Lada and Radu were not allowed to spend time in the outer rims of Tirgoviste. They were bundled and rushed through the streets whenever they left the city, catching only glimpses of ramshackle homes and suspicious, sunken eyes.
They lived in the castle, which, for all it tried, could not pretend at the splendor of Constantinople. It was dim, dark, narrow. The walls were thick, the windows slits, the hallways labyrinthine. The castle’s construction proved the pools and gardens and brightly clothed bodies were lies. Tirgoviste was no glittering Byzantium. Even Byzantium was no longer Byzantium. Like everything else this close to the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia had become a stomping ground for stronger armies, a pathway smashed by armored feet again and again and again.
Lada put her hand against the wall, feeling the cold that never quite left the stones. The castle was both the goal and the trap. She had never felt safe here. She knew from the snapping tone and tense demeanor of her father that he felt constantly threatened, too. She longed to live somewhere else, in the countryside, in the mountains, somewhere defensive where they could see their enemies coming for miles. Somewhere her father could relax and have time to speak with her.
Two Janissaries walked past. They were elite Ottoman soldiers, taken as young boys from other countries in the name of taxes, trained and groomed to serve the sultan and his god. Their ceremonial caps, bronze with flowing white flaps, bobbed as they laughed and talked, perfectly at ease. Her father insisted the castle was a symbol of power, but he refused to see the true symbolism of Tirgoviste. It did not give them power—it gave others power over them. They were trapped here, prisoners to the demands of the powerful boyar families. Worse, despite her father’s anointment to crusader by the pope, they were still a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire. Her father sacrificed money, lives, and his own honor to the Ottoman sultan, Murad, for the privilege of this throne.
Bogdan babbled on in the language of their Hungarian neighbors to the west, telling Lada about his day. She pushed into the grand hall, occasionally correcting his pronunciation. The two Janissaries were there, lounging against a wall. Lada spared them only a brief glare. They were like a rock in her slipper, constantly irritating.
Bulgaria and Serbia had similar arrangements with the sultan, paying money and boys to the Ottoman Empire in return for stability, while Hungary and Transylvania fought to avoid being vassals. The tension between borders demanded Vlad’s constant attention, forced him to leave for weeks on end, and gave him pains in his stomach that made him nasty and irritable.
Lada hated the Ottomans.
One of the Janissaries raised a thick eyebrow. Though he looked Bulgarian, maybe Serbian, he spoke Turkish. “Ugly thing, the girl. The prince will be lucky to find her a match. Or perhaps a nunnery with low standards.”
Lada continued as though she had not heard, but Bogdan stopped. He bristled. The soldier noted his understanding and stepped toward them in interest. “You speak Turkish?”
Lada grabbed Bogdan’s hand, answering with perfect pronunciation. “One must learn Turkish if one is to command the castle dogs.”
The soldier laughed. “You would be right at home with them, little bitch.”
Lada had her knife out before the soldier or his companion noticed. She was too short to reach the man’s neck, so she satisfied herself with a vicious slash across his arm. He shouted in pain and surprise, jumping back and fumbling with his sword.
Lada gestured, and Bogdan threw himself at the soldier’s legs, tripping him. Now that he was on the floor, his neck was an easy target. Lada pressed the knife beneath his chin, then looked up at the other soldier. He was a pale, lean man—almost a boy, really—with shrewd brown eyes. He had one hand on his sword, the long, curved blade favored by the Ottomans.
“Only a fool would attack the prince’s daughter in her own home. Two soldiers against a harmless girl.” Lada bared her teeth at him. “Very bad for treaties.”
The lean soldier took his hand off his sword and stepped back, his smile a perfect match to his weapon. He bowed, sweeping out an arm in deference.
Bogdan jumped up from the floor, trembling with rage. Lada shook her head at him. She should have left him out of this. Lada had a sense for power—the fine threads that connected everyone around her, the way those threads could be pulled, tightened, wrapped around someone until they cut off the blood supply.
Or snapped entirely.
She had few threads at her disposal. She wanted all of them. Bogdan had almost none, and what threads he did have were his simply by virtue of his being a boy. People already respected him more than they did his mother the nurse. It made Lada’s jaw ache, the ease with which life greeted Bogdan.
She jabbed her knife, poking the prone soldier once more for good measure, but not quite hard enough to break the skin. Then she stood straight, smoothing the front of her dress. “You are slaves,” she said. “There is nothing you can do to hurt me.”
The lean soldier’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he looked over Lada’s shoulder, where Bogdan loomed. She grabbed his arm and walked out of the room with him.
Bogdan was fuming. “We should tell your father.”
“No!”
“Why? He should know how they disrespected you!”
“They are beneath our notice! They are less than the mud. You do not get angry at the mud for clinging to your shoe. You wipe it off and never look at it again.”
“Your father should know.”
Lada scowled. It was not that she feared punishment for her actions. What she feared was that her father would find out how the Janissaries viewed her and realize they were right. That she was a girl. That she was worth less than the castle dogs until the day she could be married off. She had to be the smartest, constantly surprising and delighting him. She was terrified that the day she stopped amusing him would be the day he remembered he had no use for a daughter.
“Will we be punished?” Bogdan’s face, as familiar and beloved as her own, wrinkled in concern. He was growing like a spring shoot, so much taller now. As far back as she could remember he had been at her side. He was hers—her playmate, her confidant, her brother in spirit if not blood. Her husband. Where Radu was weak, Bogdan was steady, strong. She tugged one of his big ears. They stuck out from his head like handles on a jug, and were more precious to her than any of the fine things in the castle.
“The Janissaries have only what power we decide they do.” She meant it as a reassurance, but her mind stuck on the curved sword that hung above her father’s throne. A gift from the sultan to her father. A promise and a threat, like most things in Tirgoviste were.
The next morning Lada awoke late, eyes heavy with sleep and mind muddled by nightmares. There was a strange noise, a hiccuping sort of moan, coming from the other side of her bedroom door. Angry, she stomped out into the chambers that connected her room to Radu’s, where their nurse slept.
The nurse had all her soft parts hidden as she held herself, rocking. She was the source of the noise. Radu patted her back, looking lost.
“What happened?” Lada asked, panic rising in her chest like a handful of bees.