“Radu is doing very well.” The tutor frowned at Bogdan. “And I am not employed to educate the son of a nursemaid.”
Lada stared down at him with all the cold, imperious command she was born to. “You are employed to do as you are told.”
The tutor, who was very fond of his straight, unblemished nose, sighed wearily and continued the lesson.
“Now in Hungarian,” Lada commanded Bogdan, her walk quick and assured down the hallway. Tirgoviste was set up like a great Byzantine city: castle in the middle, manors of the boyars circling it, dwellings of the artisans and performers who earned the patronage of the boyars circling that, and then, outside the massive stone walls, everyone else. Within the walls, homes were painted a dazzling array of reds and blues, yellows and greens. Riots of flowers and tinkling fountains competed for attention. But the stench of human waste lurked beneath everything, and the poor and sick masses seemed to creep ever closer to the inner city. Lada had even seen their shacks built against the wall itself.
Lada and Radu were not allowed to spend time in the outer rims of Tirgoviste. They were bundled and rushed through the streets whenever they left the city, catching only glimpses of ramshackle homes and suspicious, sunken eyes.
They lived in the castle, which, for all it tried, could not pretend at the splendor of Constantinople. It was dim, dark, narrow. The walls were thick, the windows slits, the hallways labyrinthine. The castle’s construction proved the pools and gardens and brightly clothed bodies were lies. Tirgoviste was no glittering Byzantium. Even Byzantium was no longer Byzantium. Like everything else this close to the Ottoman Empire, Wallachia had become a stomping ground for stronger armies, a pathway smashed by armored feet again and again and again.
Lada put her hand against the wall, feeling the cold that never quite left the stones. The castle was both the goal and the trap. She had never felt safe here. She knew from the snapping tone and tense demeanor of her father that he felt constantly threatened, too. She longed to live somewhere else, in the countryside, in the mountains, somewhere defensive where they could see their enemies coming for miles. Somewhere her father could relax and have time to speak with her.
Two Janissaries walked past. They were elite Ottoman soldiers, taken as young boys from other countries in the name of taxes, trained and groomed to serve the sultan and his god. Their ceremonial caps, bronze with flowing white flaps, bobbed as they laughed and talked, perfectly at ease. Her father insisted the castle was a symbol of power, but he refused to see the true symbolism of Tirgoviste. It did not give them power—it gave others power over them. They were trapped here, prisoners to the demands of the powerful boyar families. Worse, despite her father’s anointment to crusader by the pope, they were still a vassal state to the Ottoman Empire. Her father sacrificed money, lives, and his own honor to the Ottoman sultan, Murad, for the privilege of this throne.
Bogdan babbled on in the language of their Hungarian neighbors to the west, telling Lada about his day. She pushed into the grand hall, occasionally correcting his pronunciation. The two Janissaries were there, lounging against a wall. Lada spared them only a brief glare. They were like a rock in her slipper, constantly irritating.
Bulgaria and Serbia had similar arrangements with the sultan, paying money and boys to the Ottoman Empire in return for stability, while Hungary and Transylvania fought to avoid being vassals. The tension between borders demanded Vlad’s constant attention, forced him to leave for weeks on end, and gave him pains in his stomach that made him nasty and irritable.
Lada hated the Ottomans.
One of the Janissaries raised a thick eyebrow. Though he looked Bulgarian, maybe Serbian, he spoke Turkish. “Ugly thing, the girl. The prince will be lucky to find her a match. Or perhaps a nunnery with low standards.”
Lada continued as though she had not heard, but Bogdan stopped. He bristled. The soldier noted his understanding and stepped toward them in interest. “You speak Turkish?”
Lada grabbed Bogdan’s hand, answering with perfect pronunciation. “One must learn Turkish if one is to command the castle dogs.”
The soldier laughed. “You would be right at home with them, little bitch.”
Lada had her knife out before the soldier or his companion noticed. She was too short to reach the man’s neck, so she satisfied herself with a vicious slash across his arm. He shouted in pain and surprise, jumping back and fumbling with his sword.
