Lada looked along the top of the canyon on either side, noting the heavy rocks jutting out. What if there was nowhere to go at all?
“Stop,” Lada said. “I can take out an entire army with two explosions.”
Tohin let out an exasperated breath. “You soldiers always overestimate the damage. There is not enough gunpowder, and you would be killed if you stayed close enough to light it under an approaching army.”
“Not under.” The sun dazzled Lada’s eyes as it shone down on her through a break in the rocks above. “Over.”
Tohin and Lada sat together on the jumble of rocks that had come down, blocking the entire bottom of the canyon.
In an actual battle, it would have been much more difficult. The timing would have to be perfect. They would need to wait long enough for the opposing army to be fully into the canyon. Stealth would be paramount—a single shot taking out either of the soldiers who were left to light the charges would ruin the whole thing.
But it had worked. Using the gunpowder to trigger an avalanche on two ends of the valley blocked the way forward and the way back. With steep sides and no cover, a force as scant as Lada’s could have killed hundreds of trapped men, picking them off one by one.
“You have a very good mind,” Tohin said. The rest of Lada’s Janissaries were already starting the long, backbreaking process of lugging the cannon they had never bothered using over the mountain and to the fortress on the other side.
“The conditions would have to be specific for that to be effective.”
“Still. Using the land around yourself as a weapon—that does not occur to most people. You heard that little idiot, the one with a head thicker than this rock. All he could think of was a weapon he could hold in his hand.”
“And yet, for all my brilliance, I am fighting imaginary foes in a canyon behind a fortress no one would ever try to storm.”
“Would you rather be on the field at Kruje? Throwing men at a wall that does not budge? Watching them die of rotting sickness?”
Lada felt a twinge of panic. They had had almost no word from the siege. She assumed that meant things were going well. “There is sickness?”
“A camp that large? There is always sickness.”
“Have you heard from them?”
Tohin nodded. “My husband and one of my sons have written. There has been no progress. And disease is ravaging camp much faster than they expected it to.”
“What about—” Lada stopped herself. She could not stop picturing Mehmed, lying on a cot, wasting away and sinking into himself. All this time she had imagined him with a sword in his hand, commanding men, accomplishing great things and never once wanting—or needing—her by his side. But disease was not a foe she had anticipated.
Lada cleared her throat, trying to ease the tightness that had taken root there. “What other news?”
“Nothing. They will push at the wall until it breaks or winter comes, and then they will return home. Whether they win or lose, the result is the same. The men come home, and I have less work to do but more mouths to feed.”
“Why do they bother? What difference does Kruje make? Does it really hold so much value for the empire that it is worth this risk?” Lada stood, pacing. She let the fear she felt for Mehmed act as a fuse to light her anger. “Damnable fools!”
“It is not about Kruje,” Tohin said.
“Of course not. It is about Murad’s pride! He cannot stand that his protégé betrayed him, and so he risks Mehmed—” Lada paused, taking a deep breath. “He risks thousands of men to take revenge against one.”
“It is not about Skanderberg, either.” Tohin raised a hand, cutting off the argument brimming on Lada’s tongue. “Yes, he wants to make an example of Skanderberg, punish him. But what do you think would happen in the other border cities if Murad did not address this?”
“They would return to their rightful rulers! He overreaches. He has no business there.”
“And what if he allowed Kruje to leave? If he allowed all the vassal states their freedom, if he withdrew to the borders of the Ottoman Empire as they were before we began eating into Europe, what then?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“Where would it stop? Should we leave all the cities, go back to the deserts in the east? Roam on horses?”
“Of course not.”
“So we stay here. You would allow us the first territories of our conquest—how generous of you. Do you think Hunyadi would be satisfied? Do you think Byzantium would thank us and happily live on their sliver of land? Do you think the pope would stop calling for crusades?”
“I do not think—”
“When do borders ever stay as they are? Our own people were driven from the east, fleeing from destruction. They saw cities and walls, and they wanted that. So they took them. If they had not taken them, they would have died. And someone else would have come and taken the cities instead.”
“So defend what is yours! Why must it turn to conquest?”
“Kruje is ours. Skanderberg is ours. If we were not pushing, fighting, claiming what is ours and challenging what is not yet ours, others would be doing it to us. It is the way of the world. You can be the aggressor, you can fight against crusaders on their own land, or you can stay at home and wait for them to come to you. And they would come. They would come with fire, with disease, with swords and blood and death. Weakness is an irresistible lure.”
Lada remembered Hunyadi riding into her father’s capital as though he owned it. Her father was weak, and because he was weak—because he tried only to maintain what he had and avoid a fight—Wallachia suffered.
Tohin continued. “Murad takes war to other countries so that here, in the empire, we can carry on with the business of living. We expand, because if we did not, we would die. It is Murad’s responsibility to see that we live.”
Lada stared at the ruined canyon. “The price of living seems to always be death.”
Tohin stood, joints popping audibly. “And that is why you become a dealer of death. You feed death as many people as you can to keep it full and content so its eye stays off you.”
A dealer of death. Lada carried the phrase back to the fortress on her tongue, rolling it around. Borders and aggression, sieges and sickness. Dealers of death.
