The only clear memory Lada had of the woman was one of lank hair hanging over her face, sharp shoulder blades, bowed back. Crawling. Weeping. She had expected to come here and find the same broken creature. She had not been able to picture her mother standing, much less riding.
This woman was small and fine-boned like a bird. Her hair, pinned elaborately beneath her hat, shone black with hints of silver threaded through. Her back was straight, her chin lifted, a veil of lace over her face.
Lada had been apprehensive about trying to leverage her connection to her mother to get help from the Moldavian king, her grandfather. But it had been easier to think of her mother that way, as a stepping-stone. Someone to climb over.
Here her mother was not on the ground. She was higher than Lada.
“We should leave,” she said. “This was a bad idea.”
“We should at least talk to her,” Nicolae said.
“I do not even know if that is her. I have not seen her since I was three. Perhaps we were misdirected. My mother might be dead.”
Bogdan pushed Petru aside, taking over his vantage point. “That is her.”
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “I was older than you when she left.”
“By a year!”
He blinked at Lada, expression intractable. “I remember everything about our childhood.” He said the word our with uncharacteristic tenderness. It made Lada feel unsettled, even more than she already was.
Lada crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, what are we supposed to do? Jump out of the hedge and scream, ‘Hello, Mother!’ ”
Nicolae shook his head. “Of course not. She is not our mother. Only yours.”
“She is barely even that. She will not recognize me.” Lada would have to prove her identity to the woman who had fled when she was a child. She had no way of doing that.
“We could bring my mother,” Bogdan said. “She was your mother’s companion for many years.”
They had left Oana at camp with the rest of the men, hidden along the mountain pass where they had crept into Moldavia. The whole journey Lada had longed to turn around, to flee, to go back home. But she could not. She needed help.
She hated needing.
“Fine.” Lada stood and pushed through the hedge. She struggled out from it right as her mother’s horse passed.
“God’s wounds!” Vasilissa shouted, using Lada’s father’s favorite curse. “Where did you—” She stopped, her fingers going to her mouth, pressing at the veil.
“You should travel with guards.” Lada wore her anger as armor against this woman. “We could have been anyone.”
Vasilissa moved her trembling hand to her heart.
“We are not going to rob you.” Lada sighed. “We are here to speak with you.”
“Ladislav,” Vasilissa whispered. “My little girl.”
Lada had been prepared to be humiliated by introducing herself. She had not thought about what she would do if her mother knew her. She stepped back as though struck, her vision narrowing to a tunnel. Every muscle tensed, waiting for attack.
Vasilissa leaned down as far as she could from her horse. Her voice was barely discernable over the rush of blood in Lada’s ears.
“Ladislav.” She reached one tiny, gloved hand toward Lada’s hair. Then she cleared her throat, looking Lada up and down in a way that made her feel naked. “Come. We will get you a bath and some new clothes.” Her mother turned the horse back toward the manor and set off at a brisk pace.
“I have men with me!” Lada shouted, finally regaining her voice.
“No,” Vasilissa said, not turning around. “Only you. No men.”
At a loss, Lada gestured to Petru, Nicolae, and Bogdan, who watched her from the cover of the hedge. “Just…stay, for now. I will come back for you.”
“Are you certain you will come to no harm?” Bogdan asked, narrowed eyes tracking Vasilissa’s hasty exit.
Lada was certain of the opposite. But she did not expect the type of harm Bogdan feared. “Wait here.”
When she got to the manor, the front door was closed. Barren ivy climbed over every surface, its tangled brown masses swallowing the angles and shape of the house. In the summer it would be green and lovely, but not now.
The least her mother could have done was wait for her. Lada laughed bitterly. No, her mother was skilled at doing far less than the least she could do for her daughter. Of course she would make Lada knock. Lada pounded her gloved fist against the door. It opened with such speed, the maid behind it must have been waiting there.
The girl curtsied awkwardly. She wore a shapeless brown dress and an ill-fitting black cap. “Welcome, mistress. My lady has prepared a room for you.”
Lada frowned. Who else was her mother expecting? “I only met her just now on the road.”
The girl cleared her throat, keeping her eyes on the floor. “My lady has prepared a room for you. Please come with me.”
“Where is my moth—where is Vasilissa?”
“If you will come with me, I will show you your room and draw a bath for you. Her ladyship receives visitors after supper.”
“But she already knows I am here. And I have my men waiting outside.”
The maid finally looked up. Her eyes pointed in slightly different directions, one drifting to the left. She whispered, “Please, mistress, do not speak of the men to her. We do as she wishes. It is for the best. Allow me to take you to your room, and she will see you after supper.”
Exasperated, Lada flung a hand out. “Fine. Take me to my room.”
The girl flashed a quick, grateful smile, and led Lada into the house. The deeper they got, the more Lada’s stomach clenched in fear.
There was something very wrong here.
CHRIST STARED MOURNFULLY DOWN at Radu. No matter how Radu shifted or where he looked, the round eyes of Jesus followed him.
“Are you well?” Cyprian whispered out the side of his mouth, leaning close.
Radu stopped fidgeting under the giant mosaic. “Yes. Just tired.”
