“Sir,” Kiril said, inclining his head smartly, then walking at Radu’s side. Radu had promoted him to his second-in-command. “We have finished the last of the cleanup. What now?”
“We need to find my sister. Until we know where she is and what she is planning, we cannot accomplish anything here. No one will return to the capital if the threat of her wrath looms over it. But I cannot see any way for her to retake it with the numbers she has.” Radu had been alert and waiting for attacks, but nothing had happened. Lada had vanished and taken with her everyone and everything they needed to fight. “Just because I cannot see it, though, does not mean she cannot find a way. More likely, though, is that she will try to draw us into the mountains where she will have the advantage. I do not particularly want to stumble into any more welcomes she has designed.”
Radu avoided the castle door. He had no wish to go inside. Instead, he climbed a ladder to the wall that circled the castle. He leaned over the bulwark and looked out at the city. It was still nearly empty. It had been easy to house his men—they had an entire capital to choose from. “We should act less like Ottomans and more like Wallachians.”
“How do Wallachians act?” Kiril was Bulgarian by birth, but did not remember anything of his homeland. He had been with the Ottomans since he was five. He often joined Radu for prayer and meals. They had the easy understanding of two people who had decided to claim the home that had claimed them.
Radu leaned on his elbows, looking back at the castle. In the center of the courtyard, as a child, he had once watched Aron and Andrei be whipped for a crime they did not commit. One he had framed them for. “Wallachians are desperate. Sneaky. Vicious. Or at least, that is how my family line has always behaved. Find a small group of men—those with frontier experience, not city experience. Send them into the mountains for scouting only. The smaller the groups, the more luck they will have in discovering without being discovered. We need to know where Lada is, and where she is hiding the bulk of her forces. Once we have that information, we will be able to move forward. In the meantime, we coronate the new prince of Wallachia, Aron Danesti.”
“So we act as though the country is ours, when our enemies are still out there and everything is in turmoil?”
“Lada will be furious. She antagonized Mehmed—” Radu caught himself and corrected. “Antagonized the sultan to get him to meet her where she had the advantage. We will do the same. I do not count on her storming out of the mountains, but I also would not be surprised by it. She has a terrible temper when you take what she thinks is hers. And even if it does not bait her, it serves a purpose. Sometimes, the best way to achieve power is to pretend like you already have it. We coronate a new prince, and we begin ruling. The country will fall in line. Lada changed too much, too fast. Change is hard. It requires a tremendous amount of time and willingness to endure discomfort. Going with what one has always known is easy. Add that to the sheer destruction of Lada’s tactics and the suffering that will cause? Wallachia will choose us, because we are the way to survive.”
He hoped they would gladly accept a return to what had always been if it came with peace and stability. Even if, perhaps, they deserved more.
Much like he had returned to Mehmed again and again. He had finally decided that the lonely unknown was preferable to the lonely known. He would not go back to Mehmed. Not as he had before. He prayed that Wallachia had not been pushed so far that its citizens, too, would realize they deserved better than what they had always had.
Radu would do his best to improve the country for as long as he was here. But he could only do that if it was stable. And, for now, it could only be stable by resettling into its old shape.
Kiril nodded. “I think that is a good plan, sir. And—this may be out of place—but I am glad to serve under you. Doubtless you know the rumors of why you have command. But Mehmed does not give power out on whims or as favors. You deserve your place here, and I am honored to follow you. All your men are.”
Radu laughed. “That compliment is a bit like a rose. It comes with a lot of barbs and thorns.”
Kiril raised his hands, a flush of embarrassment covering his cheeks.
Radu put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “No, no, I understand. And thank you. Your con
fidence in me means more than you can know. I will always try to do right by my brothers.”
Radu excused Kiril with one last warm smile. It was a good plan. He would put on a show of power. Boyars would flock to him as the only safe option. And, if he was lucky, Lada would be so angry at being replaced as prince that she would come down to meet them where they had the advantage. Funny that after so many years of doing everything he could to avoid her ire, he was now in a position of using all that history against her.
* * *
Radu had to ride out of the city quite some distance to answer Aron’s summons. He had wrongfully assumed the Danesti brothers had taken their family manor. He had been too busy to notice that they had not, in fact, settled in Tirgoviste.
Aron and Andrei had a few hundred men of their own that had been with them since the siege at Constantinople. The men’s camp was disorderly, bordering on slovenly. Radu rode through it with a critical eye. He would not have tolerated such lack of discipline among his men. No one in the Ottoman Empire would.
Aron was waiting for him, pacing impatiently inside his tent. Andrei sat in a chair, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. “Here you are,” Aron said. “It took you long enough to get here.”
Radu opened his mouth to apologize, but cut the words off before they could escape. He owed them no such thing. “I was unaware you had not relocated to Tirgoviste. When will you?”
“We cannot live there!” Aron stopped pacing, horrified. “It is unhealthy. We would catch our deaths.”
Radu lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think being impaled is contagious?”
Andrei gave him a darkly wry look. “Your sister is still free.”
He had a point. “Fair enough. But it is important that we consolidate. You are vulnerable out here.”
Aron had begun moving again. “We are going to our family’s countryside estate. We need your men to go ahead and make certain it is safe.”
They had not invited Radu to sit. He clasped his hands behind his back. “I do not think that is wise.”
Aron stopped, frowning. “Why?”
“I doubt the Danesti family estate is fortified. If Lada found out you were there, you would be slaughtered.”
“We will have your men as well.”