They passed a high wall surrounding a lush garden, trees drooping their heavy green boughs over as an invitation. Lada saw a fig tree laden with ripe fruit just out of reach. Her stomach growled. It was Ramadan, and she and Radu were expected to observe the fasting. Lada stole food and secreted it away whenever possible, but most days she went hungry from dawn until dusk. In the corner, where the wall met the side of a small building, a sprawling, ancient grapevine clung. She climbed it, hoisting herself onto the wall.
“We should go back,” Radu whined, looking around. He rubbed his ribs anxiously, no doubt imagining a hook tearing through his muscles and organs. Radu had lost weight since they arrived, and not simply from the fasting. His cheekbones stood out starkly, making his eyes appear even larger.
“Fine. Wait there. By yourself.”
He scrambled up after her, almost toppling over the wall in his haste. They crawled onto a branch, working their way down a tree until they could drop to the ground.
The smell was not right. The green scent was too pungent, the sweetness of some flower a shade off. The mosque loomed overhead, watching. But the serpentine paths bordered by trees and wild hedges that Lada wandered made the garden feel secret. She picked several figs, offering one to Radu. He refused, so she threw it at his head.
Biting into her fig, she trailed her fingers along the rough, waxy leaves of an untrimmed hedge and pretended she was in Wallachia.
Radu heard it first. “Listen,” he whispered. “Someone is crying.”
“And it is not you. What a wonder.”
He glared at her, then strode forward with purpose. Hissing, Lada chased after him. For all Radu’s fear that they were trespassing, he was a fool and would get them caught. She turned a corner and grabbed his vest, only to stop at the sight of a boy, perhaps twelve or thirteen, curled up on the edge of a reflecting pool, weeping.
“Are you hurt?” Radu asked.
The boy looked up, his black eyes framed with lashes so thick they caught his tears and held them. His hands were covered in marks, vicious and purple. His face, too, had been punished. A bruise was forming on one cheek.
Radu peeled off his vest and soaked it in the pool. He placed the wet cloth gently over the boy’s hands to soothe the hurts. Lada had never let him do the same for her, and she had certainly never done it for him.
The boy watched, spine straight, considering them as he looked down his long, straight nose. His full lips were pursed against the pain. “My tutor,” he said. “Father gave him permission to hit me for disobedience.”
Radu dipped his hand in the water and brought it up to the boy’s cheek. The boy seemed startled. He regarded Lada with expectant imperiousness, as though inviting her, too, to attend to him. She folded her arms and looked down her hooked nose at him. “If you are too weak to stand being hit and too stupid to avoid it, then you deserve more pain.”
Anger flared the boy’s nostrils. “Who are you?”
Lada leaned against a tree, plucked another fig, and took the biggest, messiest bite she could. “I am Lada Dragwlya, the daughter of Wallachia.”
“You should be fasting.”
She spat the pulpy skin at his feet, and took another bite.
He frowned thoughtfully. “I could have you killed for that.”
Radu trembled, starting to bow.
“Oh, stand up, Radu.” Lada grabbed his shirt and yanked him upright. “He is a stupid boy. If even the tutors are allowed to beat him, I doubt the head gardener is under his command. He is probably a pampered captive, like us.” She felt no sympathy for the boy. He reminded her of what she was—powerless, young—and it made her angry.
The boy stood, stomping a foot. “I am no slave. This is my city!”
Lada snorted. “And I am the queen of Byzantium.” She turned on her heel, pulling Radu along.
“I will see you again!” the boy called. It was not a question, but a command.
“I will burn your city to the ground,” Lada called back over her shoulder. The boy’s only response was a burst of surprised laughter. Lada was shocked when her lips answered with their first smile in weeks.
Lada furiously scrubbed the blood from her nightclothes.
As she did, she cursed her mother, for making her a girl.
She cursed her father, for leaving her here.
And she cursed her own body, for leaving her so vulnerable.
