Lada righted her chair, dragged it back to the table, and sat. “We have too much to do to worry about who sent an assassin. And now we are down one trusted ally, so there is more work for everyone. The first problem is that we do not have enough men. Even if we conscript convicts and vagrants, we are massively outnumbered. I am expecting Mehmed to come with at least twenty thousand, probably thirty or forty. Right now, at most, we have five.”
“Lada.” Daciana leaned across the table with a hand outstretched. “Let me help. Take some time.”
Lada stared at Daciana’s hand, then looked up into her face. Daciana was strong. All Wallachian women were—they could not be otherwise and still survive. Lada smiled. They would help. “The women can fight. This is their country as much as the men’s.”
Bogdan scoffed. “The women?”
His mother slapped his shoulder. “We are no delicate flowers. We break our backs with the washing and the tilling of soil and the bearing of children. We can beat an enemy as handily as we beat a rug.”
Lada nodded. “Anyone strong enough will fight. Men, women, it does not matter. We have a lot of work to do before the actual fighting begins, and we only have until mid-spring. Mehmed will not come until then.” Logistically it was impossible. He would wait until there was no risk of freezing to death, until there was scavenging of the land available to help feed his men. “We will start gathering and training women immediately. Children and the elderly will be sent into the mountains.”
“What about the sick?” Daciana asked, her tone wry.
“Oh, I have other plans for them.” Lada smiled at the woman’s confused look.
Stefan sat motionless, always the last to attract attention. “We will still be outmanned and out-trained. What else do we have?”
“Matthias.”
“You trust him?”
“Not at all. But I have word that he received money from the pope to fight the infidels. And he does not want to face an entire Ottoman army camped on his borders. It is in his best interest to keep Wallachia free. He will help.”
Stefan looked troubled.
“What?” Lada said.
“I do not trust him to use the money for what it is intended. He has been trying to raise money for other purposes for a long time.”
Stefan waited, placid and patient. He already had a conclusion, Lada could sense it. Frustrated, she sorted through what she knew of Matthias. What he would need money for. Then she threw her head back and glared at the ceiling. “The crown taken by Poland. The crown he could not afford to get back.” She swore, grinding her teeth. “That stupid, pointless crown. He is still fixated on it, doubtless. But he took the money with the promise of fighting infidels. He cannot bring the ire of the entire Catholic Church on his head. He will have to come.”
Stefan did not respond.
Lada shrugged against the cold prickling of fear on the back of her neck. “He will come, or he will pay for it, one way or another.”
“I think he will come,” Bogdan said, smiling encouragingly at her.
“I think you know nothing of Matthias, and therefore should not volunteer an opinion on this subject,” Lada snapped. Bogdan flinched as though struck. Oana shifted in her seat, but Lada avoided looking at either of them. She was not fair to him. But she was prince; she did not have to be fair.
“Do we have any money?” Oana asked, neatly changing the subject.
“No.” She should have waited another year or two, let the country settle, let tax revenue come in. But the idea of sitting in this castle, slowly gathering coins, eyeing a future where Wallachia would be free when it was already agonizingly close … She should have waited, but she never could have.
“Weapons?” Daciana asked.
“My cousin Stephen cannot send us troops, but he has sent some gunpowder and hand cannons. We will have to use them strategically. We have plenty of bows and crossbows.”
“What are all those carpenters doing?” Bogdan asked. Lada had invited everyone with knowledge of carpentry and experience clearing forests to the capital. She had several of her men supervising the enormous task. It did not require a tremendous amount of skill, simply a tremendous amount of supplies and manpower.
Lada smiled again. “They are attending to a different project.”
“So we have men and women. And sick people, apparently.” Daciana watched as Stefan made notes, calculating roughly how many additional troops they would have if a significant portion of the country’s women were conscripted. “Some gunpowder. Some hand cannons. Do we fortify the cities?”
“No,” Lada said. “In any siege situation, we lose. We never let it come to that.”
Stefan nodded in silent agreement.
Daciana watched him, fear forming new lines around her eyes. “Will what we have be enough?”
“No.” Lada leaned forward, looking at Stefan’s calculations. They would be outnumbered at least four to one. Probably more, depending on just how big an example Mehmed wanted to make of her. And she was missing so many things she needed. People, too. Nicolae. Petru. And Radu.
But she would do this in spite of what she lacked. She was strong enough. Her country was strong enough. She would show Mehmed exactly why he could never own Wallachia, why he could never own her.
“We have something else: our land. I will use every single league of it against the Ottomans.” Out of habit, Lada’s fingers touched the knives at her wrists. “The empire is coming for us, and I intend to win.”
16
Constantinople
MEHMED RESTED A tentative hand on Radu’s back. “At least Kumal died knowing his sister was safe.”
Radu was leaning forward, head cradled in his hands. He had left Nazira and Fatima—finally asleep, thankfully, curled around each other with faces pale and hollowed out by grief—after a long, restless night. Radu had not slept. He had not eaten. He had no desire to do either.
“We could not have known—”
Radu sighed to stop Mehmed from talking. Mehmed moved the hand on his back but did not shift away. They sat, shoulder to shoulder, in Mehmed’s private chamber.
Radu’s voice was filled with the tiny fissures that ran through his whole soul now. “We could have known. We should have known. Of everyone in the world, we should have been the last to underestimate her. And I knew she hated Kumal. She has always hated him. I was so eager to see Nazira and to find out—” He stopped, holding back the next words. To find out Cyprian’s fate as well. “And to find out what had happened to her that I did not think. Kumal paid the price I should have.”
“If you had gone, we would have lost you.”
“She would not kill me.” Radu paused. In fact, Lada had promised to do just that one day. “Regardless, I was her target. Kumal took my place. It is my fault he is dead.”
“It is Lada’s fault.”
“Well, then it is our fault. We are the ones who put her in that position.”
Mehmed stood. There was a cold pride in his expression that Radu had never felt directed at himself when they were alone. It was a sultan look, not a Mehmed look.
“She made her own decisions. I did not ask her to attack Bulgaria. I have done everything I could to help her.”
Radu lifted an eyebrow, too exhausted with grief and guilt to defer to Mehmed’s needs. “Have you? Really?”
A flicker of guilt shifted behind Mehmed’s eyes. Then he turned away, clasping his hands as he paced. “We cannot let this stand. She murdered my ambassadors, attacked one of my vassals, and murdered a pasha on a diplomatic mission.”
“A kidnapping mission.”
Mehmed stopped, startled by the correction. “Radu,” he said, his voice a reprimand.
Radu shrugged. “Why must we pretend when it is only the two of us?”
Mehmed’s eyebrows drew close, his mouth tightening into a line somewhere between a challenge and a smile. “Oh, are you done pretending? Is it time for honesty?”
Radu looked at the floor. His face burned brighter than the room’s coal brazier.
Mehmed crouched before him, forcing Radu to meet his eyes. “I am sorry, my friend. But I cannot let this stand. It threatens everything I have built—everything we have built. It is too dangerous a precedent. I have to go after her.”
“I understand. And I am not against it.” Radu hated that the death of one man felt worse than the death of thousands in Bulgaria. But this was personal. Lada had made certain of that. He suspected she wanted them to attack, though he could not fathom why.