Now I Rise

by Kiersten White

  Hunyadi huffed, waving away the words with his hands. “Italians. They have no honor. If we let the Muslims take Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Christendom, what is next? Transylvania? Hungary? Long have we stood between Islam’s expansion and the rest of Europe. As defenders of Christ, we cannot ignore the plight of Constantinople.”

  Lada watched, trying to figure out Hunyadi’s angle. The Ottoman Empire already surrounded Constantinople. If the city fell, it gave them a virtually impregnable capital, but it did not move them any closer to Hungary or the rest of Europe. The threat was merely spiritual, not physical. It would be demoralizing to lose the great city, but not damaging. At least not to Hungary.

  “You have led us against a sultan before,” said one of the men, his head shiny and bald, but his beard still dark. “We fought with you at Varna. We lost. We lost our king. Hungary still suffers the consequences and will continue to until the crown is once again stable. Why would we risk that again for Constantinople?”

  “It is not about Hungary. It is about Christianity. Have you heard of the priest who led peasants—ordinary peasants!—against the Ottomans? They drove them back with the ferocity of their faith! They won a decisive and shocking victory, because Christ was on their side.”

  “Yes,” the bald man said, rubbing his face wearily. “And then the priest caught the plague and most of the peasants froze to death.”

  Lada watched as Hunyadi tugged on his beard, trying to impose his intensity on the other men. He had no angle, she realized. There was no political advantage for him, personally, at Constantinople. If anything, he stood to lose all he had worked so hard to build here for himself and his son.

  Listening to him talk and argue, Lada could not help but be stirred. He was passionate and charming, utterly adamant in his belief that defending Constantinople was the right thing to do. She weighed it against Mehmed’s fervent desire for the city. She knew others thought he did it for gain—even his own men wanted the city only for the rumored riches—but that was not what moved Mehmed. Mehmed felt the weight of prophecy and the burden of his god on his shoulders. That would not disappear until he took the city or died trying.

  Lada wondered how the world could survive with men such as Mehmed and Hunyadi on opposite sides. Or perhaps that was how it did survive. If they served the same purpose, she could not imagine any nation not falling before their combined might.

  Each god, Christian and Muslim, had champions, keeping the other at bay.

  Whose side would she fall on? Could she join Hunyadi?

  Could she go against Mehmed?

  That evening Lada walked, Stefan at her side. He did not have much to report, other than that the king’s mother did not like Hunyadi and was trying to either subvert or marry him.

  “What do you think about Constantinople?” Lada asked, looking up through the bare branches at the twilight sky.

  “Hunyadi does not have enough support to go fight, but he will. The king’s mother is encouraging him. She hopes he will die there, and solve some of her problems. She will make certain he has the forces and the funding he needs.”

  “I mean you. What do you think? What do the men think? If I asked them to march with Hunyadi and defend the walls…would they?”

  Stefan was quiet for a long time. Then he lifted his shoulders. “I think they would.”

  “But it is not our goal. It is not what has kept us together.”

  “Goals change,” he said simply. “If you ask, most will follow.”

  “Will you?”

  A ghost of a smile disrupted the blank space of his face. “I do not know.”

  Lada nodded, looking back up at the sky. “That is fine. I do not know, either.”

  Two weeks after the council about Constantinople, Hunyadi invited Lada to dine in the castle. She always ate with her men, so this was unusual. Against her better judgment, she agreed, but only after Hunyadi said she did not have to wear a dress. She would not put herself through that again.

  She entered the dining room with her back as straight as a sword, hair tied in a black cloth in defiance of the elaborate styles of the Hungarian court.

  She need not have worried so much. Dress or trousers, curls or cloth, she was still invisible.

  As dishes of food were passed by servants, Lada tried to listen to the conversations around her. Her dinner companions spoke of people she did not know, of matters that did not concern her. Nowhere was there anything for her to contribute to or even enjoy. The familiarity of it all exhausted her. It was the same as what she had grown up with: circles of gossip, words and favors traded for power, deals made for which the nobility would see none of the work and all of the benefit.