Lada gestured, and Bogdan threw himself at the soldier’s legs, tripping him. Now that he was on the floor, his neck was an easy target. Lada pressed the knife beneath his chin, then looked up at the other soldier. He was a pale, lean man—almost a boy, really—with shrewd brown eyes. He had one hand on his sword, the long, curved blade favored by the Ottomans.
“Only a fool would attack the prince’s daughter in her own home. Two soldiers against a harmless girl.” Lada bared her teeth at him. “Very bad for treaties.”
The lean soldier took his hand off his sword and stepped back, his smile a perfect match to his weapon. He bowed, sweeping out an arm in deference.
Bogdan jumped up from the floor, trembling with rage. Lada shook her head at him. She should have left him out of this. Lada had a sense for power—the fine threads that connected everyone around her, the way those threads could be pulled, tightened, wrapped around someone until they cut off the blood supply.
Or snapped entirely.
She had few threads at her disposal. She wanted all of them. Bogdan had almost none, and what threads he did have were his simply by virtue of his being a boy. People already respected him more than they did his mother the nurse. It made Lada’s jaw ache, the ease with which life greeted Bogdan.
She jabbed her knife, poking the prone soldier once more for good measure, but not quite hard enough to break the skin. Then she stood straight, smoothing the front of her dress. “You are slaves,” she said. “There is nothing you can do to hurt me.”
The lean soldier’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he looked over Lada’s shoulder, where Bogdan loomed. She grabbed his arm and walked out of the room with him.
Bogdan was fuming. “We should tell your father.”
“No!”
“Why? He should know how they disrespected you!”
“They are beneath our notice! They are less than the mud. You do not get angry at the mud for clinging to your shoe. You wipe it off and never look at it again.”
“Your father should know.”
Lada scowled. It was not that she feared punishment for her actions. What she feared was that her father would find out how the Janissaries viewed her and realize they were right. That she was a girl. That she was worth less than the castle dogs until the day she could be married off. She had to be the smartest, constantly surprising and delighting him. She was terrified that the day she stopped amusing him would be the day he remembered he had no use for a daughter.
“Will we be punished?” Bogdan’s face, as familiar and beloved as her own, wrinkled in concern. He was growing like a spring shoot, so much taller now. As far back as she could remember he had been at her side. He was hers—her playmate, her confidant, her brother in spirit if not blood. Her husband. Where Radu was weak, Bogdan was steady, strong. She tugged one of his big ears. They stuck out from his head like handles on a jug, and were more precious to her than any of the fine things in the castle.
“The Janissaries have only what power we decide they do.” She meant it as a reassurance, but her mind stuck on the curved sword that hung above her father’s throne. A gift from the sultan to her father. A promise and a threat, like most things in Tirgoviste were.
The next morning Lada awoke late, eyes heavy with sleep and mind muddled by nightmares. There was a strange noise, a hiccuping sort of moan, coming from the other side of her bedroom door. Angry, she stomped out into the chambers that connected her room to Radu’s, where their nurse slept.
The nurse had all her soft parts hidden as she held herself, rocking. She was th
e source of the noise. Radu patted her back, looking lost.
“What happened?” Lada asked, panic rising in her chest like a handful of bees.
“Bogdan.” Radu held up his hands helplessly. “The Janissaries took him.”
The bees turned into a swarm. Lada ran from the room, straight to her father’s study, where she found him bent over maps and ledgers.
“Father!” It came out breathless, desperate. Small. All her efforts to force him to see her as something other than a little girl unraveled in that single word, but she could not stop herself. He would help. He would fix this. “The Janissaries have kidnapped Bogdan!”
Her father looked up, setting down his quill and wiping his fingers on a white handkerchief. It came away smudged with black, and he dropped it to the floor, discarded. His voice was measured. “The Janissaries told me they had some trouble with one of the castle dogs. An injury to a soldier. They requested we supply a replacement who had been taught Turkish. It is a fortunate turn of events for the son of a nursemaid, is it not?”
