Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga 2)

Constantine rubbed his face wearily. “Tell me why you are here.”

Halil threw a single piece of parchment on the table next to him. “Mehmed offers you terms of surrender. I will await your response.” Leveling a murderous glare at Radu, Halil stomped out of the room.

Constantine read the letter, scratching absently at his beard. Droplets of blood broke through the skin. “He will let me go into the Peloponnese and be a governor there.”

“We have wanted you to leave the city,” Giustiniani said gently. “We need you safe, and then we can gather allies.”

Constantine sighed. “If I leave the city, I am never getting back in. I cannot do it. But…” He paused, tracing a finger over the bottom half of the letter. “If we open the gates, they will march through peacefully, leaving all citizens and property unmolested.” He looked up at Radu. “Do you think he will honor that?”

“He will.” Radu felt the first true spark of hope in ages. He had been right not to kill Constantine! Another way to end this siege had been given to him. “It is Muslim law. If you surrender, they have to respect that. There will be no prisoners, no slaves, no looting.”

Giustiniani scoffed. “I doubt that very much.”

“You have seen the order of his camp, the control he has over his men. He wants the city itself, not anything in it. He does not want to destroy it—he wants to own it. I will stake my life on his truthfulness in this matter. He will honor these terms. All your people will be spared.”

“And the Christian capital of the world will be handed over to their god.”

Radu chose his next words carefully. “If they take the city by force, they have three days for looting and doing anything else they wish. But if you surrender, the Ottomans treat their vassal states well. We would all have to run or risk death, but your people would not suffer under the sultan’s rule.”

Constantine’s smile was as brittle as spring ice on a river. “The same cannot be said for my rule. How my people have suffered. How my city has darkened.” He looked at Cyprian, fondness in his expression. “What is your counsel, nephew?”

Today Cyprian’s eyes were not gray like the sea or the clouds. They were gray like the ancient, weary rocks of the city. Radu knew that the nameless child dead in the streets had come into the room with them. “We have lost so much. Perhaps this is a way to avoid losing everything. Our people would not be slaughtered or sold into slavery. You would live.” He put a hand on his uncle’s shoulder, his voice breaking. “I want you to live.”

Constantine looked to Giustiniani, the other reason the city had survived for as long as it had. “You?”

Giustiniani shook his head. “If Halil is right, all we need to do is hold on for a little longer and Mehmed will be forced to leave. He may even lose the throne.” After a pause, Giustiniani looked at the floor. “But I cannot promise we can hold on for even a day more. We have fewer than half of the forces we started with. The men are hungry and weary and frightened. The Venetians want to leave. My men do, too. I will not let them, but it may come to a point where I can no longer prevent them. With one victory, they could topple us—or with one victory, we could have enough momentum to sustain ourselves. We are balanced on the edge of a knife. I do not know whom the knife will cut. The choice is yours.”

Constantine sat, his broad shoulders sloping as he picked up a quill and stroked the length of it. “I cannot do it,” he said. Radu leaned heavily against the wall, all hope extinguished. “I will send Halil with an offer of peace. We will increase our tribute, and give the sultan the land under the Rumeli Hisari. We will give him Orhan, too, and abandon all attempts at destabilizing his throne.”

Constantine was willing to sacrifice Orhan, a man he had used to manipulate the Ottomans for decades, even though Orhan had chosen to stay and fight. He would sacrifice Orhan, but not his pride. Not his throne. Radu shook his head, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “Mehmed will not accept.”

“I know. But I cannot abandon my city. I am sorry, my friends. I will fight until my last breath before I will see Ottoman flags in this palace and hear their call to prayer from the Hagia Sophia. It is in God’s hands now.”

But which god? Radu thought. With so many men on both sides sending up so many prayers, how could any god sift through the noise?

That night, the air was sweet with the promise of summer around the corner. The wind had blown strong from the horn, clearing the smoke from the city for once. Radu and Cyprian sat on the Blachernae Palace wall, facing the Hagia Sophia. Though they had not discussed it, neither man had gone to his scheduled position at the wall after leaving Constantine. They had ended up out here, silent, side by side.

It was almost quiet enough to pretend the world was not ending around them.

“The moon begins waning tonight,” Cyprian said.

Radu remembered the prophecy that the city could not be taken on a waxing moon. “Do you believe in that one?”

“I believe in very little these days.”

Radu looked toward the Hagia Sophia, where the full moon would rise over the city. A full circle of gold, like their coins, the moon was a protector of the city along with the Virgin Mary. Would the waning finally shift the tide of war?

Next to him, Cyprian sat up straight, a sharp intake of breath like a hiss puncturing the quiet of the night. In place of the full moon rising over the Hagia Sophia, there was only a sliver of a crescent moon.

The crescent moon of Islam.

“How is this possibl

e?” Cyprian whispered.

Radu shook his head in disbelief. The moon was full tonight—had to be full tonight. But slowly lifting itself above the city’s holiest building, the moon remained a crescent. The dark part was not as dark as normal, but rather a deep red. Stained like blood.

For hours Radu and Cyprian watched as the crescent moon hung over the city, promising an end to everything. Wails and cries from the streets drifted on the sweet breeze. For once the church bells did not ring warning. What could bells do against the moon? Finally, agonizingly slowly, the moon returned to the fullness it should have had all along.