Radu put a hand on Mehmed’s shoulder, but he stared at Lada. “Thank you,” he mouthed.
She did not acknowledge it or the immense gratitude welling in his eyes. She owed him a debt. Nothing was more important to him than Mehmed’s trust. Perhaps it would have been kinder to break that trust and force a removal. Maybe then Radu could be free of the impossible love he carried. But she could not do that to him, not when it was so easy to take this blow on her own shoulders.
“They will think I ordered Ahmet’s death,” Mehmed said, oblivious to Radu’s feelings, as always. “Halima was with me when it happened. I will have to tell them, it was Huma, it was not—”
“No,” Lada said. “They will think it was your order no matter what you say. If you claim it was your mother, it will make you look like a murderer and a liar.”
“What am I to do?”
Lada thought of what she would do. This was a time for power, not subtlety. No one could question that the sultan was in charge. “Make it law. You know what your father’s brothers did. The wars they fought are still raw wounds. Your father had to kill them all eventually. Make a decree that when a sultan is crowned, it is legal for him to kill his brothers for the security of the empire.”
Mehmed had never looked at her with genuine horror before, but he did now. She stopped herself from taking a step back and steeled herself against the fear that, between this and the revelation of her betrayal, she had lost his love.
She would not be weak to avoid his judgment. That was not who she was.
“You think my mother was right to do this?” Mehmed asked.
“I think…” Lada pushed away the image of hopeful, happy Halima glowing as she talked about her son. The son who was being murdered even as she spoke. Did she know yet? Had she learned her whole world had been taken from her? “I think sometimes when balancing a nation against a single life, impossible decisions must be made. Huma made the decision. Whether it was right or wrong is beside the point. It is done.”
“If I make that law, I am already condemning one of my own sons to death.”
Lada had not thought of that and cringed at the accusation in Mehmed’s eyes. Did he think her so monstrous, that she craved the death of his sons? She shook her head. “If you do not make this law, you are allowing a future civil war that will claim untold thousands of your citizens.”
“These are lives, Lada,” Radu said. “How can you speak of them like they are matters of simple mathematics, a problem to be solved?”
Lada stood, a hand to her side against the pain of her wound. “Because thinking like that is the only way to keep from losing our minds.”
“What about our souls?” Mehmed whispered.
Before Lada walked out, she paused at the door. “Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”
That evening she sat next to Bogdan. They were alone in the palace barrack’s mess hall. She had not spoken with or even seen him since the assassination attempt. This was the first time she had felt up to joining her men for a meal, but most of them were on duty. Mehmed trusted them more than ever, and they were all in heavy rotation.
“How are you?” Bogdan asked.
Lada gave him a flat look, wishing she were strong enough to physically punish him for asking such a stupid question. “I was stabbed and beaten by a trusted mentor a week ago.”
He matched her expression with a similar one. “I was there.”
She wondered if he had been scared, if he had been angry that she might die so soon after they were reunited. But his face betrayed nothing.
“I meant how is it being in mourning.”
Bogdan was a fool if he thought she was mourning the death of Mehmed’s half brother. She was not happy that the boy had been killed, but she could not pretend to oppose Huma’s rationale. It would be hypocrisy to dress in sackcloth and ashes. Disrespectful, even.
“Is it common knowledge, then?” she asked. Radu had sent her a note that Mehmed was going to make the fratricide decree, but she had thought it would be tomorrow. She had also been hurt that Mehmed had not asked for her advice on what to say.
She wondered how long it would take him to forgive her for everything that had transpired. The fear that perhaps he would not be able to nagged at her. Where would she be then?
Bogdan shrugged. “Petru told me.”
Lada frowned. “Petru was not on duty today. How did he hear about Ahmet?”
“Who is Ahmet?”
“Mehmed’s half brother.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your father.” Bogdan stopped, his jaw tightening. “They did not tell you.”
Lada knew she was looking at Bogdan’s face, but she could not see it. She could not see anything. “My father is dead?”
“I am sorry. Petru thought you knew. Hunyadi and the boyars killed your father. Mircea, too.”
Lada nodded, her head bobbing up and down of its own volition. A roar filled her ears. A roar like the wind rushing along the banks of the Arges River, tearing at a tree growing sideways out of the rock. “When?”
“Petru overheard Mehmed and Radu a week ago. Right before the revolt.”
“A week.” Her hand darted to the pouch around her neck—but it was gone.
She had not realized it, had not felt for it since she fought Ilyas.
It was gone.
ALL RADU WANTED TO do was sleep, but the knocking would not cease. He stumbled to the door and yanked it open, ready to yell at whoever was there. The ghost of his sister stood in the doorway. Her eyes were large and vacant, her face as smooth as a fading memory.
“Our father is dead,” Lada said.
Radu leaned heavily against the doorframe. Lada drifted in past him. He shut the door, closing them in.
“Why did you keep this from me?”
Radu was glad it was dark so he could not see her face. “I did not know how to tell you.” He reached for her hand. It felt cold and tiny in his own. “I am sorry. I know you loved him.”
“I did not love him. I worshipped him. And then he betrayed us by being human—so worthlessly, weakly human. He left us here with nothing and made it impossible for us to return home.”
“He terrified me.”
Lada laughed sharply. “Little brother, everyone terrified you.”
“That is true.”
“Mircea is dead, too.”
“Yes.” Radu thought of the raw grief Mehmed had been consumed by after the murder of his infant half brother. Radu felt nothing like that when he thought of Mircea’s death. Perhaps that meant something was wrong with him. He wondered if Lada mourned Mircea. He did not ask.
Lada spoke. “Do you remember that summer? When Father took us out of the city?”
“Yes. I was bitten by so many bugs I could scarcely move.”
“I thought he would see me. I thought if we left Tirgoviste, if we left stupid Mircea, if we left behind the boyars and their ceaseless bickering, he would see what I was becoming to please him. For one day, I thought he did. It was the happiest day of my life. And then he left, as he always did.”
“He loved you.”
“You sound so certain. How do you know?”
“Because he tried to save you, that day the sultan claimed us.”
“He failed.”
“But he tried. That was more than he did for me.”
After a brief silence, Lada let out a harsh bray of laughter. “I keep thinking how angry Mircea must be to be dead.”
“I had the same thought!”
They laughed, and then it was quiet for a few warm minutes, safe and dark with their childhood between them. The things they had had and the things they had lost that only they could ever understand.