And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga 1)

Radu finally stopped struggling, glaring at her instead. Tears pooled in his big eyes. He was so pretty, this brother of hers. His was a face that made women stop in the lanes to coo at him. When he flashed his dimpled smile, the cook gave him extra servings of whatever he loved best. And when Lada saw him hurt, she wanted to protect him, which made her angry. He was weak, and protecting him felt like a weakness. Mircea certainly suffered no such weakness on her behalf.

She let go of Radu’s chin and rubbed the back of her head. Last month Mircea had yanked her hair so hard he had left a bald spot, which only now was starting to fill in. Girls should know their place, he had hissed.

Lada lifted her face to a ray of sunshine fighting its way through the leaves. This. This is my place. Her father had given it to her, and Wallachia would always be theirs.

Radu kicked at his scribblings in the dirt. “Not everyone wants the country to be ours.”

“Can we return to—” the tutor started, but Lada held up a hand, silencing him.

Dropping to a crouch, she picked up a round stone, one perfectly fitted to her palm. Balanced. Heavy. Spinning, she launched the stone through the air. A thud was followed by a sharp cry of anger, and then laughter. Bogdan stood from where he had been creeping along the ground, trying to sneak up on them.

“Try harder, Bogdan.” Lada’s sneer shifted into a smile. “Come sit. Radu is mangling Latin.”

“Radu is doing very well.” The tutor frowned at Bogdan. “And I am not employed to educate the son of a nursemaid.”

Lada stared down at him with all the cold, imperious command she was born to. “You are employed to do as you are told.”

The tutor, who was very fond of his straight, unblemished nose, sighed wearily and continued the lesson.

“Now in Hungarian,” Lada commanded Bogdan, her walk quick and assured down the hallway. Tirgoviste was set up like a great Byzantine city: castle in the middle, manors of the boyars circling it, dwellings of the artisans and performers who earned the patronage of the boyars circling that, and then, outside the massive stone walls, everyone else. Within the walls, homes were painted a dazzling array of reds and blues, yellows and greens. Riots of flowers and tinkling fountains competed for attention. But the stench of human waste lurked beneath everything, and the poor and sick masses seemed to creep ever closer to the inner city. Lada had even seen their shacks built against the wall itself.

Lada and Radu were not allowed to spend time in the outer rims of Tirgoviste. They were bundled and rushed through the streets whenever they left the city, catching only glimpses of ramshackle homes and suspicious, sunken eyes.

They lived in the castle, which, for all it tried, could not pretend at the splendor of Constantinople. It was dim, dark, narrow. The walls were thick, the windows slits, the hallways labyrinthine. The castle’s construction proved the pools and gardens and brightly clothed bodies were lies. Tirgoviste was no glittering Byzantium. Even Byzantium was no longer Byzantium. Like everything else this close to the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia had become a stomping ground for stronger armies, a pathway smashed by armored feet again and again and again.

Lada put her hand against the wall, feeling the cold that never quite left the stones. The castle was both the goal and the trap. She had never felt safe here. She knew from the snapping tone and tense demeanor of her father that he felt constantly threatened, too. She longed to live somewhere else, in the countryside, in the mountains, somewhere defensive where they could see their enemies coming for miles. Somewhere her father could relax and have time to speak with her.

Two Janissaries walked past. They were elite Ottoman soldiers, taken as young boys from other countries in the name of taxes, trained and groomed to serve the sultan and his god. Their ceremonial caps, bronze with flowing white flaps, bobbed as they laughed and talked, perfectly at ease. Her father insisted the castle was a symbol of power, but he refused to see the true symbolism of Tirgoviste. It did not give them power—it gave others power over them. They were trapped here, prisoners to the demands of the powerful boyar families. Worse, despite her father’s anointment to crusader by the pope, they were still a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire. Her father sacrificed money, lives, and his own honor to the Ottoman sultan, Murad, for the privilege of this throne.

Bogdan babbled on in the language of their Hungarian neighbors to the west, telling Lada about his day. She pushed into the grand hall, occasionally correcting his pronunciation. The two Janissaries were there, lounging against a wall. Lada spared them only a brief glare. They were like a rock in her slipper, constantly irritating.

Bulgaria and Serbia had similar arrangements with the sultan, paying money and boys to the Ottoman Empire in return for stability, while Hungary and Transylvania fought to avoid being vassals. The tension between borders demanded Vlad’s constant attention, forced him to leave for weeks on end, and gave him pains in his stomach that made him nasty and irritable.

Lada hated the Ottomans.

One of the Janissaries raised a thick eyebrow. Though he looked Bulgarian, maybe Serbian, he spoke Turkish. “Ugly thing, the girl. The prince will be lucky to find her a match. Or perhaps a nunnery with low standards.”

Lada continued as though she had not heard, but Bogdan stopped. He bristled. The soldier noted his understanding and stepped toward them in interest. “You speak Turkish?”

Lada grabbed Bogdan’s hand, answering with perfect pronunciation. “One must learn Turkish if one is to command the castle dogs.”

The soldier laughed. “You would be right at home with them, little bitch.”

Lada had her knife out before the soldier or his companion noticed. She was too short to reach the man’s neck, so she satisfied herself with a vicious slash across his arm. He shouted in pain and surprise, jumping back and fumbling with his sword.

Lada gestured, and Bogdan threw himself at the soldier’s legs, tripping him. Now that he was on the floor, his neck was an easy target. Lada pressed the knife beneath his chin, then looked up at the other soldier. He was a pale, lean man—almost a boy, really—with shrewd brown eyes. He had one hand on his sword, the long, curved blade favored by the Ottomans.

“Only a fool would attack the prince’s daughter in her own home. Two soldiers against a harmless girl.” Lada bared her teeth at him. “Very bad for treaties.”

The lean soldier took his hand off his sword and stepped back, his smile a perfect match to his weapon. He bowed, sweeping out an arm in deference.

Bogdan jumped up from the floor, trembling with rage. Lada shook her head at him. She should have left him out of this. Lada had a sense for power—the fine threads that connected everyone around her, the way those threads could be pulled, tightened, wrapped around someone until they cut off the blood supply.

Or snapped entirely.

She had few threads at her disposal. She wanted all of them. Bogdan had almost none, and what threads he did have were his simply by virtue of his being a boy. People already respected him more than they did his mother the nurse. It made Lada’s jaw ache, the ease with which life greeted Bogdan.

She jabbed her knife, poking the prone soldier once more for good measure, but not quite hard enough to break the skin. Then she stood straight, smoothing the front of her dress. “You are slaves,” she said. “There is nothing you can do to hurt me.”