In front of them, standing behind a giant wood postern, a priest ran through liturgy after liturgy. Radu’s Greek was good, but he could barely understand the antiquated phrasings and words. Even if he could, he would not care. Being in this church made him feel like a child again. Radu had not enjoyed his childhood, and it was deeply uncomfortable to be reminded of it.
Everything was larger than life in the church. Though it was not as big or beautiful as the Hagia Sophia, gilt covered all possible surfaces. The priest wore elaborate robes, stitched and embroidered with pounds of history and tradition. A censer filled the room with scented smoke that made Radu’s eyes water and his head spin.
On the raised dais next to the priest, Constantine sat on a throne. Radu envied him a seat. All the other men stood, packed in too tightly, still and listening. Radu yearned for the movement of true prayer, for the simplicity and beauty and companionship of it.
The liturgy continued, as cold and uncaring as the murals of various saints meeting violent ends that decorated the walls. Lada would like those at least. Radu smiled, remembering when they had visited a monastery on the island of Snagov in Wallachia. Lada had been chastised for laughing at the gruesome death scene of Saint Bartholomew. An elaborate painting of him with half his skin already off adorned one of the monastery walls. Radu could never look at that mural without shivering in fear. Lada had told him to think instead of how cold poor Saint Bartholomew must have been without any skin on.
He wished Lada were with him now. But even if she were, she would be up in the gallery with Nazira and all the other women. And she would be blisteringly angry about it.
Radu avoided Jesus’s gaze yet again and found himself staring at an equally mournful mosaic of Mary. Her head was tilted down and to one side, a miniature Christ child solemn and staring on her lap. Will you protect your city? Radu silently asked her. He knew there was one God. But in this city of mysticism steeped in so much reli
gious fervor, he could not escape the fear that the other god, the god of his childhood, lurked in the mist and the rain and the tremors of the earth. Radu was trapped behind these walls, separated from who he had become. With his tongue he cursed Muslim infidels and with his heart he prayed for constant forgiveness.
Surely the true God, the God of his heart, knew what Radu was doing here. Even if Radu himself did not.
When the liturgy finally ended, Radu wanted nothing more than to go back to Cyprian’s house and sleep for a day. But Cyprian grabbed his arm and pulled him toward a group that was milling about near Constantine.
“I wanted to introduce you to—ah, here they are!” Cyprian clasped hands warmly with two boys who shared the round-eyed, mournful faces of the mosaics around them. Radu half expected them to tilt their heads and lift their hands in various saintlike poses. Instead, they smiled shyly.
“This is John, and his brother, Manuel. My cousins. Their father was John, the emperor before Constantine.”
The older boy looked to be around eight, the younger five. They wore purple robes and gold circlets. The clasps of the chains securing their robes glittered like jewels, but as Radu looked closer, he saw they were made of glass.
Radu bowed. “I am Radu.”
The younger boy, Manuel, perked up, his round eyes growing even rounder. “From the sultan’s palace?”
“Who told you about me?” Radu asked, with a puzzled smile.
“Cyprian has told us all about you!”
Cyprian cleared his throat. “Not all about you. Just…that you saved me.”
Manuel nodded. “Is it true what they say about the sultan?”
Radu smiled to hide the pit that had opened up in his stomach. Had even this small boy heard that Radu was the sultan’s shameful plaything? Why would Cyprian have told him that? “They say many things. I am afraid you will have to be more specific.”
“That the sultan kills a man before every meal and sprinkles his food with the blood to protect himself against death.”
Radu was so relieved he had to choke back a laugh. He covered it by pretending to cough. “No, unless things have changed dramatically since I left. He prefers his food without blood, like most men.”
“I heard he is so wealthy that he had all his teeth replaced with jewels.” John, the older boy, said it with a studied casualness, but he leaned forward just as intently as his brother.
“That would make eating all his blood-sprinkled meals quite a task! But no, that is not true, either. Though he does sometimes wear a turban so large it nearly brushes the ceiling!” That was an exaggeration, but both boys nodded in wonder. “He has fountains of clear water in all his rooms, and his fingers are so heavy with jewels that he cannot sign his own name without removing his rings first.”
Manuel scowled. “I do not know why he wants our dumb city, then.”
John elbowed him sharply in the side. “You are just jealous because I am the heir to the throne and you are not.”
Manuel stuck out his tongue. “Not if you die first!”
Cyprian put a hand on both their shoulders. “No talk like that, boys.” They deflated, looking shamefacedly at the floor. “And I am going to have a word with your nurse about the rumors she is letting you hear.”
John looked up first. He lifted his chin bravely, but it trembled slightly. “Is the sultan as cruel as they say?”
Radu wanted to deny it, but he had to remember he was playing a part. “He is…very smart, and very focused. He will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. So, yes, he can be cruel.”
John nodded, then set his jaw determinedly. “Well, it does not matter. The walls will save us. And even if he gets past them, an angel will come down from heaven with flaming swords before they can pass the statue of Justinian. The infidels will never have my city.”
A loud, deep laugh sounded next to them. Constantine ruffled the boy’s brown curls, skewing the circlet to the side. “Your city? I am fairly certain it is still mine.”