She was so busy with a stream of cursing that she did not hear the door open.
“Oh,” said the maid, a girl fragile and darting as a bird.
Lada looked up in horror. Evidence of her womanhood draped over her hands, the red an undeniable testament. She had been caught. An image of herself crawling and weeping swept through her mind. That was what a wife was. What a wife did.
And now this maid, this spy, knew she was old enough to be a wife.
With a scream, Lada jumped on the maid, hitting her around the head. The maid dropped to the floor, bracing against the blows and crying out. Lada did not stop. She hit and kicked and bit, all while screaming obscenities in every language available to her.
Arms pulled at her, a voice she knew pleading desperately, but she did not stop. She could not stop. This was the end of her last shred of freedom, all because of the prying eyes of a maid.
In the end, it took two palace guards to pull her off. Radu looked at her with the terror of a small prey animal startled from its den. Lada would not answer his questions. It did not matter. Nothing mattered anymore.
Lada had been expecting punishment, so the invitation to join women for an afternoon meal came as a shock. She was escorted by a narrow-shouldered bald man to a section of the palace she had never visited.
Two women stood when she entered the elegant room. One was young, perhaps only a few years Lada’s senior. She had her hair wrapped in a cheerful blue scarf, with a veil over the lower half of her face. Her eyes were big and projected a brilliant smile.
Lada flinched as the woman rushed forward, but she only took her hands and squeezed them.
She spoke Turkish. “You must be Ladislav. You poor dear. Come, sit. I am Halima. This is Mara.”
Lada allowed herself to be pulled toward the cushions around a table, taking in the other woman, who sat straight-backed and corseted, her structured dress in contrast to Halima’s flowing layers of silk. This woman’s hair was dark brown, elaborately curled and formally twisted in the style of the Serbian courts.
“Why am I here?” Lada asked, tone as blunt as she could manage in her confusion.
“Because no one knew what else to do with you.” Mara’s tone was cold, her eyes narrowed. “When they discovered why you beat that poor child, the men refused to acknowledge the topic further. We were asked to speak with you about your feminine issues.”
“Did you not understand what was happening?” Halima leaned forward, eyes crinkling in sympathy. “You must have been so frightened! I knew to expect my monthly courses, and still I nearly fainted at the blood! But here you are, with only your brother. You must meet with us, let us teach you and help you.” She clapped her hands together in delight. “It will be fun!”
Lada remained where she was, standing stiffly by the table. “I want nothing you can offer.”
“Oh, but you must have questions! Do not be afraid. You cannot embarrass us. We are wives, after all.”
“That is exactly the fate I am trying to avoid,” Lada muttered.
“Then you are a fool,” Mara answered.
“Oh, be kind, Mara! She does not understand. It is a wonderful thing, being a wife! Murad is so attentive, and we are taken care of better than we could ever hope for.” There was no hint of furtiveness or secrecy in Halima’s tone. Her statement was as honest as her big, stupid eyes.
“You are married to Murad?” Lada asked, the sultan’s name foul on her tongue.
“We both are.” Halima smiled brightly. Lada looked in horror toward Mara.
Mara’s smile was the bitter winter to Hali
ma’s brilliant spring. “Yes. We are both his wives, among other wives and many concubines.”
Lada recoiled. “That is an abomination.”
“If I recall correctly,” Mara said, “your father has another son, from a mistress.”
Lada did not answer, but her face was confirmation. They never spoke of the other Vlad, but Lada knew he existed.
Halima gestured eagerly, as though she could pluck the thoughts from Lada’s mind and smooth them out into more pleasant shapes. “That is how it is done here. Men are allowed to have more than one wife, if they can provide for them. And the sultan has a tradition of keeping a harem. We are all loved and cared for. It is such a privilege to be a wife!”
Mara took a sip of tea from a delicate teacup, unlike any Lada had seen. When she spoke, she spoke in Hungarian. “Halima is an idiot.”