She prayed that Mehmed would not be one of those fed to death to keep it away from the heart of the Ottoman Empire.
NO ONE WAS MORE surprised to see the shaft of an arrow appear in the middle of Yazid’s torso than he was.
He looked up at Radu, a half smile on his face as though the arrow were the end of the joke he had been in the middle of telling. And then he fell off his horse, tangling under the wheels of the supply wagon behind them.
“Ambush!” Lazar shouted.
Radu should have shouted that. But he kept looking at the space on the back of the horse where Yazid had just been. Now there was nothing.
An arrow flew by, so close to his face that he felt the sting of its wind. Two more came in quick succession, though these were flaming and not meant for him. They found their larger target in the wood and canvas of the wagon.
Shouts up and down the twenty-wagon train sounded, letting Radu know the whole thing was under attack. The trees were close, pressing in like giant fingers ready to pull them all into the depths of the forest. To smother them in murky green and muffled birdsong until everything was quiet again.
There was a lot of screaming.
Water drenched Radu. Someone had thrown a bucket at the wagon and soaked Radu more than the wood. A flash of movement in the trees caught Radu’s attention, and he threw himself from his horse, shouting as he drew his sword and ran for the enemy.
There was an arm, a scream, a flash of an eye showing white all around the iris, and then—
And then there was a body at his feet, his sword red with a terrible knowledge. Radu threw his head back in a howl of triumph. All he saw among the trees were men running, away from him, away from the
wagon train. They had won.
He had won.
No one had been there to protect him, not this time, and he had—
He looked down.
The enemy—the terrible threat that he had single-handedly ended—was a boy. His wrists were knobby, his elbows sharp points. His eyes, wide and wondering with death, were orbs in a gaunt face that told of hunger and desperation. And so very, very few years.
Radu dropped to his knees and reached out. His hand hovered over the hole he had made that tore this boy from life. He had shot arrows at enemies before, had probably killed before, but never like this. Never with a face right there to fall still and cold with the question of why.
“Radu?”
A hand came down on his shoulder. “Radu, are you hurt?”
Radu twitched away with a shudder. “I will scout ahead.” He stumbled back to his horse, galloping beyond the train, beyond the line, beyond the last scouts kneeling on the ground around one of their dead. When he had left them all behind, he gasped for air but could not find it.
For the first time ever, his life had been in danger and no one had been there to save him. He had saved himself.
But no one had saved that boy in the forest, and Radu cried for him, wishing that someone had.
Radu threw down his maps, rubbing his face wearily. “We could burn down the trees.”
“Which trees?” Lazar leaned back, stretching his long legs and smiling with lazy amusement. He spent more time in Radu’s tent than his own as the siege dragged interminably and the lines between ranks broke down. Five months they had been here. Five months.
“All of them. All the trees from here to Italy. All the trees everywhere. Any tree that could hide Skanderberg and his damnable men along any route our supply trains travel.”
“Did you hear? The Venetians have announced they will no longer sell us supplies.”
Radu sighed, the thick pole in the middle of his tent supporting his weight as he leaned against it. “Well, that solves the problem of how to guard the wagons, at the very least. If we have no supplies, Skanderberg’s men cannot attack and steal them.”
“Winter is nearly here. We will freeze before we starve, if that is any comfort.”
Radu stood. “You are late to visit the women of the camp.” Lazar spent much of his free time with the prostitutes that accompanied the soldiers. At first Radu had pretended not to notice, but now, as with everything else, he no longer cared.
“I like to make them miss me sometimes, too. I am generous with my love. I have enough for everyone.” He climbed onto Radu’s cot, lying back with a look that pretended at innocence. He was getting bolder, deliberately teasing when they were alone, and Radu did not know how to handle it. He cared about Lazar, valued his friendship and counsel, but…
He was in no mood to try to answer the question. Rather than facing Lazar, he walked out into the night. Smoke hung heavy on the air. Radu breathed it in, made it a part of himself. He was certain the smoke had lodged permanently in his nose, and he would never be able to smell anything else.
The careful rows they had laid out five months ago had decayed into a rambling warren of tents, muddy quagmires, and trash heaps. Radu avoided the worst parts, skirting campfires where men gathered, eyes permanently narrowed and fists clenched.
Kumal’s tent grew from the midst of the camp like a diseased mushroom. Radu ducked inside, nodding at the grim-faced servants. The air was too close, a subtle, sour odor of sickness inescapable. He could, it turned out, smell something other than smoke.
He made his way quietly to Kumal’s cot, then sat on the rug next to it. Kumal’s face was sunken, his eyelids pulled so thin over his eyes that Radu could see each delicate vein beneath the skin. Too many in the camp were sick, with disease running rampant after so long in such close quarters. At least Kumal had the dignity of dying in privacy.
Kumal raised a hot, dry hand, and Radu took it in his own.
“How are you today, my friend?”
Kumal’s lips cracked as he parted them in a smile. “I am well,” he rasped.
Radu answered the smile as well as he could manage. “Do you need anything? Water?”
