Radu huddled close to the fire, grateful for the heat and for Nazira’s skills. “And all this time I thought you were merely decorative.”
Cyprian gave a small laugh, while Radu and Nazira traded a secret smile over how true her decorative role actually was. It was good to hear Cyprian laugh. He had understandably been in a pall since receiving news of the murders.
Assassinations, Radu corrected himself. Political, not personal. That made them assassinations, not murders. Which he found easier to stomach, though neither was pleasant.
“How much farther to the city?” Radu asked.
“We should be there tomorrow.” They had taken a wandering route, fueled by the servant Valentin’s terror and Cyprian’s fear of pursuit. Radu and Nazira could not very well assure their traveling companions that Mehmed wanted them all to arrive safely, so they toiled along little-used roads and through backcountry.
Nazira dished out soup and then settled in next to Radu.
“You even remembered spices?” Radu said. The soup was deliciously hot on his tongue.
“You married extremely well, Radu.” She leaned against his free arm. Radu looked up to see Cyprian watching them with a forlorn, wistful expression.
Nazira noticed it, too. “Are you married, Cyprian?”
He shook his head as though coming out of a daze and looked down at his bowl. “No.”
“I wondered if you were going home to a wife. Did you grow up in Constantinople?”
He nodded, soaking the now-stale flatbread in the soup to soften it.
Nazira continued asking questions, pumping Cyprian for information. Radu was both proud of her and sad that it was necessary. “Do you have family there still?”
“Yes. Sort of.” Cyprian’s smile twisted and did not touch his eyes. “My father is Demetrios.”
“The despot?” Radu asked, surprised. Constantine’s two brothers, Demetrios and Thomas, ruled other areas in the Peloponnese. They were often at odds with each other, enemies as frequently as they were allies. Radu could not understand why one of them would allow his son to be an ambassador. It was a job of dubious prestige, thankless and, frankly, dangerous. Ambassadors were as likely to be killed by foreign courts as their own if they brought back undesirable reports.
Cyprian nodded. “I am, unfortunately, a bastard. My mother was his mistress. So I am not as valuable as his legitimate sons. Constantine took me in and gave me a position in his court as a favor to my mother.”
“Was she from Cyprus?” Nazira asked.
Cyprian’s expression softened. “She named me after her island. She always said I was her home wherever she was.”
Nazira sighed prettily. “I like her very much already. Have you ever been to Cyprus? I hear it is beautiful.”
“No. My mother died four years ago. I have meant to go and see her birthplace, but Constantine’s need has been greater than my whims.”
“Is he so demanding, this uncle emperor of yours?” Nazira’s tone was light and teasing. Radu leaned back, wondering how else Nazira would prove he had drastically underestimated her.
Cyprian laughed. “No. That is what keeps me at his side. I would fear for my soul if I had it in me to repay all his kindness by abandoning him in his time of greatest need.” His expression turned dark once again. “I worry for how he will mourn if news of the ambassadors’ deaths reaches him before we do. He will think me murdered, and will blame himself. It was not his fault. I requested to go.”
Radu frowned. “Why would you do that?”
Cyprian took a moment to drain his soup, looking into the bowl like he could make more appear. “I liked my first visit. Edirne seemed to me very beautiful and … intriguing. I did not anticipate how things would have changed.” He looked back up, another attempt at a smile moving his lips but not changing the sad shape of his eyes. “Besides, I had taken all that time to learn Turkish. It seemed a pity to waste it.”
“If I had known, I would have warned you all.” Even as he said it, Radu knew it was not true. He would have wanted to warn them. But he would not have gone against what Mehmed thought best.
Cyprian leaned forward as though he would grasp Radu’s shoulder. Then he sat back. “It is for the best you did not. It would have alerted the sultan to your disloyalty, and you would have died with us. No, it is better this way. I will mourn my companions, buoyed by the hope that you have brought us.”
The soup had turned sour in Radu’s stomach.
16
Early March
“AMBASSADORS ARE HERE. From Edirne.” Stefan had hardly finished speaking when Lada ran from their camp to the castle. Radu would be with them. She had a lot to speak with him about, and she anticipated with delight presenting Oana to him.
She pushed toward the throne room, trying to see over heads of others trying to get in. Two guards would not let her past. Hunyadi found her there, arguing with them.
“My brother will be with the ambassadors,” she said.
Hunyadi shook his head. “No, they are all Turkish. But they brought this.” He held a letter addressed to her. Unlike last time, he gave it to her unopened.
Lada clasped Hunyadi’s hand, trying to hide her disappointment and frustration. “It is from Radu. I asked his aid. If there is news of value, I will bring it to you.”
He nodded, smiling. “I know.”
She took the letter and retreated beneath the bridge, where the heavy weeping branches of willows cocooned her and she could pretend to be far from the poisonous castle. There were many reasons why Radu might not have come. He was ill. He was delayed. He was dead. Or he finally had what he wanted, and nothing could tempt him to leave.
Lada only marginally preferred the last option to his death.
She split the seal and opened the letter. It took her a moment to process that it was not from Radu, telling her whether he would join her in her quest for Wallachia.
It was from Mehmed.
Her face flushed as she read and then reread the first few lines, horrified.
I dream of her neck, slender and unadorned as the gazelle,
I long to see her tresses, draping a cloth between us and our nakedness,
Her breasts like smooth mirrors, her legs like slender reeds bent by the water,
At eventide she lightens the shadows, a lamp against the night,
And I will not forswear that fire nor the passion it alights in my body,
Swift and taut as an arrow at the ready, with her, my target.
“What has he shat out on this page?” Lada muttered, scowling at the words. Mehmed had tried to read her poetry before, and she always stopped him. It was a waste of words and breath. Who had ever looked with lust upon a gazelle? And her breasts had nothing like the mirror about them.
She skimmed the rest of the poem. When he had finally finished comparing her body to various objects and animals, he moved on to business.
I know you have not been successful in your attempts at the throne. I wish I could help. However, I have a proposition.
Lada scowled. He did not wish that he could help—he had very clearly demonstrated he wished no such thing. She braced herself for his suggestion that she return to him.
Do whatever you must to persuade Hunyadi to stay out of Constantinople, and I will be able to part with enough men to give you the strength you need to reclaim your throne. Send word back with my ambassadors. Once I have it, I will wait for you in the south of Transylvania, where it meets Serbia and Wallachia.
Lada dropped the letter in her lap. Whatever she had thought Mehmed might write, whatever sly attempts to lure her back or to remind her she had made the wrong choice, they were not there.
She did not know if that disappointed her. But she had found something she had not expected. Support. He wanted her to succeed. And he was offering her help.
Her way to the throne had opened up again. All she had to do was betray Hunyadi.
It was dark by the time Lada walked in a daze back to camp. Her men still lived outside, with no room for them in the barracks. It suited them fine, and it suited her as well. She preferred a tent to the stone prison of Hunedoara.
When she entered her tent, she found Oana sitting on the rug next to a lamp, mending in her lap. As a child, Lada had sometimes wondered if her nurse came with sewing supplies permanently attached. Lada collapsed onto her bedroll with a sigh. “What are you doing in here?” she asked Oana.