“I am glad it is you.” Her heart still raced as she replaced her dagger in its wrist sheath.
He remained as unmoving and still as his expression. His was such a forgettable face that when he was away, Lada had a hard time remembering what, exactly, he looked like. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the side as though Lada were a problem to be solved.
“I have been paid a tremendous amount of money to kill you.” His voice was so emotionless it took Lada several seconds to process what he had said.
Her hand twitched toward her wrist, but she stopped. She knew how deadly Stefan was. She had taken great pride in it. It was rather less pleasant knowing that, if he wanted her dead, she already was. At first, anger and sadness bubbled to the surface. But they were replaced with a bleak sort of pleasure. Had she not hoped that someday someone would realize she was deserving of an assassin of Stefan’s caliber?
She would have preferred that day never come. But it was validating in its own morbid way.
“How much?” she asked.
“More than you have left to fund this fight.” He reached into his vest—his movements deliberate and slow—and pulled out a leather pouch. He tossed it onto the bed behind her. “That is not all of it. Or even most of it.” This time a hint of a smile, like a quickly fading dream, brushed over his face. “But you can use it how you see fit.”
“So you are not going to kill me.”
“I considered it.”
She appreciated his honesty. If she had to kill him, she would be very sorry. “Why?”
“Because if whoever wants you dead is willing to offer this much gold, someone will do the job sooner or later. I could do it in a manner befitting our long history.”
“I think that is the most emotional sentiment I have ever heard you express about us.”
This time his smile was real and lasting. She hoped she would remember it, even if she forgot his face. “I do not know who paid me to kill you. I suspect either Matthias Corvinus, because you are making him look weak in the fight against the infidels, or your Moldavian cousin, who is using your distraction to take back several border fortresses.”
“God’s wounds. I liked him!” Lada rubbed her forehead, then shrugged. “Though I would do the same in his position. We are blood, after all.” She sat on the bed, tapping a foot against the worn carpet beneath it. “You do not think it was Mehmed?”
“He has proved several times over he wants you alive. If you die because of him, it will be in battle and against his wishes.”
Lada agreed. She felt the same way about sending an anonymous assassin after Mehmed. If he died, she wanted it by her hand. Anything else would feel unfinished.
She did not know if she wanted him dead. All this maneuvering, all this horror and fighting and death between them, and still she did not think she preferred the world without him.
She looked back up, wishing more than ever she had time to sleep. And when she awoke, Stefan would still be hers. So would Nicolae. And Petru. And Radu and Mehmed and everyone else she wished to have. “Where does this leave us?”
“I cannot stay at your side when this is over. And … I do not wish to. You gave me something to fight for, and I am not ungrateful. But now I have something to live for. And long lives do not seem likely in your company.”
Lada grinned at him. “I can see why Daciana fell for you, with a sweet tongue such as that.”
Stefan cleared his throat, as though clearing away any emotion that had managed to work its way through.
Though his choice was not unexpected, it still stung. She hated that Stefan would not be hers for much longer. It was good that Daciana was far away from Lada’s anger and resentment. Lada had liked her, too, but now that meant losing both of them. Her smile turned darker and sharper. “I have the family that you live for. You see this through to the end, whatever that may be, and I will give them back to you.”
She expected anger, but Lada could swear something like affection disturbed Stefan’s calm. He inclined his head respectfully. “I started this at your side. I will finish it there. And then you will never see me again.”
“Fair enough. Go get me word of the men Matthias is sending, and where we stand with the pope.”
Stefan turned toward the door.
“Stefan,” Lada said. He paused, his back toward her. She could put a knife in it right now. But she did not reach for her blades. Perhaps she was tired, or just tired of seeing her friends bleed. Or perhaps it was because he had to know she could do it, and in spite of everything, he trusted her enough to turn his back on her anyway. “How would you have killed me?”
“With all the gentleness you never had in life.” He walked out.
For a few brief, mean seconds Lada considered sending word to have Daciana and the children killed. Stefan would not find out until it was too late. But she did not wish any of them dead. They had been her friends. That they would betray that friendship did not threaten her life or her success.
She had been trying so hard not to lose anything or anyone. But she had been wrong to feel that way. They would all be gone one day, one way or another. She stood, striding from the room without bothering to look anywhere else in the castle. Nothing—and no one—was left inside that she could not afford to lose.
And that was why she would win in the end. Because she would offer up everything on the altar of sacrifice, so long as she kept her country.
22
Three Days South of Tirgoviste
“DOES IT MAKE anyone else nervous that the prince has not yet attacked us?” Ali Bey asked, staring down at their map—which had been altered with notations for the new bogs and swampland. All the existing wells and cities had been crossed out. The map sat in the center of a table set up in Mehmed’s tent. Around it also stood Aron, Andrei, Radu, and the pashas, bleakly considering their options in ink and parchment.
Aron’s face was as dour as the map. “She does not need to. It has taken us three weeks to get this far. We had planned for three days.”
“How are we with supplies?” Radu asked.
“Between the delays and the lack of anything to scavenge or claim, we are not doing well.” Ali Bey slammed his fist down on the table. “Why will she not just meet us out in the open?”
Mehmed laughed, startling them and drawing their attention to the other end of his sumptuous tent, where he sat, apparently engrossed in a book about the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him. “Why would she? We have all the men and force on our side. But on her side she has time. She will wield it against us in whatever ways she can.”
Ali Bey frowned, his bushy eyebrows drawing so low Radu wondered whether they tickled his eyes. “It sounds as though you admire her.”
“Should I not admire excellence wherever I find it? I am certainly not finding any to admire in my current company.”
The other men flinched. Radu felt the sting of the words, but they did not wound him as deeply as they once might have. There was something to be said for having his heart broken so many times. Broken things healed thicker and stronger than they were before. Assuming one survived long enough to heal.
“The sultan is right,” Radu said. “Lada is using every advantage she has. But she does not have many at her disposal. We have to find the weak points and press them as hard as she has pressed ours.” He stared at the annotated map and the story it told. It was Wallachia, turned into a weapon. Lada was using their country the way she had always worshipped it: completely and viciously.
Aron threw down his pen with a splatter of ink. “What are her weaknesses, then?”
“People.”