No garden could survive the introduction of a snake. Everything would be lost, would then belong to the snake forever.
Lada knew more now, of course, from the rude talk and graphic stories of the Janissaries. They had only served to further her conviction that her interpretation had been correct all along.
But here was Huma, and she was no garden. She was a serpent. “Murad liked his girls very young. I spent several years eating almost nothing so that I could stay small and undeveloped.” She picked up a leg of chicken, roasted and covered with cracked flakes of pepper. Her eyes rolled back as she bit into it, a soft, satisfied hum slipping through her lips. “I thought I would die of want before I ever managed to conceive an heir. But then precious Mehmed took up in my womb, and I could eat again.”
Lada took some flatbread, tearing it into small pieces as she watched Huma luxuriate over her food. Several more times the little flowers brought food, refilled Huma’s wine, even wiped her mouth clean.
“You are fascinated with the girls,” Huma said. Lada snapped her attention back to the older woman. She had assumed Huma was so absorbed in her consumption of food that Lada had let her mind and gaze wander.
“Why do they veil their faces? Does your god hate even the sight of women?”
Huma laughed. “You misunderstand. Women should veil their bodies, yes. But veiling the face is a symbol of status. Only women who are so well provided for they can afford not to do menial labor may wear a veil. These girls have earned their veils. It is a mark of privilege.”
“Privilege? They are slaves!”
Huma laughed. “So am I, dearest. I was sold as a very young girl, brought to the harem as a servant as well.”
Lada scowled. “You should have fought them. You should have escaped.”
“To where? I was angry, for many years. And frightened. But there are many ways to be powerful. There is power in stillness. There is power in watching, waiting, saying the right thing at the right time to the right person. There is power in being a woman—oh yes, power in these bodies you gaze upon with derision.” Huma ran one hand down her ample breasts, over her stomach, and rested it on her hip. “When you have something someone else wants, there is always an element of power.”
“But it can be taken from you.” Lada had seen enough of men and the world to know that a woman’s body was not an object of power.
“Or it can be given in exchange for more important things. These girls, my servants, understand that. The smart ones, anyhow. They will spend years climbing, trying to get in a position where they have some measure of control. The ones who are clever will do better than the ones who are merely beautiful.”
Her gaze was so pointed, Lada felt herself blush. She dropped the pieces of ripped flatbread onto the plate in front of her. She felt awkward, ungainly, and uglier than she had ever considered herself before. It had not bothered her, most of her life, knowing that she was not beautiful, would never gain admiration for her looks alone. But Huma used her face as a weapon and a tool in a way Lada never could. Lada had never realized that simply by being attractive, she might have gained more threads of power.
Lada lifted her chin defiantly. “I can be strong without giving anything up. I saved Mehmed.”
Huma picked up a date and sucked on it. “Mmm. Yes, you did. And that was well done. But you did not think you were the only woman who has ever killed to protect him, did you?”
Lada frowned in confusion, then immediately regretted it. Huma seemed to be pulling information from everything. She was dragging her long fingers through Lada’s very soul, merely by watching her face.
Huma lay back on her pillows, lifting a hand to her forehead, her sleeve falling down to reveal the long, pale curve of her arm. “It was such a tragedy when Mehmed’s eldest brother fell ill and died so suddenly. To be struck down in his prime! And then Mehmed’s second brother and his two sons, murdered by unknown assailants. Oh, what sadness. Only one son left of an age to inherit should Murad fall in battle!” Her expression of mock sorrow shifted to something darker, angrier. “Or, should he decide to retire and simply throw his one remaining heir to the wolves. Murad has jeopardized everything I worked for.”
Lada’s mind spun. “But you cannot leave the harem! How could you have done all this?”
“Did you notice the men who work here?”
Lada shook her head.
