“Your party attendance is more complicated than I thought, then.”
Radu gritted his teeth. “Much.”
“Well, you are very fortunate you married so well.” Nazira put a hand on his arm and steered him onto the walkway. “Tell me about him.”
“His name is Suleiman, and he is the newly promoted admiral of the navy.”
Nazira laughed. “This will be easy.”
She danced effortlessly from group to group with a coy smile and a word of greeting for all. Radu was on the fringes of these parties lately, a contrast to when he had been a shining focal point. But with Nazira on his arm, more people were willing to stop for a moment of conversation. He craned his neck for a view of Suleiman. Nazira pinched his arm, hard.
“Patience,” she whispered.
After several more stops to chat with the uncle of her deceased father’s best friend, the cousin of Kumal’s deceased wife, and any number of other people Nazira treated with delight and deference regardless of their place in the Ottoman social hierarchy, they plowed directly into Suleiman. Somehow Nazira had managed to turn and walk so that Radu knocked the man over.
“Oh!” Nazira squeaked, putting her hands over her veiled mouth. “I am so sorry!”
Radu held out a hand to help the man up. They had never met before, but Suleiman’s eyes lingered on the boat-shaped gold pin on Radu’s cloak. “Please forgive me.”
“Of course.” Suleiman bowed. “I am Suleiman Baltoghlu.”
Radu bowed as well. “Radu.”
“Radu …?” Suleiman paused expectantly.
“Simply Radu.” Radu’s smile was tight. Lada had left him behind under the mantle of the Draculesti family. But Radu had rejected his father’s name. He would not take it up again, ever. “This is my wife, Nazira.”
Suleiman took her hand, bowing even deeper. “They make wives prettier in Edirne than they do in Bursa.”
Nazira beamed. “That is because the wind blows too hard in harbor cities. The poor women there have to expend all their energy merely staying upright. There is no time left for being pretty.”
Suleiman laughed, a loud burst of sound that drew attention. But the attention was focused on him and Nazira, not on him and Radu.
“Tell me, what do you do in Bursa?” she asked.
“I am an admiral.”
“Boats! Oh, I adore boats. Look, did you see?” Nazira pointed to the collection of delicate boats bobbing in the river. They were carved in fanciful shapes. One had a prow like the head of a frog, and its oars had webbed feet carved into their ends. Another looked like a war galley, tiny decorative oars sticking out both its sides. “Radu is afraid if we take a boat out, he will not make it back to shore. But surely if we had an admiral with us …” Nazira looked up at Suleiman through her thick eyelashes.
“I am at your service.” Suleiman followed them to the dock, helping Nazira into a boat carved like a heron. A head on a slender neck pointed their way forward, and silk wings extended on either side. The tail was a canopy arching overhead to protect passengers from the sun, though it was not quite warm enough to be necessary.
“This is lovely!” Nazira sighed happily, leaning over to trail one hand in the water. Radu was not quite so pleased—he hated boats—but he shared a secret smile with Nazira. She had done his job for him.
Suleiman took the oars. Radu sat gingerly in the back of the small boat.
“I am going to chatter very brightly, waving my hands a lot,” Nazira said as they pulled away from the shore, and away from any prying ears. “In fact, I am going to talk the whole time, and you two will be unable to get a word in edgewise.”
She continued her one-sided conversation—a silent one. Her head bobbed up and down, she laughed, and her hands punctuated imaginary sentences. Any onlookers would see her entertaining Suleiman while Radu tried his best to keep his stomach.
“How soon can you build the new galleys?” Radu muttered, clutching the sides of the boat.
Suleiman shrugged like he was trying to loosen up his shoulders for rowing. “We can build ships as fast as he can fund them.”
“No one can know how many ships we really have.”
“We will build a few galleys in Bursa for show, so it looks like I am doing something. The rest will be built in secret, in a private shipyard along the Dardanelles. But I still need men. We can have all the ships in the world, but without trained sailors, they will be as much use as the boat we are in now.”
“How can we train that many men in secret?” Someone would notice if they conscripted men for a navy. A few new boats could be attributed to a foolish whim of an immature sultan. An armada, complete with the men to sail it, was another thing entirely.
“Give me the funds to hire Greek sailors, and I will give him the finest navy in the world,” Suleiman said.
“It will be done.” Radu leaned over the side, barely avoiding heaving.
Suleiman laughed at some new pantomime of Nazira’s. “Whatever you do, keep this one around. She is truly a treasure.”
This time Nazira’s laugh was real. “I am.”
Radu did not have to feign relief when Suleiman finished their loop around the island and pulled them back to the dock. He stumbled onto it, grateful for the solid wood beneath his feet.
“Your husband has a weak stomach,” Suleiman said as he helped Nazira out of the boat.
“Yes. It is a good thing he is so handsome.” Nazira patted Radu’s cheek, then waved prettily at Suleiman. “Our navy is in most capable hands!”
Suleiman laughed wryly. “My little bird boats will be the terror of the seas!” He bowed theatrically, then strode away.
“Thank you,” Radu said, letting Nazira take him back through the party, then into a secluded corner. They sat on a bench with their backs to the bathhouse wall. “That was brilliant.”
“Yes, I am. Now tell me what is really going on.”
“I am— We are— This is very secret.”
Nazira rolled her eyes, exasperated.
“I am helping Mehmed with his plans to take Constantinople. We have to work in secret so that Halil Pasha—” Radu paused, grimacing. Halil’s new title always tasted foul on his tongue. Why had he insisted Halil be elevated from a pasha to a vizier? “So that he does not discover our plans with enough time to sabotage them. We know he is still in league with Emperor Constantine. My elimination from Mehmed’s inner circle was deliberate. I need to appear unimportant; that way, I can organize things Mehmed cannot be seen to care about, like the navy. Everything we do in public is to divert attention from his true goals. Even this party is a farce, to show that Mehmed is frivolous and cares only about Edirne. Why would he invest so much money in a palace if he intends to make his capital elsewhere?”
“But if everything you are doing is in secret, could you not do all that and still be one of his advisors?”
“My actions would draw too much attention if I were constantly at Mehmed’s side.”
“Not if it were widely known that you were merely his friend. Sultans can have close friends who are not necessarily important, but are merely beloved.” Nazira looked down, her expression pained but determined. “Do you never wonder if, perhaps … Mehmed understands more than you think he does? And this separation is not so much a strategy as a kindness?”
Radu stood so quickly he nearly lost his balance. “No.”
“He is not a fool. If I saw in one evening how you felt, surely he has seen the same over the years you have spent together.”
Radu put a hand up, wishing he could make Nazira swallow the words so they had never been spoken. If Mehmed truly understood how he felt, then … It was too much to think about. There were too many questions that had no answers Radu wanted.
“Maybe your sister was wise to leave. She realized a sultan could never give her what she needed.”
Mehmed’s plan made sense. It was the only path. That was why Mehmed had chosen it. “I am staying because my life is here,” Radu said. “Lada left because she wanted the throne, and she got it.”
Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he had not pushed Lada to abandon them last year. Because he had chosen that, too. Chosen to say exactly what she needed to hear to decide to leave Mehmed—and Radu. It had been a dark, desperate move. A move he thought would bring him closer to Mehmed. Radu held back a bitter laugh.