  Since she had nothing to offer anyone, no one paid her the slightest mind. Hunyadi fared better. He was wildly popular, regaled with requests to tell stories of his conquest. But his otherness was inescapable. He was a soldier, through and through, and though he was undeniably charming, there was a gruff directness to him that was out of place here. The nobles deferred to him with a certain patronizing arrogance. The king’s mother, Elizabeth, asked him for story after story, each circling back to his childhood.

  Lada realized with a spike of anger what it was: Hunyadi was their pet. They were proud of his accomplishments, boastful of what he had done, but they would never, ever see him as their equal. And Elizabeth made certain no one forgot where he came from.

  He was worth more than every glittering waste of a person in this whole castle.

  Though Hunyadi never drank when they were campaigning or riding, Lada watched as he downed glass after glass of wine. She revised her previous thought that he was doing better than she. He was miserable. As the meal broke up and people stood in groups to talk, Hunyadi suggested dancing several times. Lada had seen him dance—he was a wonderful dancer—and she understood his need to do something with his body. Movement was freedom. But there were no musicians, and his suggestions were met with laughter, as though he jested.

  Lada stomped across the room and took his elbow. “I need him,” she snapped at the courtesans polluting the air with their aggressive perfume. They pouted, protesting mildly that he had not finished his story, but as soon as Lada removed Hunyadi they filled the space as though he had never existed.

  “Thank you,” Hunyadi said, swaying slightly. “These people are more terrifying than a contingent of Janissaries.”

  “And far more ruthless.”

  Lada guided him toward the door, but he stumbled to a stop, a smile of true joy parting the haze of alcohol on his expression. “Matthias!”

  Matthias, his own auburn hair oiled and carefully styled, unlike his father’s mane, paused in his conversation with several other men. Lada knew he had heard Hunyadi, but he continued as though he had not.

  “Matthias!” Hunyadi barreled over, clapping his hands on the young man’s shoulders. Matthias’s answering smile was as carefully styled as his hair.

  “Father.”

  “Matthias, I wanted you to meet Lada Dracul.” Hunyadi turned back to her and gestured at Matthias with unabashed pride. Matthias’s answering whisper of a sneer made Lada wish to run her sword through him.

  He gave her a perfunctory bow. “So you are the feral girl of Wallachia he has taken under his wing.” The men around him laughed. One made an obscene gesture behind Hunyadi’s back. Their opinion of her relationship with him was evident. Lada sensed that Matthias had never been privy to his father’s idea of marrying them.

  “Lada single-handedly defeated a whole Bulgar contingent. Saved my life. And she grew up with Sultan Mehmed. Invaluable insight. Very clever.” Hunyadi smiled at Lada with the same level of pride as he had shown for his son, and something inside her broke.

  “Is that so?” One of the men leaned forward, leering. “Tell me, is it true what they say? That he has one thousand women in his harem, and another harem made up entirely of boys?”

  Lada felt the familiar stab of anger that always accompanied menti
on of the harem, and a brief spike of fear. A male harem? Was such a thing possible? Was Radu…She shoved those feelings down with an unexpected defensiveness on her brother’s behalf. How must Radu, already tormented by the impossibility of his love, feel when he heard such insinuations used as slander?

  Besides, these men did not know Mehmed. How dare they speak of him this way? She raised an eyebrow coolly. “If you are so interested in male harems, I can introduce you to the sultan. Though you are not quite pretty enough for his tastes.”

  The man’s face turned a dangerous shade of red. Hunyadi let out a barking burst of laughter and clapped Matthias on the back. His son cringed, then carefully reset his face. “I believe Elizabeth would like to speak to you,” he said to his father.

  Hunyadi groaned.

  The leering man spoke again. “I believe she would like to do more than speak with you.” Matthias pretended outrage, but it was all in jest. Hunyadi was embarrassed. Response was impossible. He could not impugn Elizabeth’s honor, nor did he want to criticize Matthias’s friends.

