“I think I have an idea, though. To keep us safe.”
Lada let out a dismissive puff of air between her lips. “I keep us safe. Remember what I told you in the stables when Mircea was torturing you?”
A smile finally broke through Radu’s concern. It lit his face with a beauty to rival the ceiling. “You would not let anyone else kill me.”
“That honor is mine and mine alone.”
Radu finally relaxed, sitting back on a pillow and flinging his arms wide. He was still such a child in so many ways, and Lada wanted to keep him that way.
Or force him to leave it behind forever.
She never could decide which, and it nagged at her.
Only when Radu was no longer looking did Lada let her smile fade into a calculating frown. She had to keep them safe from Murad’s wrath. She had to turn Mehmed’s rule to their advantage, but she did not know how.
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Radu asked, though he knew the answer.
Lada finished tugging on her boots. She wore trousers beneath her skirts, the skirts ill-fitting and put on almost as an afterthought. “To train.”
“Even with all the Janissaries gone to fight?”
“There are a few left.”
Radu scowled. “You are such good friends with the Janissaries. I never see you.” He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice, but he was lonely. Mehmed was always busy, and Radu dreaded ever becoming the nuisance he had been viewed as by Lada and Bogdan growing up. When Mehmed wanted him, he was there without question or delay. But if Mehmed did not call for him, Radu drifted, listless.
Lada did not respond, and Radu could not resist digging at her. “Do you remember when we came here?”
“Of course I remember. It has only been a few weeks. Are you stupid?”
“No, I mean the first time we came here. With Father.”
She got quiet, then. They never spoke of their father, not to each other nor to anyone else. Tension pulled around Lada’s eyes that Radu felt, too, as though merely by invoking their father’s memory someone would realize that his contract with the Ottomans was broken and Lada’s and Radu’s lives were the price.
“You were angry with me the whole time.”
“I am always angry with you, Radu. Say what you mean.”
“You were angry with me because I befriended the enemy. Riding with the Janissaries, talking with them. I simply find it…amusing that now they are your dearest companions.”
A flurry of emotion descended on Lada’s face. Guilt, Radu suspected, though the rage that followed was more familiar. She finally settled on derision. “I do not have to answer to you. Go crawl on your belly in front of their god. At least I have a sword in my hands.”
The door slammed behind her, punctuating her exit. Radu sighed and rubbed his face, wondering what he had hoped to accomplish by needling his sister. Did he want her to stop training with the Janissaries? Or did he want her to admit that she had accepted this as their home? Because if she admitted it, then he finally could, too.
The unfairness pricked at him—that she could hate them and enjoy them at the same time. If anyone deserved to be friends with the Janissaries, it was him. He had never found Lazar again and wondered about his fate, wishing he were here to joke with and to help Radu find a place he belonged, as he had so long ago in the stables.
His soul sputtering like a candle at the end of its wick, Radu went in search of Molla Gurani. The tutor was in his chambers, studying. He weighed Radu with his eyes and stood. “Let us walk.”
Lada loved to make comments about how dull Molla Gurani was, claiming he was the bastard son of a shepherd who had become too amorous with the sheep. She used to repeat his lessons at night in a bleating monotone until Radu begged her to stop, worried her version would replace the real lessons in his mind.
Radu found Molla Gurani deeply comforting, his ascetic demeanor restful and safe. When they were standing in front of a fountain, Radu blurted out what he could not admit to Lada. He had come so close, had even thought that if he presented it as a secret plan to save their lives she might agree. But he was alone in this, as always. “I want to convert.”
Molla Gurani simply blinked and nodded, as though Radu had commented on the weather.
“No one can know. I mean, would that be acceptable? If it was just between God and me?”
“A true conversion is always only between a man and God.”
Radu wiped his brow, relieved. If Lada found out that he had made it official, he worried it would break what remained of their bond. Whatever else she was, Lada was his family, his childhood, his past. They had to stay together.