Bright We Burn

by Kiersten White

  She really was clever. Radu could not blame Mehmed for admiring her still. He could, however, wish that cleverness did not create so much extra work for himself and suffering and death for everyone else.

  One Day South of Tirgoviste

  LADA ADJUSTED HER STOLEN Janissary cap. She had not worn one in years. It was like revisiting a favorite story from childhood and realizing that while the details were the same, the entire meaning had changed. She looked over the group of twenty handpicked men, checking any last details. But they knew what they were doing. Other than Bogdan, they were her last remaining Janissaries.

  She realized with an unexpected pang that someday soon these twenty would die, too, and she would be left without any Wallachians trained by the Ottomans. An unexpected urge to leave them behind and out of harm’s way was pushed down as she cleared her throat.

  “All we are after tonight is information. How the camp is laid out. Where the pack animals are kept. Where the food and especially where the weapon stores are. How many men. Pay attention to everything, but do not be conspicuous. Tomorrow night, each of you will lead men back into camp.” Lada smiled, her teeth white as bones in the moonlight. “Tomorrow night is the fun. Tonight is the work so our fun will be fruitful.”

  Bogdan grabbed her arm as everyone scattered to enter the camp at different points. He stood too close, letting in little darkness between them. “I want to be with you.”

  “And I told you,” Lada said, pulling away, “I need you out here to signal if anything goes wrong. We can still send enough men down from the hills to create a distraction and get out. But only if you are waiting to give them the signal. Otherwise we will all be dead if any of us are caught.”

  Bogdan moved in front of her, blocking her path. “Are you going after him?”

  Lada did not have to ask whom Bogdan was referring to, but she wanted to punish him for daring to demand an answer. “No. Radu can stay there for his betrayal. I have no use for him.”

  “That is not who I meant.”

  Lada pushed forward and past Bogdan. “I am going to find where the sultan is sleeping. Perhaps I will murder him in his bed. Perhaps I will do the same to you later.”

  “Be careful,” Bogdan said, puncturing her meanness with his constant care.

  She kept walking.

  The benefit of such a massive force was that there were any number of entry points into camp, and no way for anyone to know she did not belong there. They were prepared to fend off hundreds or thousands. Not one. She slipped in among the tents, then walked with purpose. Just another Janissary who knew exactly where to go and had a job to do. The camp was well lit with torches and campfires. There was less activity than she had counted on, though. All the soldiers were, as far as she could tell, confined to their tents unless actively on patrol. And the service portion of the camp she skirted was even quieter. Perhaps they had discovered her contributions to Mehmed’s forces.

  She had a sudden image of Radu falling ill. Mehmed joined him in her imagination, both wasting away with sickness.

  No. It was not how any of them were supposed to die. So they could not. She physically shook away the image and turned sharply to go deeper into the camp.

  The lack of activity made her job slightly more difficult but also gave her some advantages. With only minimal men out and about, it would take more time for them to muster a response to any attack. Soldiers in tents were sleeping soldiers. On a campaign like this, a man never passed up an opportunity for sleep.

  She kept going, noting locations and positions of any importance. The camp was set against the hills with broad open plains on three sides. They had cut down any trees that might offer hiding places. No army could approach on horseback without being seen from a great distance. And the hills were too barren and rough for an entire army to reach under short notice. It was a smart, defensible position.

  A position that all the devastation in the countryside—too many pits in one direction, too marshy in another, rotting animal carcasses left all over another option—had subtly but surely directed them to.

  She smiled happily to herself. It would be impossible to set an army up in those hills if the army were coming now.

  But not if the army had already been there for weeks.

  She nodded companionably to a passing Janissary, then turned a corner around a cluster of tents and stopped cold.

  He never learned. In front of her was a glorious tent, taller and grander than any others in the camp. Mehmed’s name was actually written on it in the form of his flags and banners hanging slack in the still night air.

  Lada walked around back, past the Janissaries standing guard at the tent’s entrance. With a spinning sense of history repeating itself, she pulled out a knife and slit the silken material to create her own door. Then she slipped inside.

  Mehmed was sitting at a desk with his back to her. A few steps. Her knife. The end of the Ottoman campaign in Wallachia. Perhaps the end of Ottoman dominance entirely as they were plunged into a question of succession.

  “You never learn,” she said. “I have killed you again.”

  Mehmed tensed. Then he turned with a smile. He held a dagger, too. “You are late. I have been expecting you every night since I crossed the Danube.”

  For a few moments Lada stood, poised on the brink of violence. Then she stepped past Mehmed and sank down onto one of his red silk pillows, stretching out her legs on the floor. Her boots got mud on his rich carpet. “I have been rather busy. Things to do. Empires to fight. Summer holidays to plan.”

  “Am I such a low priority, then? That hurts my pride.”

  He finally stood, his movements slow and measured as though she would spook—or attack—and sat across from her. He grabbed one of her boots and tugged it off. He tapped the knife she wore hidden at her ankle, then tugged the other boot off. He shook his head, tracing that ankle sheath, too. “Both sides?”

  “I like to be prepared.”