  Lada could bear no more. “The room is too warm. Will you see me out?” Hunyadi nodded graciously, offering his arm. She steered him once more toward the door and grabbed a bottle of wine on their way. She handed it to him wordlessly. They walked through the center courtyard, then over the bridge, descending the bank to a bare weeping willow. Hunyadi slipped several times, nearly taking them both down.

  Lada’s thoughts were on Mehmed. It was so strange, hearing accounts of the Mehmed that the world saw—seemingly infinite versions of the same person, each distorted and exaggerated. But she knew the real him.

  Or did she?

  He had spied on her. He had sent her to Wallachia with his support, and then supported her rival. He had married and fathered children, all while professing his love for her. And through it all, he had never taken his sights off Constantinople. He would not, could not. Not even for her.

  Could she really consider fighting for Constantinople, knowing it would be going directly against Mehmed and everything he had been to her? She did not think she could raise a sword against him. As much as she loved Hunyadi and hated the Ottomans, it would not be the Ottomans she would truly be fighting. It would be Mehmed.

  She remembered those warm nights together, cocooned in her room, plotting and planning the attack on the city. It had felt like playing pretend. But it had never been pretend for Mehmed. Constantinople was his dream, the one thing he would not give up. Everything was to that end. Including supporting her rival on the Wallachian throne. He had sacrificed her dreams for his.

  Maybe she would go to defend the walls.

  “Did you see him?” Hunyadi said, once they were sitting.

  Lada startled out of her thoughts. “Mehmed?”

  Hunyadi laughed. “No! My son! He looks like a king.”

  Lada thought that was not a thing to be proud of. She weighed her next words as judiciously as she could. “He is nothing like you.”

  Hunyadi smiled, nodding. “I know. I do not understand him. But I have worked with blood and sweat my whole life so he could have access to everything that I never could. My sword has cut a way to the courts for him. He never has to do what I have done. I gave him that.” Hunyadi lowered his head, closing his eyes. “I think he has a chance at the throne. Can you imagine? I am the son of peasants, and my son could be king. Everything I have done, all that I have lost, all the struggle and death. It was for him.”

  Lada remembered the look of pride he had given her. Matthias did not deserve Hunyadi. “I wish you had been my father,” she said. If Hunyadi were her father, everything would be easier. She would jump at the chance to crusade with him, to fight at his side.

  If Hunyadi were her father, she would never have known Mehmed, never had her loyalties twisted and tugged into strange new shapes. And her heart would not have to constantly shield itself from the part that missed Mehmed so desperately. Hunyadi would have protected Radu, too. And Radu would have appreciated him in a way Matthias was incapable of.

  Hunyadi patted her arm with his heavy hand. “Do not wish away what you are. If you were my daughter, I would have extinguished your fire long ago. I would have given you the best tutors and the finest clothes and made you into a pretty doll to be traded away in marriage. I did the same with my son; I made him into someone I do not know, and it fills me with both pride and sadness. That is the best we can do for our children—turn them into strangers with better hopes than we ever had. Your father was a fool and a coward, but his choices shaped you into the fearsome creature you are. I do not want to imagine a world in which you are not you.”

  For years Lada had nurtured only hatred for her father, to take away the pain that loving him had left her with. But that night in her tent as she drifted to sleep, she let some of it go. Because she, too, was grateful for who she was. She would not wish any part of herself away.

  Which meant she was still left with the question of what to do with the parts that loved Mehmed and the parts that wanted to fight at Hunyadi’s side.

  THREE HOURS AFTER LEAVING Edirne, Radu, Cyprian, and Nazira heard a horse galloping madly toward them. They pulled their horses to the side of the road. Cyprian drew his sword, and Radu copied him, though he could not imagine who might be pursuing them. Certainly not Mehmed’s forces. Perhaps one of the ambassadors had somehow discovered their deception, and was riding to warn Cyprian?

  The horse, lathered and shivering, was drawn to an abrupt stop in front of them. “He has killed them!” the rider shouted.

