“But how?”
“We need a little time. We have information, which means we have power. We must think of—” She stopped, narrowing her eyes at something in the distance.
A man rode down the main street, surrounded by soldiers. As the man got closer, Radu saw that he smiled, one hand uplifted in a gesture of friendship. His men, grim and hardened, with hands hovering near their swords, promised something else entirely. Several flags Radu did not recognize hung limply from poles carried at the group’s rear. “Who is he?”
“Hunyadi,” Lada said, the name dropping from her lips like a curse.
They watched from the tower and, though Radu knew he was supposed to hate Hunyadi, he found himself in awe. Hunyadi rode into another man’s kingdom and the people he passed smiled and bowed. When Radu’s father was on horseback, he rode hunched over and leaning forward. Whether to arrive faster or to make himself a smaller target, Radu did not know. Hunyadi sat straight in his saddle, shoulders back, chest presented to the world in defiance of assassins’ arrows.
“We are too late,” Lada said. “All your information is worthless now.”
Radu’s eyelids felt heavy with shame. He had never managed to be useful to his father, and now, because of his cowardice and delay, he had failed once again.
Lada turned toward the door. “Well, we may as well see what doom the Transylvanian terror brings with him.”
Radu tripped over his own feet in his haste to keep up with Lada as she threw herself down the tower steps and into the great hall before Hunyadi arrived. She paused at the entrance and Radu slipped past her, finding a dim corner where he often stood unobserved. She elbowed him sharply in the side, and he made room for her.
A few minutes later, their father rushed in. His hat was askew, his mustache so recently curled Radu could still smell the oil. He sat down on his ornate throne, fixing his hat and breathing heavily.
He was sweating.
In that moment, Radu knew his father was no longer in control of Wallachia. Perhaps he never had been. The stinging taste of his father’s perfumed oil was heavy on Radu’s tongue as John Hunyadi strode confidently into the room.
“He is magnificent,” Radu whispered.
“He is the end of us,” Lada answered.
When his father pulled him out of bed, Radu was certain he was dreaming. He dressed in a sleepy, candlelit haze, his father’s murmured, anxious words washing over him. He knew it was a dream because his father had never been in his room before, had never helped him dress or asked if he would be warm enough. Radu was twelve, he was old enough to dress himself, but he let his father help.
He would not puncture this dream, not willingly.
It was not until they were outside in the sharp night air and Mircea arrived, leading horses, that panic set in. He and Lada were lifted onto saddles, though they could mount by themselves. Several Janissaries waited nearby, their horses huffing soft white clouds of breath.
“Where are we going?” Radu whispered. No one had told him to be silent, but a blanket of stealth and threat hung over them all and he did not want to disrupt it.
No one answered.
The horses moved forward, a cart loaded with supplies in the middle of the party and Janissaries surrounding them. Radu looked over his shoulder to see Mircea standing with a torch, watching them leave. Staying behind. Smiling.
Radu shivered. He had not been frightened until he saw the look of triumph on Mircea’s face. Nothing that made his older brother look that happy could be good.
As his wariness abated, Radu dozed on and off in his saddle, startling awake several times when he nearly slid off. One of the times a hand steadied him, and he found Lazar next to him, holding the reins of Radu’s horse and his own. Comforted, Radu snuggled deeper into his cloak and was lost to the lullaby of hooves and the whisper of leather.
They made camp well after the sun had risen. Their party was small. Several Janissaries, a few servants, a driver for the supply cart, Lada, and their father.
Radu rubbed his sore neck, then realized with a start that his nurse was not with them.
“Lada!” He tugged on her sleeve, interrupting her ferocious attempt to braid her hair. “They forgot Nurse!”
She glared at him, eyes red and tight with exhaustion. She watched the camp around them warily, tracking the movements of the soldiers. “She is not coming.”
Radu swallowed hard against the painful lump in his throat. He had never been a day without his nurse. Here with his father, but not his nurse? He had the same sensation as when he had been out on the ice and felt it shifting beneath him, threatening to plunge him into frozen terror. “But how long will we be gone?”
Lada strode past him, ripping her bundle of possessions out of Lazar’s arms. “That is mine,” she snapped. “Never touch my things.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, toward their father’s tent.
Lazar made an exaggerated bow, then winked at Radu. “Charming girl, your sister.”
Radu’s mouth formed a smile for the first time all day. “You should see her when she has had enough sleep.”