  “I know.” Mehmed removed her wool socks, knitted for her by Oana, and began kneading her feet. She could not imagine him doing this with—for—anyone else. Certainly not any of the women in his harem. They existed to serve him.

  “I want you out of my country,” Lada said, not taking her eyes off him.

  He smiled, as dark and secret as the night. “Then why did you invite me here?”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Lada.” He moved past her feet, rubbing her tight calves. “You sent me men in boxes and an entire vassal state in turmoil. From you, that is practically courtship.”

  Lada laughed. She did not want to. She had not come here to be with him. But in spite of their history, in spite of his betrayals, he was…Mehmed. Her Mehmed. She had known as soon as she entered the tent she would not kill him. Even though she really should have, if she believed in what she had set out to do.

  She lifted a foot and put it against his chest, shoving him away. “You idiot. I should kill you.”

  He leaned back on his elbows. “Probably. And I should call my men in here and have you arrested. But I do not want to do that.” His gaze on her was far more tender and intimate than his fingers had ever been. Lada felt it through her whole body. “I want you to come back with me.”

  “I never will.”

  Mehmed sighed. “I know. But I keep pretending to myself there is a way. To get you back. To be together. I have only ever wanted you.”

  “You have wanted a tremendous amount more than me.”

  Mehmed’s grin was sharp and wicked like her knives, and just as familiar. “That is true. But I also want you.”

  “Yes, now that you have everything else you set out to gain.” Lada pulled her legs beneath her, scooting closer to him. “Is it what you hoped? Constantinople?”

  “It is more.” Mehmed paused, his expression turning wistful and forlorn. “And less, at the same
time.”

  Lada touched a corner of Mehmed’s mouth. “I understand.” It was a hard thing, setting a lofty goal and achieving it, only to realize on the other side that the work had just begun.

  “I think only you could understand me. And you? You have your country.”

  “Says the man with an army camped in reach of my capital.”

  “You know I had no other choice.”

  Lada traced one finger over Mehmed’s bottom lip, then down his chin and neck to his chest. She jabbed it there, hard enough to hurt. “You always have other choices. And you never choose my side.”

  Mehmed grabbed her finger, clutching her hand. “Because I want your side to be at my side.”

  “That will never happen.”

  “Then we are at an impasse. I cannot let your aggression stand. It sets a dangerous precedent for the other vassal states.”

  “Then give up Wallachia as a vassal state.”

  “I cannot.”

  Lada withdrew her hand, lifting a single eyebrow and letting disdain drip from her voice like grapes on a vine. “Here I thought you were the sultan. Emperor of Rome. Hand of God on Earth, or so all your missives have informed me. Were the titles lies along with everything else?”

  “If I give up ground anywhere, I risk losing it everywhere. You of all people know how tenuous power is. Can we not compromise?”

  Lada narrowed her eyes. Nicolae had told her she could and should negotiate. He whispered still, ghostly, in her ear. For once, she listened. “How would we compromise?”

  “I will agree to forgive past debts in exchange for a renewed treaty.”

  “Never.”

  Mehmed sighed, lifting his eyes to the ceiling of the tent. “I will agree to forgive past debts in return for Bucharest and new terms of vassalage.”

  “You can have no land.”

  “Ah, but you did not say no outright!” He smiled slyly at her. “You sign new terms of vassalage, I do not meddle in your country, you do not harass my borders or the borders of any of my vassal states.”

  “I will never give you boys for your Janissaries again. And I have no money—and if I did, I would spend it fighting you.”

  Mehmed laughed. “I did not ever say you had to actually give me anything. All I ask is that you sign the terms. Just sign them, allow me to leave with a treaty that is respectable and shows Europe we have an understanding, and that is the end of it.”

  “Really?” Lada leaned even closer, as though she could read him like a battle plan. Radu would have known if he was sincere. Lada did not. But she found herself hoping. “You would give up the taxes, the soldiers, everything my land has to offer?”

  “Right now all your land is offering me is swamps, poisoned wells, and the plague.” He paused. “Thank you for that one, by the way.”

  Lada grinned, elation coursing through her. “I know how much you value a clean camp. I wanted to make things interesting for you.”

  “So you agree?”

  Lada knew Mehmed would be a fool to follow through on such a disadvantageous agreement. And Mehmed was no fool. But if he left, it would give her time to organize. To muster more support. To rise to enough power to truly challenge him. Maybe he would never come back. Maybe their agreement would stand, and she would have saved her country from decades of conflict. She doubted it. But Nicolae pushed from the grave not to pass up this opportunity.

  Lada leaned close, studying Mehmed’s dark eyes, his full lips. Remembering the taste of him. “I will come back tomorrow night to sign it. And then you will take your men and leave my country.”

  “We are agreed.” Mehmed took off her Janissary cap, sighing as her hair fell free. “You know, the last time I was here, you told me you would kill me if I set foot on your soil again.”

  “Fortunately for you, you have proved useful.”

  He lowered his face to her neck, brushed his teeth along the skin there. “Let me show you how useful I can be.”