John smiled, blushing. “I only meant—”
“Have no fear, John. I will take good care of it until it is your turn.”
They turned their smiles on Radu. The combined weight of their love and hope with the heavy gaze of Jesus above them nearly knocked Radu to the floor. He bowed to cover his feelings, then straightened.
“Will you join us for a meal?” Constantine asked. “It will be nice to have someone else to answer their infinite questions for once.”
“I would love to,” Radu said, still exhausted but with a spike of excitement. This was his first personal invitation to spend time with the emperor. It was a good thing. A step in the right direction. A way to feel like he was actually accomplishing something, even though he feared there was no point.
Then a tiny hand slipped into Radu’s own, and he looked down into the saintly eyes of Manuel. The little boy beamed up at him, and Radu felt his soul wilt as he smiled back.
Everything had been so normal at dinner. Even Radu had managed to relax, enjoying the food and laughter and stories. All his hopes to hear something useful were dashed in the middle of bread and meat and preserved fruit.
And that was when he had his idea.
Mehmed might have sent him in without a plan, but he could destroy the city’s chances at surviving a siege before the Ottomans ever got to Constantinople. If food made them feel normal, allowed them to continue on as though their city were not under imminent threat, the absence of food would finally make it clear they could not survive.
It would be an act of mercy, destroying the food supplies. People would be forced to flee. Even if it did not lead directly to surrender, at least it would empty the city of innocent citizens.
Orhan, the pretend heir to the Ottoman throne, proved the key to discovering the location of one of the major food supplies. Because his men were not allowed at the wall—for fear soldiers would confuse them for Turks loyal to Mehmed—they had other assignments throughout the city. And one of those assignments was patrolling and checking all the locks on a warehouse. Radu could think of no reason for its protection other than that it housed food.
It had been a simple enough task for Radu to shadow the men and find his target. But now the bigger question: how to eliminate it?
Lada would burn it down. Radu did not doubt that. But the warehouse was in the middle of a relatively populated section of the city. If he set the building on fire, the fire would spread. He could end up killing innocent citizens—and part of his motivation in doing this was to save them. He could not live with collateral damage.
Poison would have the same effect, because they would not know the food was poisoned until people were dead. And Radu had no real means of obtaining large quantities of poison, much less doing so in secret.
He was in the kitchen tearing apart bread, pondering the problem of the food, when Nazira shrieked in terror from their bedroom. He raced upstairs to find her standing on the bed. “A rat!” She pointed to a corner where a large, mangy rat seemed equally terrified of her. “Kill it!”
Radu sighed, looking for something large enough to smash the rodent. And then he stopped. A smile lit his face. “No. I am going to catch it.”
Though rats were in plentiful supply in the city, catching a significant number of them was no small task. Or rather, it was many, many small, wearying tasks. And because Radu could not risk being missed at the wall, he had to sacrifice sleep. Nazira loved the plan, but was physically incapable of interacting with rats without screaming. Screaming did not lend itself well to secrecy.
So Radu spent all night, every night, catching rats. It was a far cry from his life at the side of the sultan, but not so far from what his role had always been. Sneaking around, gathering supplies, building toward an ultimate goal.
It would have been thrilling if it did not involve so many damned rats.
“What happened to your hands?” Cyprian asked a couple of mornings into the rat adventures. He and Radu were eating toget
her on the wall, shoulder to shoulder as they looked out on the empty field that was filled nonetheless with the looming threat of the future.
Radu looked down at his fingers. “Vermin cemetery residents do not like sharing gravestones with trespassers.”
Cyprian set down his bread and took Radu’s hands in his own. He carefully examined them. Radu’s stomach fluttered. It felt like something more than fear of discovery, but he could not say what.
“Be careful,” Cyprian said, running a finger as soft as a whisper along Radu’s palm. “We need these hands.” Cyprian looked up and Radu found himself unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. Cyprian released his hands, laughing awkwardly. “We need all the hands we can get.”
“Yes,” Radu murmured, still feeling Cyprian’s finger tracing his palm.
That night, Radu had enough rats. Any more and he would not be able to carry them in secret. He waited for Orhan’s men to finish their patrol past the back doors of the warehouse. They never went inside, only checked the locks. He crept silently across the street, a wriggling, repulsive burlap sack filled to bursting slung across his back. He set the sack down and picked the lock, cursing his bitten fingers for their slowness. Cyprian had been right. They needed these hands.
Finally, shivering with nerves, Radu got the door open. Slipping inside, he made his way to the center of the vast space. Crates and barrels loomed like gravestones in the darkness. Everything smelled warm and dusty. He had guessed right about the contents of the warehouse. He used the metal rod he had brought to pry open lids, then he dumped rats into crates and barrels until his sack held only the rats that had not survived captivity. But he had managed to hit barely a third of the containers. He would have to do this every night for weeks to actually destroy all the supplies.
Burn it, Lada whispered in his mind.
“There’s always another way,” Radu answered. Thunder rumbled overhead as though agreeing with him. The city was prone to torrential downpours. Radu would need to hurry home to avoid getting caught in one. He looked up at the ceiling—