Halima tilted her head to the side. “What?”
Mara continued. “She is a child. She fancies herself a princess in a tale. Murad choosing her as a wife from among the harem was the biggest thing a girl like Halima could ever accomplish. I do not know whether to strangle her or to do everything in my power to keep her in her glittering fantasy.”
Lada answered in Hungarian, intrigued by Mara’s honesty. “What about you?”
“I am here for the same reason you are. My marriage to Murad was the seal of a truce with my father and Serbia. My presence here keeps Serbia free.”
Lada scoffed. “But Serbia is not free.”
Mara raised a single eyebrow. “What do you think freedom is?”
“The right to rule yourself! Not to be beholden to a foreign nation for safety.”
“Every country is beholden to other nations for safety. That is what treaties and borders are.”
“But this is different!”
“How so?”
“You! You should not be forced into a marriage! It is not fair.”
Halima coughed deliberately, her lips turned down. “Perhaps we could speak in a language everyone understands? So no one’s feelings are hurt by being left out?”
Mara continued without acknowledging her fellow wife. “Hmm. And what do you think would have happened to me if I had stayed in Serbia? I would have been married to another man not of my choosing. I despise my husband and this entire empire, but at least here I have accomplished something. Halima’s marriage to Murad keeps her safe and taken care of. My marriage to Murad keeps all of Serbia safe and taken care of. It is not fair, no. But it is more important than fairness. Do you love Wallachia?”
Lada scowled at the trap of the question. She knew where it would lead, but she had to answer truthfully. “Yes.”
“Just as I love Serbia. I serve my country and my family by being exiled. We must all do what we can, Ladislav. This was my contribution.”
Halima cleared her throat prettily. “Are we ready to speak in Turkish now? I thought of some advice I would like to give Ladislav!”
Lada picked her way through the meal, observing the two varieties of wife before her. She could never be like Halima, grateful and naive. But could she be like Mara—resigned to a fate she did not choose, in defense of her country?
Halima kept up a chirping discourse, talking of nothing of substance with such dreamlike joy Lada almost understood Mara’s protectiveness of her. There was something comforting about the mindlessness of it all. And Lada enjoyed Mara’s wry, biting comments, often delivered in a language Halima did not understand. Maybe Lada would ask to meet with them again. It would be nice to have someone to talk to besides Radu and their hated tutors.
Halima was in the middle of a lengthy story. “…and Emine, she is my dear friend, you know she joined the harem on her own! It was quite the scandal. She left her family and walked right in! Of course they had to take her then, her family would not have her back, and so—”
“What?” Lada interrupted, confused. “Simply because she entered the harem?”
“Oh yes! That is why we met you here. If you enter the harem building, you are technically the property of the sultan! It has to be that way, you know. To protect the bloodline.”
Mara noted Lada’s look of horror with a bleak smile. When she had finished eating, she primly wiped her mouth. She spoke in Hungarian again. “It is good for you to be with us. Try to be like this beautiful idiot. The sooner you stop fighting, the easier your life will be. This is what your purpose is.”
Lada stood so abruptly she nearly fell backward. “No.”
She turned and fled from Mara’s heavy, knowing gaze, feeling the weight of it on her shoulders for long after.
THE MAN WAS FAT.
Tiny purple veins painted his face, webbing out from around his nose. His eyes were watery, his jaw weak, his fingers strained around too-tight rings.
He trembled with age, illness, or nerves. Lada trembled with rage.
Radu silently prayed to whichever god was listening that she would not get them both killed. He had no idea what set her off on that poor maid, but she had drawn official attention as being a problem. Now they stood in one of the opulent courtrooms of the palace. There was more silk and gold in this single room than in the whole caste at Tirgoviste. Various dignitaries stood nearby, murmuring among themselves, waiting their turn to speak with Halil Pasha, the horrible man who had made Radu and Lada watch their first impalings. Normally Radu would have seized this opportunity to listen in and get a feel for the court, but he was too sick with fear and could look only at Lada. If only Kumal were here, if only he lived in the capital. Radu knew he would help them.
