During the longest, loneliest hours of the night, it had been all Lada could do to keep herself from waking him just to see the way his eyes changed when he saw her, the way his lips formed around words and intentions. She liked who she was when he looked at her, craved it. But she had resisted. And now, with her own sleep so close, she found her door blocked by a woman.
“Lada?” The woman’s round face was sweetly pleasant, like a plum, with equally round lips. Her eyes were weak, too large and watery.
“What?”
“I—it is me. Nazira.”
Lada frowned, her mind sluggish. The woman did look familiar.
“I introduced myself at Mehmed’s wedding? I danced with Radu.”
“Everyone danced with Radu.”
The woman laughed. It came so easily to her, a reflex of a muscle Lada did not have. “Yes, that is true. Radu has not mentioned me?”
Red flashed before Lada’s eyes, all her muscles tensing. Was this some sort of test? A trick? Did someone know Radu’s true heart and feelings for Mehmed? If Halil had discovered it, he would try to use it to his advantage. Lada would not betray her brother so easily. “Radu and I do not speak much. We are both very busy.”
“Oh. I am sorry. You would know my brother, though. Kumal?”
Recognition slammed into place, jarring Lada completely awake. She had never paid much attention to the women who floated around the edges of the court, but she did remember Kumal. Kumal, the stealer of souls. The man who had driven Radu into the heart of the Muslim god.
“I do know him.”
Nazira must have missed the growl in Lada’s voice, because she smiled in relief. “Well, apparently Radu has not spoken of it with you yet, but I—we…we are being married tomorrow.”
“You are what?”
“We have only recently decided, and we wanted to be married quickly, without fuss. There is so much else going on, and Radu must be available for Mehmed.”
Lada felt dizzy, as though she had dismounted from a daylong ride and the earth still moved beneath her with the gait of a horse. “He is marrying you.”
“We are avoiding the more rigorous traditions, but I wanted to spend today at the baths with my cousins and aunt. And you, of course. You are his only family.” She mistook Lada’s expression of confused horror for a questioning one about the baths. “It is custom to spend the day before a wedding at the baths. Radu has reserved one of the palace baths for us, so we will not be disturbed. And I hoped, since we will be sisters, that you would join us.”
Who was this woman? First her brother delivered Radu’s soul to a foreign god, and now, when Radu had the ear of the sultan, she swooped in to marry him? Lada knew Radu did not love her. She suspected her brother incapable of loving anyone but Mehmed. Why, then, had he agreed to this marriage? Did they have some sort of hold on him, some vicious blackmail?
If Nazira was using Radu to get to Mehmed, Lada would need to have as much information as possible. She could work with subtlety like Radu. He was not the only one who could play that game. She gritted her teeth in an approximation of a smile. “Give me a few moments to change?”
Lada followed Nazira through a walkway over which deep green vines arched, waxy and impervious to the chill of winter. She had never been to the baths, preferring to clean herself in private rather than spend time with other women. The exterior of the building was simple, almost austere. But once they were inside, a new world was revealed. Hand-painted tiles featured a repeating flower motif that grew along the walls and climbed across the ceiling in brilliant reds and yellows accented by the deepest blues.
High-set windows let in light, which cut through the steam curling in the air. Nazira greeted several women with delight, exchanging kisses. Everyone seemed overjoyed and surprised, remarking on the speed of the engagement and Nazira’s good fortune in nabbing the handsomest man in Edirne.
Lada wondered whether her own head or the tiles would break first if she began smashing her skull into them.
Her smile felt like agony.
An attendant led the women to an area that had been prepared for them, with mats for their clothes and long, soft swaths of cloth to wrap themselves in while disrobing. Lada lingered near the back, wondering how Radu did this sort of thing. Did she insert herself into conversations? Did she hope to be invisible and merely listen?
The other women did not hesitate to slip out of their clothing, laughing and talking, perfectly at ease. They were neither ashamed of nor embarrassed by their bodies. When most of them had gone into the water, Lada threw off her clothes as quickly as possible, tucking the leather pouch she wore around her neck beneath them. Then she slid into the bath from the side, rather than walk naked to the shallow steps.