Lada felt her lower lip tremble. That feeling she got in her heart when her father looked at her—that frantic, desperate pride—twisted and soured. He knew what Bogdan was to her. He knew, and he let the Janissaries take her dearest friend anyway.
He did not care. And now he watched for her reaction, weighing her.
She clenched her shaking hands into fists. She nodded.
“See that the dogs behave themselves from now on.” Her father’s eyes cut straight through her, releasing the bees and leaving her echoing and empty inside. She curtsied, then walked stiffly out, collapsing against the wall and shoving her fists against her eyes to push the tears back inside.
This was her fault. She could have walked away from the Janissaries. Radu would have. But not her. She had to defy them, had to taunt them. And one of them—the thin one—had known just by looking at her the best way to hurt her.
All her tiny threads snapped and circled back around her heart, squeezing too tightly. This was her fault, but her father had betrayed her. He could have said no—should have said no, should have stopped it, should have shown the Janissaries that it was he, not them, who ruled Wallachia.
He had chosen not to.
Her mind stuck on the image of his discarded handkerchief. Dirtied and dropped, forgotten now that it was not pristine. Her father was wasteful. Her father was weak.
Bogdan deserved better.
She deserved better.
Wallachia deserved better.
She went back to the mountain in her mind, stood on its peak, remembered the way the sun had embraced her. She would never toss aside her country the way her father had. She would protect it.
A small sob threatened to break free. What could she do? She had no power.
Yet, she vowed. She had no power yet.
RADU HAD ALWAYS HATED Bogdan, hated that he stole Lada’s time and attention, hated the way he tugged on Radu’s hair, or pulled his ear, or sneered when Radu scraped a knee and could not help crying.
Hated most of all that Bogdan ignored him the rest of the time.
And now Bogdan had stolen Radu’s nurse, leaving a hollow shell behind. It was Bogdan’s own fault he was gone. He had to ruin everything else on his way out, too.
Radu’s rooms were a suffocating sepulchre to Bogdan. His nurse wept in her chair, sewing basket dormant beside her. Lada was worse, though. Normally when something did not go her way, she became a torrent of rage, a sweeping storm that flew in and overwhelmed everything, working itself out as quickly as it had descended.
With Bogdan’s loss, however, Lada was silent. Staring. Calm.
It terrified Radu.
He tucked himself into a corner of the stables, a dark, musty spot where only someone looking could find him. No one was ever looking for Radu. A spider crawled down his hand and he lifted it, gently placing the spider on a wood beam where it would be safe.
Two swaggering Janissaries led their sweating and quivering horses into the stables. Radu watched through narrowed eyes as they efficiently wiped down the horses, watered them, and got them fresh feed.
When Mircea returned from riding, he always jumped down, threw his reins at a servant, and walked off. Mircea whipped his horses, too, the angry furrows in their flanks marking them as his favorites. Once, Radu had been watching when no stableboy was present. Mircea simply got off his horse, a long gash on its leg seeping blood, and left.
Radu wanted to hate all Janissaries out of loyalty to Lada, but he liked the way they took care of their animals. He also liked their funny hats, and the way they always had someone. There was never a Janissary by himself.
The two men had been talking in low, comfortable voices the whole time. “Have you noticed the new animal in here?” one asked. His back was to Radu.
The other Janissary, a young man with pockmarked skin and dark eyes, shook his head.
“A shy creature. I should think he’s very valuable, but I have yet to see anyone take him out for a ride. Pity.”
“Oh, do you mean the pale one? Big eyes? Curly hair? Hides in a corner?”
Fear seized Radu. They knew he was here. What would they do to him?
“Yes, that one! Seems a sad little thing. Perhaps if he made friends with some of the other animals…” The Janissary straightened, and turned his head, smiling with kind eyes at Radu’s hiding spot. “Would you like to help us with the horses?”
Radu did not move.
