had seen men die.
He had killed men.
And now he was right back where he had started, no closer to helping Mehmed. And Mehmed was as far away as he had ever been.
Radu paused on a letter in a shaky script, then tore it open.
It was from Kumal. Radu sat back, grinning with relief. Kumal was on the mend, slowly recovering his strength. But a sentence at the bottom of the letter left Radu both shocked and dismayed.
I expect that, by spring, I will be well enough to attend your wedding to Nazira, a joyous event we bask in the warmth of anticipating. Until then, my dear brother, take care of yourself.
Radu laughed in disbelief. Apparently Kumal did not view his survival as voiding a contract made on his deathbed. He would have to wait to tell Kumal it was impossible. He did not want any disappointment interrupting his friend’s convalescence.
Radu had no idea if he was even allowed to marry. Janissaries were not, but he was not strictly a Janissary, despite his command. He supposed it came down to the whim of the sultan. Nazira held no political value, with Kumal’s position dependent on the favor of the capital and no significant money to their family. He knew she could marry higher than him, though, a pashazada or another vali. Why would Kumal want such a thing for her?
A pang of bittersweet understanding rippled through him. Kumal wanted the best for his sister, which meant he wanted for her what he thought would make her happiest. All her kind attentions, her blushing smiles, her joyful radiance when he had visited—Radu was not Kumal’s choice. He was Nazira’s.
But how could he give Nazira his heart when it was so twisted and tangled up in Mehmed’s? Hers glowed pure and open. He would have to persuade Kumal that Nazira deserved more than he could give her.
A light knock on the door startled him. A servant boy, wide-eyed and wary-looking, bowed. “The sultan requests your presence.”
Radu sighed. “Of course he does.” He gave the servant a beleaguered smile, and the boy’s face lit up with the shared understanding between them. “Do you get any sleep these days?”
The boy shook his head. “None of us do. He wants every candle burning, constant singing, food and wine at all hours.” He darted a look over his shoulder, torn between excitement over the deviousness of speaking of the sultan in this tone and fear of being caught at it.
Radu smiled to show the boy he was not worried. “I think he fears the dark. Who attends him when I am not there to keep him company?”
The boy made a face. “Halil Pasha, often. He hit me last week for spilling a drop of soup on his shoe.”
“Oh, I hate him. He is a terrible man.” Radu pulled out a coin from a purse beside his bed and handed it to the boy. “What is your name?”
The boy bowed, voice squeaking. “Amal.”
“Amal, I am sorry you must work so hard for so little. Whenever Halil Pasha is here, find me and I will give you an extra coin to make up for the pain of enduring his presence.”
Radu feared Amal’s big head would fall right off his thin neck, he bobbed it so eagerly.
If Halil Pasha was perched like a carrion crow, waiting to seize on the moment of Murad’s impending death, Radu needed to beat him to it.
LADA LAY SPRAWLED ACROSS Mehmed’s bed, her head hanging over the side. “No, no, no.” She pushed his hand away from where it pointed at a map of Constantinople and the surrounding areas. “Your father could see only the wall, and that is where he failed.”
“But if we cannot take the wall, we cannot take the city!”
“Ignore the wall. The wall is your last step. If you want the city, what do you need first?”
Mehmed scowled at the map, fingers unconsciously tracing the wall surrounding the city. But then his gaze shifted, his expression turning thoughtful. He moved his finger from the outline of the wall to the Bosporus Strait. It was the point through which all ships carrying supplies, soldiers, and aid from Europe had to pass. “We need to cut the throat,” he said. He threw himself off the bed, grabbing an inkwell and pen. On one side of the narrow stretch was a tower built by his great-grandfather Beyazid, the last point of Ottoman holdings before Byzantium land. He drew a matching tower on the other side, the side that was Byzantium territory. And then he slashed his pen across the water between them.
Lada clapped her hands together, the sharp crack echoing through the room. “Deny them aid. Meet them on the sea and the land. Make them fight you on all fronts—stretch them as thin as they go—and somewhere they will snap. Knock on every door; you need only one of them to open.”
Mehmed’s smile dropped away, his hands hovering reverently above the map. He touched Lada that way, sometimes, and it stirred a strange jealousy in her breast to see him look at a city with the same worshipful hunger.
“If I fail,” he said, “it will be the end of me.”
Lada laughed. “Then do not try, little sheep. Tend to your flock. Patrol your borders. No one ever said you had to take Constantinople. It is only a dream.”
Mehmed’s eyes burned when he looked up at her. “It is not simply my dream.”