“Andrei, too?” Radu asked, hushed.
Kiril answered in the same tone. “The same manner. Both in their sleep. The bodies are cool, but only just. It could not have been more than an hour or two ago.”
“And no one saw anything?”
Kiril shook his head.
Radu stared down at Aron’s body. He felt sorry for the other man, but a competing feeling of resentment churned beneath the surface. With Aron murdered in his own bed, in the middle of the castle, in the middle of the capital, how could Radu possibly convince any boyars they would be safe?
And who would be prince now?
Radu was too overwhelmed to pretend at decorum or tradition. Around the table he had Kiril, Cyprian, and Nazira.
“It was her, right?” Kiril asked.
Radu pulled off his turban. He felt trapped, constrained. “It had to be. Aron and Andrei have no enemies. They did not have enough time to make any. Bulgaria, Moldavia, Hungary, Transylvania—it is in all their best interest that Wallachia is stable and under control. No one would have sent an assassin for them.”
“But why now? Why did she wait this long, doing nothing?” Nazira asked.
Radu shook his head. “I have no idea. Any word from the scouts?”
“A few have returned,” Kiril said. “The rest I fear never will. Simion’s men found bodies in a pit. They did not know who they were, but the clothing suggested boyars. There was some evidence of a large camp, but the trail was cold.”
“The Basarabs,” Radu said. “My guess is Lada found them.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
Radu rubbed the back of his neck where a tension headache was building. He imagined a slender dagger sliding in. How precise, how surgical, how tiny a cut that separated one forever from life. “We need a prince. I do not think the remaining Basarabs have anyone of age, but I will look at the records. What few Danesti are left will likely be wary of coming anywhere near the country. They have all fled to distant relatives. Perhaps there is a good candidate for prince among the—”
“Why are you looking for a prince?” Nazira asked.
“We need someone on the throne.”
Nazira’s look somehow managed to be both hard and pitying at the same time. “Radu, my husband, we have an heir already. One we know is not afraid to come to Tirgoviste, or to face Lada.”
Radu deflated. He had been hoping, pretending there was another option. “I do not want the throne.”
“I know. We have spoken of it. But sometimes for the good of the people, we must do things we do not wish to.”
“They are not my people!” Radu stood, surprised by the force of his declaration. He began pacing the room. “I do not want this. Any of this. I stayed as a favor to the empire. I cannot be prince.”
“You have seen what state the country is in.”
Radu laughed. “Precisely! Putting it back together will be the work of a lifetime.”
“Hard work,” Cyprian said, smiling sadly. “Important work.”
Radu looked at the faces around the table, then collapsed back into his chair. “I want to go home,” he said, knowing he sounded like a child, and not caring.
Nazira put a hand over his. “We have our family. We can make home anywhere. But I think we—you and I—carry a tremendous weight on our souls from what we have seen and done. We have participated in destruction. It will do our souls good to nurture and rebuild, instead.”
Cyprian leaned close. “I know you want to retire, to live quietly and forget everything that has come before. But you could not turn your back on my cousins. Surely you cannot turn your back now on an entire country that so desperately needs you.”
They were right. Radu knew he would carry the ghosts of Constantinople with him forever. Perhaps this was his punishment for everything he had done. But perhaps it could be his chance at redemption.
“Very well.” The words tightened around his throat like a shackle. “I will be prince.”
His friends nodded solemnly, knowing this was not a cause for joy or celebration. There was no triumph in Radu’s ascension.
“Would you like to throw a party?” Nazira asked, in a generous attempt to ease the tension. “That was Aron’s first order of business.”
“No,” Radu said. “We will coronate me immediately and send out word that I am prince. We will post guards around the city so it is perfectly defended. And then we are going into the mountains.”
All the pieces of his life clicked together to form sharp stones of a brutal path. Everything led him here. Everything led him back to Lada. And he knew what he should do. What Mehmed would do. What Lada herself would do.
He had to end it, once and for all.
43
Poenari Fortress
THOUGH SHE HAD maintained her filthy disguise this whole time, lest someone recognize her, she could not bring herself to hide any longer. She did not want to ride up to her fortress looking—and feeling—this weak. She arrived at the village closest to Poenari. It was tiny, clinging to a shallow stretch of land between the river and the mountains. She had visited it often and kept horses here. They knew her. As she dismounted, she pulled off her shawl and glanced around, hoping that at least this far in the mountains the land was still hers. If it was not, she was dead regardless.
“My prince,” an old woman gasped, dropping the clothes she was washing at the bank of the river. She took in Lada’s bloodstained dress, then stood. “Come with me.” The woman dried her hands on her apron. Lada followed her to a humble home on the outskirts of the village. The woman pulled out a wooden tub and put a cauldron of water over the embers of her fire. She stoked it, humming to herself.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I was not expecting to host the prince. But you are a prince of the people.” The woman smiled at Lada with more warmth than even the embers held, and Lada felt something inside herself break. She wanted to cry. She could not remember the last time she had wanted to cry, and could not fathom what it would accomplish now. Instead, she sat and accepted the bread and dried meat the woman offered her.
“How have things been here?” Lada asked. She did not want to specify in her absence—if Matthias had kept her imprisonment secret, she would certainly not be the one who let it be known.
“Quiet. Peaceful. A man came through a month ago asking for word of you.” The woman smiled. “He did not leave again.” The woman poured the scalding water into the tub, then excused herself. She returned with two buckets of cold water and dumped them in as well. “It would be the greatest honor of my life to wash my prince.” The woman bowed her head.
Lada peeled away her clothes, throwing them into the fire. She set her locket carefully on a chair and then climbed into the tub, her knees against her chest. She sank as low as she could in the confines. The woman hummed a low sweet song to herself as she took a chunk of soap and a rough brush and began.
Though Lada had not been bathed by someone else since she was a child, she accepted the offering of this woman’s kindness. Months of fear, of dirt, of caked blood came off into the water. Lada wished she could remove her skin to reveal something new and stronger beneath. Scales, or chain mail. But beneath the grime she was only soft and pink. Her body was unfamiliar to her. Her breasts still large, her stomach distended from months of poor nutrition. Her arms and legs thinner, weapon calluses on her hands gone.
When the water cooled, Lada climbed out. The woman wrapped her in a blanket worn soft with years of use. Lada sat by the fire and—in yet another inexcusable betrayal of Oana—allowed the woman to brush her hair.