Radu answered the smile as well as he could manage. “Do you need anything? Water?”
Kumal shook his head. “I need a promise.”
Radu clucked his tongue. “I am sorry, the supply wagon carrying promises was waylaid by Skanderberg last week. We are entirely out of them.”
Kumal’s chest rattled with a laugh. “I am serious. I need a promise from you.”
“Anything.”
“Take care of Nazira.”
Radu blinked and looked up at the draping cloth of the tent ceiling, now stained black with smoke, soiled and ruined like everything else here. “She will be very upset with you when we return and she finds out you were trying to get rid of her.”
Kumal’s grip tightened with more strength than Radu thought he had left.
“I promise,” Radu said. “I will take care of her.”
Kumal sighed in relief, his body deflating under the blanket until it looked as though a grown man could not possibly be beneath it. Radu stayed with him for another hour, but they did not speak again.
When Radu left, he wandered. Lost in thought, he drew closer and closer to the edge of camp. He stood outside the last straggling tents, staring toward the dark line of the wall. That damnable wall.
Three times they had directly assaulted it, only to be repulsed.
They had never managed to find the water source for the city.
They had even tried to bribe the city leaders again, to no avail.
There was a loud rumbling sound, and the ground beneath his feet shuddered. A plume of dust rose against the sky, blotting out the stars. Men shouted, but there was none of the typical clash of metal and scream of horses that signaled a surprise attack from a raiding force. This was something new, something bad.
Radu ran forward, drawing his sword. He stumbled in the dark, raising an arm to his mouth to avoid inhaling the dirt that drifted in the air like the grave coming to collect them all.
On his left, another man joined him. “No, no, no!” the man screamed.
Radu tripped and fell hard to the cold ground, nearly impaling himself on his sword. Because he knew that voice. And he knew the hand that reached out to pull him up.
“Come on, we have to help! The tunnels collapsed!”
In the dark, Mehmed did not know him. But Radu would know him anywhere. He took the hand, held it as though it were his anchor to this world. And then it was gone and Mehmed disappeared into the night ahead of him.
Radu hesitated. If he went back to camp now, Mehmed would never know. They would not speak. Radu could slip back into the blood-tinged monotony of his days. But that was a lie. Because even when Mehmed was not in his life, he was the missing sun at the center of everything. Radu still revolved around Mehmed, even when he was gone.
Radu ran forward, catching up to Mehmed, who had stopped on the edge of a sunken line in the ground. It led from where they stood to within a few arm spans of the wall.
Mehmed dropped to his knees, hanging his head in despair. A couple of men moved up and down the line, calling frantically, but it was obvious that anyone who had been inside the tunnel would not be coming out.
Radu knelt beside Mehmed, putting a hand on his shoulder. Mehmed looked up in surprise, but whatever he was about to say died on his lips as he squinted at Radu. Without a word, he threw himself forward. He wrapped his arms around Radu’s torso and buried his face in his shoulder. The earth shifted again beneath Radu, or inside Radu, the rumbling and collapsing groan of all his promises to himself falling away.
Mehmed.
His Mehmed.
He put a hand to the back of Mehmed’s neck, holding him.
“I failed,” Mehmed said. “They are all dead, and I failed.”
Radu shook his head, cheek brushing the top of Mehmed’s head. “We have all failed. This is not your fault.”
“This was my plan, though. My idea to save the siege.”
“No one can save it. Do not hold yourself responsible for your father’s folly. Learn from it.”
Mehmed nodded into his shoulder, then pulled back. He grasped Radu’s shoulders too tightly, as though he was afraid Radu might drift away. How could he? Mehmed was his sun. He would always return.
“How are you here?”
“I came with your father. I have been here the whole time.”
Shock and hurt played across Mehmed’s face. He did not look well, drawn and pale even in the darkness. Either he had been sick, or he was getting sick. Radu wanted to run his fingers down Mehmed’s cheeks, to touch him, to fix him.
“Why have you not found me before?” Mehmed asked.
“I…” Because I am in love with you. Because I cannot be around you for fear you will finally see what is written across my heart. Because the pain of you is one I cannot bear. “I could not, not without betraying my true purposes to your father’s inner circle. They must think I am indifferent to you.”