Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga 3)

“Yes.” Radu smiled, though he did not quite know where he stood with this man. “He sends his greetings and asks that a priest join him in Tirgoviste to take over the cathedral.”

“Hmm. Well, come along with me to the monastery. We can offer you food and rest.” The monk turned back down the path. Radu walked by his side, the others falling in behind.

“Have you been to our island before?” the monk asked. “You seem familiar.”

“Not since I was a small boy.”

“Ah yes. I remember now. Your sister told me.”

“Lada has been here?”

“She came last autumn. In fact, look there—” The monk pointed to the spires of the church, nearly finished, with men on ropes clinging to the outside and hammering in shingles. “She donated the funds for the new building. She has been a good patron to us.”

Radu frowned, puzzled. The church was functional and elegant with dusty stone that would age in beauty the way all churches here did.

“You seem surprised,” the monk said.

“I never knew my sister to be particularly concerned with the welfare of her soul.”

The monk smiled slyly. “Are we not all? Besides, as she put it, our church is Wallachian and thus deserves more glory and trappings than other gods.”

“Ah, that makes more sense.” If it was done for Wallachia in competition with other countries, then Radu could understand Lada’s desire to improve the island. In fact, he was surprised she had not made the church much larger. And spikier. “What did you think of her?”

“She is singular. I have never encountered her like—though I have lived the last twenty years on this island, and we do not have many visitors. Still, while I was initially skeptical, reports from the countryside indicate that your sister is a leader of remarkable vision and strength.”

“Was,” Radu gently corrected.

“Oh?” The monk’s face twisted playfully. “Mircea!” he called out. Radu cringed involuntarily, hearing his cruel older brother’s name. But Mircea was dead, and his name common. One of the men working on the church turned his head. “Who is prince of Wallachia?” shouted the monk.

“Lada Dracul, may she spit ever in the faces of the Turks!”

The guards around Radu shifted uneasily, but none of the workers moved aggressively, or even paid them much mind.

“Does he not know a new prince has been crowned?” Radu asked. Maybe people had not returned to their towns because they were unaware.

The monk opened the church’s doors, the dim interior cool and inviting. “I think, my son, that he does not care.”

* * *

Lunch was fish with summer vegetables and rough bread. The monks were polite and kind, patiently disinterested in anything Radu had to say. And even less interested in taking a position in the capital.

“Perhaps check in one of the village churches,” the monk that had led him here suggested.

“Everyone is afraid to come to Tirgoviste,” Radu confessed, staring up at a mural of Christ. “Most are still hiding in the mountains. Those that have come down are much like your man on the roof. They do not care about the new prince. We cannot even begin to collect taxes. We are mostly just praying they plant fields so we will have a harvest.”

“It is a different country now. Your sister offered them change. They will not give it up easily.”

“But she is not even here.”

The monk lifted his hands as though offering evidence. “She is, though. As long as she is alive, so are the changes she wrought. The gates have been flung open, and the sheep have wandered. I suspect this Aron is not up to the task of shepherding them back in.”

Radu could not argue with that. He said nothing, and studiously avoided Nazira’s pointed look.

The monk stood. “Would you like us to do anything for you before you leave?”

Radu did not want to tell the monk that this religion had nothing he wanted any longer. They were good people—and he wished them all the best in living their faith—but it was only a childhood memory for him. He felt nothing for it, either good or ill. That, he supposed, was a blessing of sorts. It was nice to have something in Wallachia that he was neutral toward, something that caused no pain.

“Will you tell me if my sister visits again?” His own visit had given him the clarity that he was not only fighting his sister—he was fighting the very idea of her. And that was just as, if not more, elusive and difficult to target. Aron was not likely to inspire devotion or encourage a change of loyalties in anyone who had responded to his sister.