Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga 2)

As soon as they were far enough into the garden, Radu turned to Cyprian. “We want to leave.”

“What?”

“Right now. We cannot pretend to support Mehmed anymore. His father kidnapped me, tortured me, stole my entire childhood. I cannot stand by and watch as Mehmed takes Constantinople the same way.”

Cyprian wilted. “So he does mean to attack.”

“As soon as he is ready. Can you get us to the city, to the emperor? I will do whatever I can. I grew up with Mehmed and served him; I am familiar with his true temperament and many of his plans. I can help you.”

Cyprian nodded. Mehmed had been right. Cyprian must have planned to try to get information from Radu. Why else would he be so quick to trust them? “We should leave right now,” he said.

“We are ready.” Radu pulled his and Nazira’s traveling bags from behind a stone bench.

“She is coming?” Cyprian’s surprise was confirmation of what Nazira had said. No one turning spy would risk the life of an innocent woman. Please, Radu prayed, please let Nazira come through this safely. It was one thing to gamble with his own life for Mehmed’s cause. He felt sick knowing he was also risking Nazira’s.

“Radu is my husband.” Nazira gripped his hand. Some of Radu’s fear was soothed. It was selfish to draw any amount of happiness from her sa

crifice, but he could not help it. “Where he goes, I go.”

“Very well.” They followed Cyprian to the guest stables, where he found one of the ambassadors’ servant boys. The boy was small, with intelligent eyes and black hair thick and tangled like thatch. After a quick, whispered conversation, the boy saddled three horses.

Though Radu knew perfectly well they would not be followed, Cyprian’s paranoia was contagious. Radu found himself glancing over his shoulder as they rode through the city. His last view as they crested the hill outside Edirne was the same as the first he had ever had of the empire. Spires and minarets were black points against the starlit sky.

He bid them a silent farewell, praying that they would watch over the city in his absence.

LADA WAS NOT CERTAIN which was more surprising: that she had been invited to one of Hunyadi’s inner-circle councils, or that his son Matthias had not.

Hunyadi sat at the head of the table, with several similarly grizzled men around him. At the opposite end of the table sat two priests. The seat next to Hunyadi was empty. He stood and gestured for Lada to sit there. The sting of invisibility that had plagued her in the week since swearing her loyalty disappeared as she sat at Hunyadi’s right hand. As soon as she was settled, he leaned forward, slamming a fist against the table.

“Constantinople!” he roared. “Once again it faces a threat. Perhaps the greatest threat it has ever known. We cannot let the heart of Christendom, Rome of old, fall to the infidels. If Constantinople succumbs to the Muslim plague, what is to stop them from spreading over the whole world?”

One of the priests nodded vehemently. The other remained impassive. A few of the men were engaged, but several leaned away from the table as though distancing themselves from the topic.

“What are you suggesting?” the excited priest asked.

“We crusade, as we have before. We gather the righteous until we swell around the walls like God’s own wave, to forever drown the infidel threat.”

The other priest smiled drily. “I believe the last successful Christian crusade actually sacked Constantinople.”

Hunyadi huffed, waving away the words with his hands. “Italians. They have no honor. If we let the Muslims take Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Christendom, what is next? Transylvania? Hungary? Long have we stood between Islam’s expansion and the rest of Europe. As defenders of Christ, we cannot ignore the plight of Constantinople.”

Lada watched, trying to figure out Hunyadi’s angle. The Ottoman Empire already surrounded Constantinople. If the city fell, it gave them a virtually impregnable capital, but it did not move them any closer to Hungary or the rest of Europe. The threat was merely spiritual, not physical. It would be demoralizing to lose the great city, but not damaging. At least not to Hungary.

“You have led us against a sultan before,” said one of the men, his head shiny and bald, but his beard still dark. “We fought with you at Varna. We lost. We lost our king. Hungary still suffers the consequences and will continue to until the crown is once again stable. Why would we risk that again for Constantinople?”

“It is not about Hungary. It is about Christianity. Have you heard of the priest who led peasants—ordinary peasants!—against the Ottomans? They drove them back with the ferocity of their faith! They won a decisive and shocking victory, because Christ was on their side.”

“Yes,” the bald man said, rubbing his face wearily. “And then the priest caught the plague and most of the peasants froze to death.”

Lada watched as Hunyadi tugged on his beard, trying to impose his intensity on the other men. He had no angle, she realized. There was no political advantage for him, personally, at Constantinople. If anything, he stood to lose all he had worked so hard to build here for himself and his son.

Listening to him talk and argue, Lada could not help but be stirred. He was passionate and charming, utterly adamant in his belief that defending Constantinople was the right thing to do. She weighed it against Mehmed’s fervent desire for the city. She knew others thought he did it for gain—even his own men wanted the city only for the rumored riches—but that was not what moved Mehmed. Mehmed felt the weight of prophecy and the burden of his god on his shoulders. That would not disappear until he took the city or died trying.

Lada wondered how the world could survive with men such as Mehmed and Hunyadi on opposite sides. Or perhaps that was how it did survive. If they served the same purpose, she could not imagine any nation not falling before their combined might.

Each god, Christian and Muslim, had champions, keeping the other at bay.

Whose side would she fall on? Could she join Hunyadi?