Kumal shook his head. “I need a promise.”
Radu clucked his tongue. “I am sorry, the supply wagon carrying promises was waylaid by Skanderberg last week. We are entirely out of them.”
Kumal’s chest rattled with a laugh. “I am serious. I need a promise from you.”
“Anything.”
“Take care of Nazira.”
Radu blinked and looked up at the draping cloth of the tent ceiling, now stained black with smoke, soiled and ruined like everything else here. “She will be very upset with you when we return and she finds out you were trying to get rid of her.”
Kumal’s grip tightened with more strength than Radu thought he had left.
“I promise,” Radu said. “I will take care of her.”
Kumal sighed in relief, his body deflating under the blanket until it looked as though a grown man could not possibly be beneath it. Radu stayed with him for another hour, but they did not speak again.
When Radu left, he wandered. Lost in thought, he drew closer and closer to the edge of camp. He stood outside the last straggling tents, staring toward the dark line of the wall. That damnable wall.
Three times they had directly assaulted it, only to be repulsed.
They had never managed to find the water source for the city.
They had even tried to bribe the city leaders again, to no avail.
There was a loud rumbling sound, and the ground beneath his feet shuddered. A plume of dust rose against the sky, blotting out the stars. Men shouted, but there was none of the typical clash of metal and scream of horses that signaled a surprise attack from a raiding force. This was something new, something bad.
Radu ran forward, drawing his sword. He stumbled in the dark, raising an arm to his mouth to avoid inhaling the dirt that drifted in the air like the grave coming to collect them all.
On his left, another man joined him. “No, no, no!” the man screamed.
Radu tripped and fell hard to the cold ground, nearly impaling himself on his sword. Because he knew that voice. And he knew the hand that reached out to pull him up.
“Come on, we have to help! The tunnels collapsed!”
In the dark, Mehmed did not know him. But Radu would know him anywhere. He took the hand, held it as though it were his anchor to this world. And then it was gone and Mehmed disappeared into the night ahead of him.
Radu hesitated. If he went back to camp now, Mehmed would never know. They would not speak. Radu could slip back into the blood-tinged monotony of his days. But that was a lie. Because even when Mehmed was not in his life, he was the missing sun at the center of everything. Radu still revolved around Mehmed, even when he was gone.
Radu ran forward, catching up to Mehmed, who had stopped on the edge of a sunken line in the ground. It led from where they stood to within a few arm spans of the wall.
Mehmed dropped to his knees, hanging his head in despair. A couple of men moved up and down the line, calling frantically, but it was obvious that anyone who had been inside the tunnel would not be coming out.
Radu knelt beside Mehmed, putting a hand on his shoulder. Mehmed looked up in surprise, but whatever he was about to say died on his lips as he squinted at Radu. Without a word, he threw himself forward. He wrapped his arms around Radu’s torso and buried his face in his shoulder. The earth shifted again beneath Radu, or inside Radu, the rumbling and collapsing groan of all his promises to himself falling away.
Mehmed.
His Mehmed.
He put a hand to the back of Mehmed’s neck, holding him.
“I failed,” Mehmed said. “They are all dead, and I failed.”
Radu shook his head, cheek brushing the top of Mehmed’s head. “We have all failed. This is not your fault.”
“This was my plan, though. My idea to save the siege.??
?
“No one can save it. Do not hold yourself responsible for your father’s folly. Learn from it.”
Mehmed nodded into his shoulder, then pulled back. He grasped Radu’s shoulders too tightly, as though he was afraid Radu might drift away. How could he? Mehmed was his sun. He would always return.
“How are you here?”
“I came with your father. I have been here the whole time.”
Shock and hurt played across Mehmed’s face. He did not look well, drawn and pale even in the darkness. Either he had been sick, or he was getting sick. Radu wanted to run his fingers down Mehmed’s cheeks, to touch him, to fix him.
“Why have you not found me before?” Mehmed asked.
“I…” Because I am in love with you. Because I cannot be around you for fear you will finally see what is written across my heart. Because the pain of you is one I cannot bear. “I could not, not without betraying my true purposes to your father’s inner circle. They must think I am indifferent to you.”
“I do not understand.”
“I am spying for you, Mehmed. Learning how everything in the city works, tracing the lines of bribes, corruption, conspiracy. So that when you take the throne again, I can give you what you did not have before. Allies. Information. Plans.”
Mehmed dropped his hands. “This is why you left?”
Radu nodded, shivering against the bitter cold left in the absence of Mehmed’s touch.
“You left to help me. Not because you hate me.”
Radu’s voice trembled with how much he wanted Mehmed to hear, to understand, in the next sentence: “I could never hate you.”
Mehmed drew him close, pressing their foreheads together. Mehmed’s was feverishly hot. “You broke my heart for missing you, Radu.”
Eyes closed, Radu drew a shaking breath. “Mine, too.”
“You are my best, my truest friend. Will you return with me? Come home!”
Radu nearly said yes—could not have said no—when Mehmed continued: “Lada needs you, too.”
Radu dropped his head, pressing it harder against Mehmed’s, then straightened, pulling away. “How is my sister?”