“Exactly as it is supposed to be. My precious eunuchs, they make everyone so deeply uncomfortable. Men cannot stand to look upon them, tormented with imagining what they must have endured to become what they are. The eunuchs are slaves, just as I am, but they, too, have sacrificed. They have had something precious and irreplaceable taken from them, and in doing so, have created a place of power for themselves. They are everywhere in this country, in every important household; they are clerks, they are guards, they are mine.” Huma sat up, her movement so sudden and violent compared with her lazy, sensual motions that Lada jerked back.
“You see this”—Huma gestured to the room, the building, and finally to herself—“as a prison. But you are wrong. This is my court. This is my throne. This is my kingdom. The cost was my freedom and my body.” Her fine eyebrows raised, mouth playful, eyes hard. “So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?”
This was so different from what Mara had presented to Lada. Not an offering of oneself for the benefit of a bigger cause, but the offering of a portion of oneself for the pursuit of personal gain. “I—nothing, I—I,” she stammered.
“Would you sacrifice my son?”
“What? No! I protected him, I—”
“Would you sacrifice what you think your life should be for what it could be, were you to rule at my son’s side?” Huma paused, then laughed at Lada’s tortured expression. “So that is not your design. Very well. You may go now. But I want you to think on what must be sacrificed to secure a future where no one can touch you. I want you to think of Mehmed, and his future.” She waved a hand dismissively, and Lada fled.
ALL THE FEAR THAT had felt so overwhelming in the darkness seemed tempered the next day, as the brilliant sun illuminated a palace going about business as usual.
Huma had instructed Radu and Lada to act as if nothing had changed, but to draw no attention to themselves.
Radu took a deep, shaking breath, then slid along the wall toward Mehmed’s rooms. Returning to the scene of the assassination attempt was probably a bad idea. If there were soldiers in the hall, he would turn and run. Pretend to be lost. Pray they were not the ones who let this happen, since Mehmed did not know who had been on duty, and they could not very well ask.
But Radu wanted to be brave. Maybe Lada and Mehmed, in their terror, had missed something. If he went in, if he searched the…
Even thinking the words the body made him recoil. But he would. Huma wanted to pretend it had never happened. Radu wanted to know why it had. If he found some vital clue, he might be the one to rescue Mehmed this time. Radu might have gotten Mehmed to safety, but Lada was the one who had actually saved him.
That bothered him more than it should. And made him reckless.
However, when he turned the corner, the cavernous hall outside Mehmed’s rooms echoed with the absence of life.
Was the body still inside? Had no one discovered it? Huma had notified everyone that Mehmed was reveling in the harem. Perhaps no one had been in Mehmed’s rooms since. Sick with dread and a morbid curiosity, Radu slipped through the doors, past Mehmed’s waiting chamber toward his study. He held his breath, then stepped inside.
No blood on the gleaming tile floor. No discarded dagger. No lifeless assassin.
Someone had cleaned up after all. There was nothing to suggest the violence this room had held.
But no—that was wrong. A rug, one of Radu’s favorites, cheerfully blue and yellow, was gone. The only evidence was the absence of things that should have been there: the
body, the blood, the rug, and Mehmed.
Radu walked to the desk, reverently placing his hands on various objects. An inkwell. A map of Constantinople with notes scrawled across it in Mehmed’s compact, aggressive script. Several booklets of religious thought that Radu had been hoping to borrow. A heavy, leather-bound tome detailing the life of Alexander the Great.
The whisper of an outer door sent Radu into a panic. He threw himself behind a pillar, just as the door to the study opened.
The intruder’s steps were quiet but assured. Radu heard items being shuffled, then the crackle of a stiff sheet of parchment resisting being rolled. The intruder left as quickly as he had entered. After a few seconds to calm his racing heart, Radu left his hiding place and returned to the desk. Everything was there.
Except the map of Constantinople with Mehmed’s careful notes.
Without giving himself time to think better of it, Radu raced out of the rooms. He saw a hint of movement around a far corner and ran after it. He turned the same corner and saw the figure—a boy, perhaps sixteen, wearing the plain clothes of a servant, walking with submissive but purposeful posture. It was exactly how Radu would move if he needed to get somewhere without being noticed.