  “Valentin?” Cyprian sheathed his sword. It was the thatch-haired boy who had helped them in the stables.

  Valentin tried to dismount, but fell roughly to the ground instead. “He killed them!”

  Cyprian jumped from his horse, grabbing Valentin. “What do you mean? Why are you here?”

  “He killed them! At the party. The sultan killed them. He killed them all.”

  Cyprian looked up at Radu and Nazira in horror. “Did you know?”

  Radu shook his head, numb with shock. He had not known. This, then, was Mehmed’s declaration of war. Radu knew that lives would be lost—of course they would, that was the price of a siege—but this felt so personal. So…excessive. It felt more like murder than war. He had no doubt Mehmed had his reasons, and if Mehmed could explain them, Radu would understand.

  Unbidden, the image of the ambassadors lying on the gleaming tile floor, blood pooling around them, came to Radu’s mind. Sour acid rose in his throat, threatening to come out. Surely there had been a reason. “I did not know,” he whispered.

  Cyprian cradled the boy, still looking up at Radu and Nazira. “Your timing saved my life. I owe you everything, and will call you friends to my dying day.”

  Nazira and Radu looked at each other as the full weight of what they were in the middle of finally descended on their shoulders.

  Three days later, Radu’s assumption that Nazira would require a lot of help on the road was heartily disproved. She had packed not only her essentials but also provisions. Radu had not even thought of it, a fact that was not lost on Nazira. She batted her eyes slyly at him as she started a fire effortlessly and pulled out food from a saddlebag. “We wives are very useful things to have around,” she said.

  Radu huddled close to the fire, grateful for the heat and for Nazira’s skills. “And all this time I thought you were merely decorative.”

  Cyprian gave a small laugh, while Radu and Nazira traded a secret smile over how true her decorative role actually was. It was good to hear Cyprian laugh. He had understandably been in a pall since receiving news of the murders.

  Assassinations, Radu corrected himself. Political, not personal. That made them assassinations, not murders. Which he found easier to stomach, though neither was pleasant.

  “How much farther to the city?” Radu asked.

  “We should be there tomorrow.” They had taken a wandering route, fueled by the servant Valentin’s terror and Cypri
an’s fear of pursuit. Radu and Nazira could not very well assure their traveling companions that Mehmed wanted them all to arrive safely, so they toiled along little-used roads and through backcountry.

  Nazira dished out soup and then settled in next to Radu.

  “You even remembered spices?” Radu said. The soup was deliciously hot on his tongue.

  “You married extremely well, Radu.” She leaned against his free arm. Radu looked up to see Cyprian watching them with a forlorn, wistful expression.

  Nazira noticed it, too. “Are you married, Cyprian?”

  He shook his head as though coming out of a daze and looked down at his bowl. “No.”

  “I wondered if you were going home to a wife. Did you grow up in Constantinople?”

  He nodded, soaking the now-stale flatbread in the soup to soften it.

  Nazira continued asking questions, pumping Cyprian for information. Radu was both proud of her and sad that it was necessary. “Do you have family there still?”

  “Yes. Sort of.” Cyprian’s smile twisted and did not touch his eyes. “My father is Demetrios.”

  “The despot?” Radu asked, surprised. Constantine’s two brothers, Demetrios and Thomas, ruled other areas in the Peloponnese. They were often at odds with each other, enemies as frequently as they were allies. Radu could not understand why one of them would allow his son to be an ambassador. It was a job of dubious prestige, thankless and, frankly, dangerous. Ambassadors were as likely to be killed by foreign courts as their own if they brought back undesirable reports.

  Cyprian nodded. “I am, unfortunately, a bastard. My mother was his mistress. So I am not as valuable as his legitimate sons. Constantine took me in and gave me a position in his court as a favor to my mother.”

  “Was she from Cyprus?” Nazira asked.

  Cyprian’s expression softened. “She named me after her island. She always said I was her home wherever she was.”

  Nazira sighed prettily. “I like her very much already. Have you ever been to Cyprus? I hear it is beautiful.”