Lada entered their chambers, glaring at him. “Sit down. You make me dizzy.”
He did not sit, too flushed with excitement. “I am going to tell Father about Mircea and the boyar coalition. He will be so proud of me!”
“He will be furious.”
“Not with me!”
“Do you imagine him thanking you? Embracing you warmly, thrilled with the news that his own son is working against him? You are a fool.”
All Radu’s careful hopes were fleeing. He shook his head. “He will be glad to know! He will thank me!”
“We cannot always predict how our father will respond.” She looked at the corner, where their nurse’s basket of mending sat beneath her chair. The nurse used to darn Bogdan’s socks, cursing him for wearing them out so quickly. She no longer had that task.
A dark realization seized Radu. “You are jealous. You want Father to see only you.”
Lada laughed, a bitter sound. “I do not want Father to see me offering him a conspiracy to take away even more of his power. You are welcome to that.” She stomped out of the room.
Radu found her later that day, standing on the narrow walled ledge that surrounded the tower. “Did you tell him?” she asked without looking at her brother.
Radu did not answer.
“Coward.” But she angled her body so he could stand next to her. “We will think of some way to reveal the truth without entangling you in the mess. You do not want to draw Father’s attention as being part of this.”
“But how?”
“We need a little time. We have information, which means we have power. We must think of—” She stopped, narrowing her eyes at something in the distance.
A man rode down the main street, surrounded by soldiers. As the man got closer, Radu saw that he smiled, one hand uplifted in a gesture of friendship. His men, grim and hardened, with hands hovering near their swords, promised something else entirely. Several flags Radu did not recognize hung limply from poles carried at the group’s rear. “Who is he?”
“Hunyadi,” Lada said, the name dropping from her lips like a curse.
They watched from the tower and, though Radu knew he was supposed to hate Hunyadi, he found himself in awe. Hunyadi rode into another man’s kingdom and the people he passed smiled and bowed. When Radu’s father was on horseback, he rode hunched over and leaning forward. Whether to arrive faster or to make himself a smaller target, Radu did not know. Hunyadi sat straight in his saddle, shoulders back, chest presented to the world in defiance of assassins’ arrows.
“We are too late,” Lada said. “All your information is worthless now.”
Radu’s eyelids felt heavy with shame. He had never managed to be useful to his father, and now, because of his cowardice and delay, he had failed once again.
Lada turned toward the door. “Well, we may as well see what doom the Transylvanian terror brings with him.”
Radu tripped over his own feet in his haste to keep up with Lada as she threw herself down the tower steps and into the great hall before Hunyadi arrived. She paused at the entrance and Radu slipped past her, finding a dim corner where he often stood unobserved. She elbowed him sharply in the side, and he made room for her.
A few minutes later, their father rushed in. His hat was askew, his mustache so recently curled Radu could still smell the oil. He sat down on his ornate throne, fixing his hat and breathing heavily.
He was sweating.
In that moment, Radu knew his father was no longer in control of Wallachia. Perhaps he never had been. The stinging taste of his father’s perfumed oil was heavy on Radu’s tongue as John Hunyadi strode confidently into the room.
“He is magnificent,” Radu whispered.
“He is the end of us,” Lada answered.
When his father pulled him out of bed, Radu was certain he was dreaming. He dressed in a sleepy, candlelit haze, his father’s murmured, anxious words washing over him. He knew it was a dream because his father had never been in his room before, had never helped him dress or asked if he would be warm enough. Radu was twelve, he was old enough to dress himself, but he let his father help.
He would not puncture this dream, not willingly.
It was not until they were outside in the sharp night air and Mircea arrived, leading horses, that panic set in. He and Lada were lifted onto saddles, though they could mount by themselves. Several Janissaries waited nearby, their horses huffing soft white clouds of breath.
“Where are we going?” Radu whispered. No one had told him to be silent, but a blanket of stealth and threat hung over them all and he did not want to disrupt it.