But they had no friends, no allies. No help.
Lada did not look around the room. She stared directly ahead at Halil Pasha, who was finishing the contract that would betroth her to the Ottoman next to her.
“Your father will be pleased,” Halil Pasha said, giving Lada a thin-lipped smile. “It is a great honor to the Draculesti line for you to marry here.”
Radu’s would-be brother-in-law signed his name, the ink scratching out along the paper in blotchy lines like the veins on his face.
Lada spoke with a quiet, clear voice, and the room hushed in surprise. No one expected a girl to speak. She was probably not allowed to. Radu knew Lada would not care either way. “On our wedding night,” she said, “I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.”
Lada’s intended dropped the quill. A single spot of ink bled onto the marble floor. Halil Pasha stared at her, his thin smile transformed into an expression of dangerous consideration.
Radu stumbled toward them, trying desperately to think of a way to ease this situation. Then someone laughed, puncturing the silence of the room. Radu turned, surprised to find the weeping boy from the garden standing near the door beside a gaunt, bespectacled man.
Radu had looked for the boy whenever they went out or were near a court function. In the two months since, he had never seen him again, but it did not stop his eyes from hoping to find a friend.
Now, however, Radu had no hope left to give.
The boy whispered something to his companion, whose brows came down around his glasses. He murmured something back, but the boy shook his head, watching Lada with merriment dancing across his face. She stared coolly back.
Radu wondered whether Lada or himself would be killed first. Would it be worse to watch it happen to Lada and know what was coming, or to…no, it would be worse to be second. He hoped they killed him first. Perhaps that was ungenerous, but this was all Lada’s fault.
The gaunt man motioned to two soldiers who wore cylindrical brass hats with a long flap of white cloth to show their rank as Janissaries. Radu always looked closely at Janissaries, hoping to find Lazar, but this city determinedly refused him friends. Then the man and the boy from the garden turned and left. Radu’s
eyes followed them until they disappeared.
Lada’s intended looked like one of the fish they had kept in the fountains circling the castle at Tirgoviste. Mouth open, then closed, then open. He shrugged at Halil Pasha, clearing his throat. “Perhaps the sultan— Perhaps another arrangement could be— I would never question the sultan’s judgment, but—”
He was flustered, a bit outraged, but it was apparent from the faces around them that no one took Lada’s threat seriously.
Radu knew she had meant every word.
The soldiers appeared at her side. “She is to come with us.”
Lada leveled a flat stare at her intended. He began to smile—a dismissive, smug smile—but something about the intensity of her gaze froze it halfway, so he looked imbecilic. The way his eyes widened showed that, at last, he realized her threat had not been idle.
He took a small step back.
Lada followed the soldiers out of the room without even glancing at Radu. Halil Pasha watched them leave, and something in his gaze told Radu that he knew more about what was going on than they did. And he was not pleased.
“Wait!” Radu ran to catch up. He held out his hands in supplication. “Please, she did not mean any harm. She was teasing. In Wallachia, it is customary for…betrothed couples to…threaten each other. As a sign of affection. When our parents were betrothed, our mother told our father she would disembowel him and wear his intestines around her neck as jewelry.”
The two soldiers stared at Radu, believing every ridiculous lie coming out of his mouth. Lada stifled a laugh. How could she be so calm?
Stop it, he begged her every night. Stop making them angry. Stop making them hurt us. It is your fault. You will get us both killed.
Finally, she had snapped at him, No one will kill you.
But if they kill you, I will be alone. And I will want to die.
He did not want to die at all, but he definitely did not want to die second. Radu met his sister’s eyes, sending her all his heartbroken betrayal. She could not even pretend to be civil to save their lives.
And I Darken Page 8
