Feigning a look of indifference, Mehmed walked past her, followed by Radu. Lada stood to leave as well, but Huma’s arm shot out, blocking her way. “Take a meal with me.”
“I would rather return to my room.”
Huma traced a finger down the line of her own hip, stroking the material of her dress lazily. “It was not a request.”
Lada took a step forward, but Huma seized her wrist. Huma laughed, and in her laugh Lada heard all the secrets she had never been privy to. “Ladislav Dragwlya, daughter of Vlad, who sent forces, including his own son, to fight at Varna, thus invalidating his treaty with the Ottomans and leaving his children’s lives utterly forfeit. Ladislav, whom no one in the world other than her beautiful brother and a powerless sultan care about. Little Lada, who is in my house under my protection, sit down.”
Lada remembered the feeling of skin and tendons clamped between her teeth, the resistance of flesh meeting the determination of her jaw. For one brief, dizzy moment, she considered attacking Huma, savaging her the same way she had Mehmed’s attacker.
Instead, she sat.
“Good girl.” Huma clapped her hands and a trio of delicate flowers in girl form came in, setting food and drink in front of them, then gliding silently away. Lada watched the girls, and as she watched them, she wondered, Are they Mehmed’s? Has he been here? Has he picked these flowers?
Huma’s pointy red tongue flicked out, running along her teeth as she considered the meal in front of them. Lada was reminded of a snake, which confused her. Women were the garden, and men were the snakes. Her nurse had explained how men and women came together in the marriage bed to her when she was very young, around the same time her religious tutors had taught her the story of Adam and Eve. The two had mixed together in her head, until it was men and their snakes that had persuaded Eve to lose her beautiful, perfect garden.
No garden could survive the introduction of a snake. Everything would be lost, would then belong to the snake forever.
Lada knew more now, of course, from the rude talk and graphic stories of the Janissaries. They had only served to further her conviction that her interpretation had been correct all along.
But here was Huma, and she was no garden. She was a serpent. “Murad liked his girls very young. I spent several years eating almost nothing so that I could stay small and undeveloped.” She picked up a leg of chicken, roasted and covered with cracked flakes of pepper. Her eyes rolled back as she bit into it, a soft, satisfied hum slipping through her lips. “I thought I would die of want before I ever managed to conceive an heir. But then precious Mehmed took up in my womb, and I could eat again.”
Lada took some flatbread, tearing it into small pieces as she watched Huma luxuriate over her food. Several more times the little flowers brought food, refilled Huma’s wine, even wiped her mouth clean.
“You are fascinated with the girls,” Huma said. Lada snapped her attention back to the older woman. She had assumed Huma was so absorbed in her consumption of food that Lada had let her mind and gaze wander.
“Why do they veil their faces? Does your god hate even the sight of women?”
Huma laughed. “You misunderstand. Women should veil their bodies, yes. But veiling the face is a symbol of status. Only women who are so well provided for they can afford not to do menial labor may wear a veil. These girls have earned their veils. It is a mark of privilege.”
“Privilege? They are slaves!”
Huma laughed. “So am I, dearest. I was sold as a very young girl, brought to the harem as a servant as well.”
Lada scowled. “You should have fought them. You should have escaped.”
“To where? I was angry, for many years. And frightened. But there are many ways to be powerful. There is power in stillness. There is power in watching, waiting, saying the right thing at the right time to the right person. There is power in being a woman—oh yes, power in these bodies you gaze upon with derision.” Huma ran one hand down her ample breasts, over her stomach, and rested it on her hip. “When you have something someone else wants, there is always an element of power.”
“But it can be taken from you.” Lada had seen enough of men and the world to know that a woman’s body was not an object of power.
“Or it can be given in exchange for more important things. These girls, my servants, understand that. The smart ones, anyhow. They will spend years climbing, trying to get in a position where they have some measure of control. The ones who are clever will do better than the ones who are merely beautiful.”
Her gaze was so pointed, Lada felt herself blush. She dropped the pieces of ripped flatbread onto the plate in front of her. She felt awkward, ungainly, and uglier than she had ever considered herself before. It had not bothered her, most of her life, knowing that she was not beautiful, would never gain admiration for her looks alone. But Huma used her face as a weapon and a tool in a way Lada never could. Lada had never realized that simply by being attractive, she might have gained more threads of power.