“This one is very gentle. See?” The Janissary nuzzled the horse’s head with his own. The horse huffed right in his face, and both soldiers laughed. “Come on, come meet your stablemate.”
Radu shuffled forward, pressed against the stall doors, eyes darting to the entrance.
The Janissary held out a stiff-bristled brush. “Here now, make yourself useful. We have to bend over so far to reach the lower spots. Help save our poor aching backs.”
The brush was heavy in Radu’s hand. He reached out with it, hesitant, barely touching the horse. He had been trained to ride, but Mircea had been in charge, which meant Lada became wild and competitive and Radu got yelled at the whole time. He still had a mark on the back of his neck from where Mircea whipped him once. Mircea claimed he had been aiming for the horse.
The kind-eyed Janissary put his hand over Radu’s, showing him how to stroke, how much pressure to use. “I take it you are not a stableboy.”
Radu shook his head, keeping his eyes down.
“Oh, I know who our little creature is!” The pockmarked Janissary grinned, a gap-toothed smile. “Do they keep all the little princes in the stables? What odd customs Wallachia has! I trust you like eating oats?”
Radu knew he was being teased, but it felt kind. Playful. He ventured a smile. “I prefer cake.”
Both Janissaries laughed, one patting him on the shoulder. Unlike when Mircea did it, it was simply a pat on the shoulder, and not a disguised blow.
Radu helped the soldiers with the rest of their chores, asking a few questions but mostly listening. When they were finished, they told him to meet them there earlier the next day to help exercise the horses. He practically skipped back to his rooms, breathless and flushed with happiness. Lada, thankfully, was nowhere to be found. His nurse was in her usual spot. Radu climbed onto her chair and snuggled into her side, putting his hand on the back of her neck. She sighed, not looking at him.
“Did you know,” Radu said, as carefully as he had set the spider down, “that Janissaries are very prestigious in Ottoman society?”
His nurse frowned, and looked at him for the first time in days.
“They are educated and trained and even paid. Everyone admires them. I was talking to one today who told me his mother gave him to the Janissaries to save him from a life breaking himself to bits against the rocky soil. He said…” Radu paused, his voice getting softer. “He said he was grateful. That it was the best thing that could have happened to him. He always has enough to eat, and he has plenty of
friends, and money to spend when he wants to. He said he is smarter and stronger than he ever would have been. He says he prays every day, out of gratitude to and love for his mother.”
The Janissary had not actually said any of that. But his nurse held Radu’s hand so tightly it hurt. He did not move away. She nodded, wiping at her eyes. “Be a good boy, hand me my sewing basket.”
Radu settled in and watched her trembling hands get surer with every stitch.
The air was heavy and thick with humidity as Radu dragged a stick along the cobbled path behind the castle that led to the stables. He hummed happily to himself, but the humming was cut short when someone cuffed him on the back of his head.
“Where are you going?” Mircea asked.
Radu did not answer. Silence was the best tactic with Mircea.
Their father came sweeping along behind Mircea, and Radu shrank back even further. He had not spoken to his father in…he did not know how long. His father’s black eyes passed over him as though he were not even there. Then Vlad blinked, and finally focused on his youngest son.
“Radu.” He sounded vaguely questioning, as though reciting some fact he could not quite remember.
Behind him came several boyars, mostly from the Danesti family, their long-simmering rivals. Andrei was with them, skittering and withdrawn as he always was now. Dressed for riding, they all paused, staring at Radu.
Radu wished they were women. He had a much easier time with women. Men were harsh and hard and unmoving in the face of a quick, brilliant smile. Lada would know what to do. She would scowl and stick her nose in the air and dare any of them to think they were better than her. Radu stood straighter and pretended to be her.
“Can the boy ride?” one of the oldest Danesti boyars asked, his tone bored but with a slight challenge.
His father considered Radu, eyes hard. “Of course he can.”
Radu hurried along in the wake of his father and brother. He worried that he was not invited and would be punished, but he worried even more about what would happen if he was expected to come and failed to comply.