And so he copied the boy’s posture, always keeping him in his line of sight, but staying far enough back not to be noticed. He followed the thief out of the palace grounds, to the nearest street, where opulent, majestic homes bullied the cobblestones for space. The thief joined several people filing in and out of the gates of the first estate. Radu grabbed a basket lying on the stones near the entrance and tucked it under his arm, grateful that he was wearing simple clothes today instead of one of the nicer outfits Mehmed had gifted him with.
The thief entered the home through a side door. He knew where he was going. Radu followed, winding his way through a busy kitchen, nearly losing sight of his prey. They went through a back hallway and then up a narrow flight of hidden stairs for the servants’ use. The walls were close, the steps uneven, the air damp with confinement. In the gloom, Radu only just saw a door swing shut, as he was about to climb another flight of stairs. He pushed through the door into another world. Light spilled with reckless abandon through a wide, high-ceilinged hallway. Thick woven rugs lined the floor, with tile gleaming in the gaps. Statuary and pottery kept the turquoise-hued walls company, reassuring each other of their glorious beauty. Highly polished metal mirrors hung at regular intervals, giving the impression of hallways beyond this one.
All the doors were shut, and there was no sign of the thief.
Radu nearly backed into the stairwell when he noticed that one of the heavy wooden doors was slightly ajar. He crept toward it. If anyone caught him, he would have no excuse for his presence.
“…cleaned up, as you predicted,” said a voice Radu did not recognize but suspected was the servant’s.
“The little swine,” a deeper, older voice growled. There was a rough sound of parchment being flattened, then a few seconds of heavy silence. Radu glanced nervously down the hallway, but he was still in the clear.
“Arrogant devil,” the older man said, followed by some choice curses. “He thinks he can defeat the walls of the city? That it is his divine calling? May God save us from servants such as these.”
There was a swish of parchment, the scratching of a quill. Sweat trickled down Radu’s back. Taking a deep breath, he put his eye to the cracked door. The room was revealed in a single line, and Radu shifted to expand his view. There, the back of the servant. And at a desk, pouring wax onto a folded letter to seal it, the man.
Halil Pasha.
Halil Pasha pressed a ring into the wax, then handed the letter to the servant. “See that this is delivered.”
Radu darted from his perch near the door, back to the stairwell. His breath came in shallow, desperate gasps. He crept into the shadows clinging to the bottom of the next flight of stairs, waiting.
The door opened, and with a terrified rush, Radu launched himself forward against the servant. The boy grabbed at Radu’s shirt, but his fingers found no claim as he fell backward down the narrow stairs, head slamming into the wall as his feet went over and his body thudded before coming to a stop, jammed at an awkward angle.
Radu waited one breath, two breaths, three interminable breaths that filled his lungs with fear instead of air, and then, when the servant did not move or cry out for help, he rushed to his side. The letter was not in his hands, it was all for nothing, Radu had murdered him and now—
The boy’s chest moved and a low groan escaped his lips. Radu prayed his relief to the heavens, then felt in the servant’s clothes for…yes! The letter! He tucked it into his own shirt, then hurried down the stairs, nearly falling over his own feet. Taking a few precious seconds at the bottom, he slowed and entered the kitchen calmly. Every limb screamed at him to run, but he walked at a measured pace, a pleasantly blank look on his face, before he finally emerged into the sunlight of the yard, and then escaped through the gate. Only when he had turned back to the palace grounds did he allow himself to run.
A flash of dark hair and a familiar, aggressive walk caught his eye. Gasping with relief, he changed direction, plowing into Lada and nearly knocking her over.
“What is wrong with you?” she said, grabbing his shoulders to steady them both.
“I have just come from…someone was in Mehmed’s rooms, and they stole…there is a letter here!” He waved it in front of Lada’s face. Scowling in exasperation, she snatched it from him and stalked away. He followed her, checking over his shoulder.
