And after her betrayal of Mehmed and her own father’s betrayal of her, Lada had done everything she could to help him.
“The little zealot surprised us all.” Nicolae raised his drink, his cheek distorted by the livid scar when he smiled. “Those of us in the right flank under his command suffered the fewest casualties. He knew his part, and he played it well. Better even than our father the sultan.”
Lada hid her traitorous smile behind her heavy mug. “Careful, Nicolae. That sounded almost like praise.”
“I will be damned if I ever call him father, but your Mehmed may yet make a decent sultan. Until he bleeds us all out against the walls of Constantinople.”
Relieved and buoyed by news of Mehmed’s triumph, Lada relaxed into her seat, enjoying Nicolae’s tales of the campaign and exaggerated stories of mayhem, gore, and personal heroics. They were joined by several other Janissaries who were not devout and loved to imbibe, each settling into the dim space. Soon the room was packed shoulder to shoulder, everyone silly with drink and post-travel lethargy.
“But you still have not told me how you finally got two eyebrows,” she said, after a comic reenactment of Nicolae’s struggles to pull his sword out of a Hungarian soldier’s stubborn ribs before a screaming Transylvanian reached him.
“Oh, that. I ran afoul of the camp seamstress.” Nicolae gestured to his groin. “She always has to adjust the standard uniform to account for my massive manhood, and she finally tired of all the extra material required. Her shears are very sharp.”
The room roared with laughter. Lada rolled her eyes, glad it was dim enough to hide her blush of discomfort. Though she usually avoided this talk with the men, worrying what it might encourage, she had missed them too much to let them exclude her from their bawdy jokes. She sniffed derisively. “More likely she mistook your manhood for one of her delicate needles.”
She got a louder laugh than Nicolae had, along with several slaps on her shoulders. She leaned back, stretching out and taking up space the way the men around her did, and grinned at her friend.
“I could show it to you, if you like.” Nicolae held his arms out wide. “Are you prone to fainting?”
“My eyesight is quite poor. We would need some sort of lens for me to be able to see something so small.”
Several soldiers banged on the table, and one fell off his chair, either from drunkenness or laughing so hard. Ivan, who had disliked Lada since the day she bested him when she first met Nicolae, leaned forward. “But some things are not so small in here.” He reached out and grabbed Lada’s left breast, squeezing painfully.
Before she could react, Nicolae spun Ivan away, slammed his head against the table, and threw him to the ground. Grinding Ivan’s face into the hard-packed dirt floor, Nicolae growled, “Lada is one of us. And we do not treat our own that way. Understand?”
Ivan groaned his assent. Nicolae sat down again, easy smile back in place, but a weighted silence had poisoned the atmosphere. This had never happened to Lada before, but she suspected she had Nicolae to thank for that. How long had he been deflecting things like this? How much had been said when she could not hear it? Nicolae’s defense had proved the exact opposite of his claim that she was one of them. She felt it, like a curdled m
eal threatening to come back up out of her stomach: the knowledge that she could never be their equal. She would always be separate.
Ivan’s glare as he pushed himself off the floor promised a future of violence.
She met his stare with an unflinching one of her own.
RADU WAITED, BREATHLESS WITH excitement as he watched the caravan approach the keep. There was a fine carriage in the center, with twenty Janissaries and a couple of mounted eunuchs, which Radu thought odd. However, the presence of the eunuchs was explained when the carriage opened to reveal a different member of the sultan’s family than the one Radu was desperate to be reunited with.
Huma stepped out, distaste written across her features as she took in Amasya clinging to the river beneath them. The sight of her after two years—knowing what their last meeting had been about—filled Radu with fear.
“Radu! Look how you have grown.” She held out her arms and Radu took her hands in his, unsure of how to greet her.
“You look well.”
She laughed, the sound low and itching, like a breath full of smoke. “Appearances are deceiving. He is not with me, so you can stop watching over my shoulder.”
Radu gave a false smile. “What brings you to Amasya, if not returning with Mehmed?” He wanted nothing more than to ask her when Mehmed would be returning, what the delay was. But he felt it important to appear calm.
“I am here on family matters.”
“But…Mehmed is still in Edirne? What family matters do you have here without him?”
Huma watched his face for a few heartbeats and then laughed again. “You really do not know much about my son’s life, do you? Sweet boy.” She patted his cheek, her hand dry and soft. “Come, take me inside. We will catch up. Call for your charming sister so we can reunite our happy band.”
“She will be with the Janissaries. Since they returned, I have hardly seen her.”
Huma made an interested sound in the back of her throat but said nothing. After she was settled in one of the keep’s nicest apartments, Radu went to find Lada. He could have sent for her, but he did not want to stay in Huma’s company alone. The secret between Lada and himself felt like a burden but still a bond. With Huma here, it felt like a threat.
The Janissaries who had arrived with Huma were unloading gear. “Can you show us the barracks?” one asked.
“I am going there now. You can follow.” He turned to gesture to the soldier, then froze, trying to place how he knew him. The man’s face was round, with full lips over gapped teeth; it promised a heaviness that was at odds with his long limbs and slim build. He looked much younger than Radu had remembered, now that Radu was nearly as tall as him. “Lazar!”