  Their actions held all the tenderness of a battle, and twice the passion. Lada had pretended what Bogdan offered was enough, but this, with someone who was truly her equal, who understood her as no one else ever could, lit her body on fire in a way she could not experience elsewhere.

  Mehmed put a hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out. She bit him, and he shuddered before collapsing beside her on the rug.

  “Marry me,” he whispered, an arm thrown over his eyes, his chest still heaving.

  Lada yanked her clothes back on, replacing her boots and shoving her hair under the Janissary cap. Then she leaned down and put her lips against Mehmed’s ear. “I would sooner kill you.”

  She left the way she had entered. But this time she was the one leaving him betrayed, not the one broken by betrayal. Because there was another reason she had agreed to his terms. It meant the Ottomans would stay in this camp, in this position, for one more night.

  And she had options if Mehmed reneged on their agreement.

  She walked through camp as though in a dream, happier and more relaxed than she had felt in months. Perhaps years. Nicolae would be proud of her. She had made the smart decision. The decision that bought her time to build, to get stronger. To continue to create the Wallachia her people deserved.

  Voices speaking in Wallachian caught her ear. She stopped. One of the voices pulled on her heart. It was a voice of her childhood, of hiding in barns, of venturing onto thin ice. Of tears and then of cold distance. A voice she had needed on her side.

  She found the tent and paused outside, leaning close to listen.

  “The Basarabs—those who are left—will support us,” said a man she did not know.

  “I suspect the Hungarian king will as well,” Radu said. “Perhaps not outright, but when Aron is on the throne, Matthias will not be a problem.”

  Lada’s hands went to her wrist daggers. But Radu’s words had already cut deep. After all this time, he was back in Wallachia. But he was here aiding her enemies. Not only Mehmed—that she had expected—but also the treacherous boyars. The ones who had killed their father. The ones who had let them be traded to the Ottomans. He had willfully become everything she stood against.

  She staggered from the physical pain of hearing him conspiring against her. Then she steeled herself, listening more carefully.

  Aron. Aron. Who was Aron? She knew the name.

  Danesti. He was the son of the Danesti prince Lada had overthrown.

  And he was in Mehmed’s camp. Even as Mehmed was offering her peace, he had a replacement ready to go.

  See, Nicolae? she thought. I am always right.

  Lada would still be coming back the following night. And she knew Mehmed would be waiting in anticipation. This time, his hopes would be met with her blade.

  One Day South of Tirgoviste

  RADU WISHED THE TENT were larger so he could pace. Anything to keep himself awake during this endless discussion of probable futures with Aron and Andrei Danesti.

  “Will you stay and help us, after we retake the throne?” Aron asked.

  Radu wanted to return to his tent and sleep. He did not want to contemplate a longer tenure in this country. They had spoken of him staying to ease the transition, but he hoped it would not be necessary. Now that he was here, all he wanted was to be elsewhere.

  “I do not know,” he said. “To be perfectly honest, I do not like Wallachia. I have no wish to remain beyond what is necessary to aid the sultan.”

  Andrei grunted. “Like it or not, it is your heritage.”

  Radu smiled tightly. “I decided long ago not to let my past dictate my future.”

  Aron met Radu’s smile with one of his own. “That is a very nice luxury.”

  Radu could not bear the judgment in the other man’s tone. He owed nothing to this country, nothing to its people. They had traded him for a few years’ peace. It
was not the Danesti’s place to imply that Radu was being selfish.

  Radu nodded and, without bidding them farewell, left the tent.

  A Janissary was standing nearby, posture stiff. He was short and stocky. Radu turned to go back to his own tent, but…something…

  Something—

  He whipped around and watched the Janissary walk away. The gait was aggressive, the movements predatory. Radu had never realized how well he knew his sister’s walk, but it was unmistakable.

  “Lada,” he said.

  She did not stop walking. He was not sure she had heard him. He could still catch up to her. Grab her arm and force her to stop. Send up an alarm and have her captured, ending this entire campaign. Once again he was faced with an opportunity to betray someone he cared about and force a quick end to violent struggle.

  Instead, he watched her leave.

  What had she been doing here? And where—

  Mehmed.

  Terror cutting a path before him, Radu raced through the camp to Mehmed’s tent. The two Janissary guards moved to bar him until they saw who he was and let him pass.

  Radu burst in to find Mehmed lying unmoving on the floor.

  And then his eyes took in all the extra information. Unmoving and completely naked. And very much alive.

  “So my sister has been here.” Radu stayed on the edge of the rug and kept his eyes on the chandelier overhead.

  Mehmed laughed sleepily. “Do not look so scandalized, Radu. We negotiated a new agreement.”

  “Negotiated. That is a use of the word I have never heard before.”

  This time Mehmed’s laugh was bright and sharp. “Radu! I did not know you could speak so.”

  Radu squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “She could have killed you.”

  “And yet, here I am. I figured out a solution. We give her what she wants, for now. She cannot sustain herself. That much is obvious. She has a few months, maybe a year, before she is driven out by Hungary or Transylvania or her own boyars. But we leave her on good terms so that when she loses it all, she will come back to us.”