Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga 2)

“If I had known, I would have warned you all.” Even as he said it, Radu knew it was not true. He would have wanted to warn them. But he would not have gone against what Mehmed thought best.

Cyprian leaned forward as though he would grasp Radu’s shoulder. Then he sat back. “It is for the best you did not. It would have alerted the sultan to your disloyalty, and you would have died with us. No, it is better this way. I will mourn my companions, buoyed by the hope that you have brought us.”

The soup had turned sour in Radu’s stomach.

“AMBASSADORS ARE HERE. FROM Edirne.” Stefan had hardly finished speaking when Lada ran from their camp to the castle. Radu would be with them. She had a lot to speak with him about, and she anticipated with delight presenting Oana to him.

She pushed toward the throne room, trying to see over heads of others trying to get in. Two guards would not let her past. Hunyadi found her there, arguing with them.

“My brother will be with the ambassadors,” she said.

Hunyadi shook his head. “No, they are all Turkish. But they brought this.” He held a letter addressed to her. Unlike last time, he gave it to her unopened.

Lada clasped Hunyadi’s hand, trying to hide her disappointment and frustration. “It is from Radu. I asked his aid. If there is news of value, I will bring it to you.”

He nodded, smiling. “I know.”

She took the letter and retreated beneath the bridge, where the heavy weeping branches of willows cocooned her and she could pretend to be far from the poisonous castle. There were many reasons why Radu might not have come. He was ill. He was delayed. He was dead. Or he finally had what he wanted, and nothing could tempt him to leave.

Lada only marginally preferred the last option to his death.

She split the seal and opened the letter. It took her a moment to process that it was not from Radu, telling her whether he would join her in her quest for Wallachia.

It was from Mehmed.

Her face flushed as she read and then reread the first few lines, horrified.

I dream of her neck, slender and unadorned as the gazelle,

I long to see her tresses, draping a cloth between us and our nakedness,

Her breasts like smooth mirrors, her legs like slender reeds bent by the water,

At eventide she lightens the shadows, a lamp against the night,

And I will not forswear that fire nor the passion it alights in my body,

Swift and taut as an arrow at the ready, with her, my target.

“What has he shat out on this page?” Lada muttered, scowling at the words. Mehmed had tried to read her poetry before, and she always stopped him. It was a waste of words and breath. Who had ever looked with lust upon a gazelle? And her breasts had nothing like the mirror about them.

She skimmed the rest of the poem. When he had finally finished comparing her body to various objects and animals, he moved on to business.

I know you have not been successful in your attempts at the throne. I wish I could help. However, I have a proposition.

Lada scowled. He did not wish that he could help—he had very clearly demonstrated he wished no such thing. She braced herself for his suggestion that she return to him.

Do whatever you must to persuade Hunyadi to stay out of Constantinople, and I will be able to part with enough men to give you the strength you need to reclaim your throne. Send word back with my ambassadors. Once I have it, I will wait for you in the south of Transylvania, where it meets Serbia and Wallachia.

Lada dropped the letter in her lap. Whatever she had thought Mehmed might write, whatever sly attempts to lure her back or to remind her she had made the wrong choice, they were not there.

She did not know if that disappointed her. But she had found something she had not expected. Support. He wanted her to succeed. And he was offering her help.

Her way to the throne had opened up again. All she had to do was betray Hunyadi.

It was dark by the time Lada walked in a daze back to camp. Her men still lived outside, with no room for them in the barracks. It suited them fine, and it suited her as well. She preferred a tent to the stone prison of Hunedoara.

When she entered her tent, she found Oana sitting on the rug next to a lamp, mending in her lap. As a child, Lada had sometimes wondered if her nurse came with sewing supplies permanently attached. Lada collapsed onto her bedroll with a sigh. “What are you doing in here?” she asked Oana.