“Stop it,” she snapped. “You might as well be waving a flag that says ‘I am guilty!’ ”
He tried to copy her walk, forced himself to stare straight ahead. When they arrived at the harem, a eunuch let them in and they returned to Lada’s room. It was sparsely furnished with a plain bed and a simple chair, the chamber pot tucked into the corner and a small washbasin on a low table.
“My room is nicer,” Radu said, nerves bubbling over.
“Of course it is.” Lada sat on the bed and dropped the letter beside her. “Huma loves you. Everyone loves you.”
Radu itched to find out what was in the letter, to tell Lada how well he had done. It would be important. It had to be. But…what if it was nothing? What if he had attacked a servant over a letter to a distant relative? Halil Pasha had said nothing of the assassination attempt. The servant could have been picking something up Halil Pasha was meant to have.
Terrified to be wrong, terrified to be right, Radu delayed. “What were you doing out?”
“I visited Nicolae. He has heard nothing of an attempt on Mehmed’s life. Ilyas continues to lead his men as though everything is normal.”
“But we were supposed to keep it—”
Lada lifted a hand to silence him. “Nicolae will not spread the news. We can trust him. Though he was surprised at the attempt, he seemed less surprised at my theory it was a Janissary. Dissatisfaction spreads through the men like a disease. Nicolae even heard talk of hating Mehmed from several chorbaji—” She huffed in exasperation at Radu’s confused look. “Chorbaji are the Janissaries’ commanders. I have heard talk among ranking Janissaries, but for chorbaji to be speaking up, things must be serious. But Nicolae does not know who is responsible.”
Radu held up the letter, his hand trembling. “Maybe this has answers.”
Lada cracked the seal and opened the letter. The ink was so fresh Radu could smell it. His eyes went immediately to the signature.
“Halil Pasha.” Lada spat his name like a curse. She did not even elbow Radu away as he leaned against her to scan the letter. “He is writing to Constantinople. Reassuring them that Mehmed will never lead the Ottoman troops against them.”
“But he cannot promise that! Mehmed is determined to…” Radu stopped.
Lada met his eyes, her own heavy with knowledge. “He can promise that. Mehmed cannot lead Ottoman troops against them if he is dead.”
Radu stood up. ??
?We have to tell someone! Halil Pasha will be arrested, and—”
“And who will arrest him? The sultan’s Janissaries? They hate Mehmed. We do not know which of them—or how many, or how high up—knew of the attempt. And who would believe us? This says nothing of killing Mehmed, or having already tried to. It is flimsy evidence against a powerful man.”
“We have to do something!”
Lada scowled. “If only Murad had come back like he was supposed to, none of this would be happening!”
“Mehmed will not give up the throne. He wants it now. There has to be another way to help him.”
Lada folded the letter, tapping it absently against her leg. “What would you sacrifice for power?”
“What?”
She looked up at him, brows furrowed, an expression of intense thought on her face. “For power, Halil Pasha would kill Mehmed. For power, the Janissaries would abandon their duty to the throne. Everyone is willing to sacrifice Mehmed. We must figure out how to do it first.”
Radu backed up, aghast. “We have to protect him! I will not let you sacrifice him!” He turned to leave. Lada grabbed his arm but he shook her off, turning the door handle. Lada knocked him to the ground, her knee digging into his back.
“Shut up and listen to me! Something must be sacrificed. That something is Mehmed. We sacrifice Mehmed’s throne now, so that he lives to take it later. If he stays, he will die. We keep him safe until he is older. Smarter. Stronger. When he will come to the throne not as a powerless child but as his precious hand of God on Earth.”
“Do not mock him!”
“We will lose everything, Radu.” Lada’s voice was ragged, and Radu felt a sudden fear that if he could see her face, she would be crying. That terrified him more than anything, the idea of Lada breaking down. The man she had killed, the attack, they were foreign to him. He had not seen them or felt them in any real way. But Lada crying meant the end of his world. If Lada could not be strong, how could he ever hope to be?