Nazira laughed sadly against his chest. “There you go again, assuming I am worried for myself. You never account for others loving you for you, Radu, rather than what you can do for them. It is my greatest prayer that someday you will know enough of love to recognize when it is freely given.”
Radu had no answer. Sometimes Nazira offered too much insight. “I am going to speak with Urbana, then. Thank you.” He kissed Nazira’s hand.
As he walked inside, he passed Fatima. “Thank you for enduring this,” he whispered. “Nazira is in the garden, and I will be occupying Urbana for the next few hours. Go spend some time with your wife.”
She briefly met his gaze, a grateful smile shaping her kind face. “Good luck,” she said.
“Your wife may be infertile,” Urbana said as she and Radu sat down for a midafternoon meal.
Radu choked in surprise. “What?”
“You have been married more than a year. How often do you copulate?”
Radu raised his eyes to the ceiling, searching for answers there as he felt his cheeks burning hotter than the furnaces of the foundry. “Are you also an expert in these matters?” he asked, trying for a teasing tone.
Urbana frowned. “No. But I wonder about the practicality of continuing on a course that is yielding no results. What about the maid?”
Radu panicked. Apparently they had underestimated Urbana’s perceptiveness. “Fatima?” he asked, stalling. How would he explain this? What if she told someone?
“She is your servant. I am not unaware of customs here. If she bore you a son, he would be an acceptable heir. And it would be a nice thing for her, too. She would have legal status and you would not be able to sell her to someone else. I like Fatima. You should consider it.”
Radu’s voice came out strained, both with relief that Urbana did not realize the truth of his marriage and embarrassment that this was a conversation she thought appropriate. “I prefer to remain faithful to my wife.”
“Is that why you have not tried to join my bed? I would have rebuffed you, violently if necessary, but it has puzzled me.”
“I want to talk about your cannons!” Radu said, desperate to wrestle the topic away from babies and beds.
Urbana’s face fell; then she brought her thick eyebrows together as though bracing for pain. “If you would just let me talk to your sultan, I can—”
“I want you to make them.”
Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “What?”
“I want you to make them. All of them. Your Babylon crusher, yes, but also every cannon you have time and dreams for. I want you to create the greatest artillery the world has ever seen.”
Urbana’s delight quickly shifted to tired disappointment. “I want that, too, but neither of us has a foundry or materials or the money to acquire them.”
“Can you keep a secret?”
She licked her lips, pulling them thoughtfully between her teeth. “No, not really.”
Radu laughed drily. Urbana might become invaluable, but not if he was unable to keep her hidden from Halil Vizier. Nothing could be easy in his life, apparently. He rubbed his forehead beneath his turban. “Well, that is a problem, then. Tell me, would it be possible to create these cannons without drawing a lot of attention?”
“Not with the amount of ore we will need. And we will need men—lots of men. I cannot do it alone. And I cannot do it just anywhere. That is why I came here—Edirne and Constantinople have the only foundries big enough for me to make my cannons in.”
Radu had too many secrets. They were overflowing. And he did not know how he could build an artillery without being noticed. Besides which, the weight of secrets was wearing on him. He doubted everything now. Even Mehmed, which hurt. If Mehmed hid his dealings with the Wallachian prince, hid Lada’s plight, what else might he be keeping from Radu?
Secrets gave everything more power, more potential for devastation and destruction.
Radu stood and walked to the window. Nazira and Fatima lay on a blanket in the garden, whispering and laughing. If he had seen them without knowing the truth of their relationship, he would have assumed they were very dear friends. No one questioned why Fatima was always with Nazira, why they were happy to live out in the countryside with no one else around.
They hid their love in plain sight.
“Urbana,” Radu said, an idea forming that he liked the shape of, “how do you feel about parties?”
“I hate them,” she said.
“What if I said that going to a lot of parties is the price you will have to pay to make your cannons?”
Her voice was flat but determined. “What should I wear?”
6
January
THE TREK BACK from interrogating the governor of Brasov was a frigid and lonely one. Lada looked for Matei on the way to camp. At every sound she whipped around, expecting to find him.
He did not appear.
She was nearly there, the fires in the distance promising rest and warmth, when a horse whinnied in the darkness to her right. She dropped into a crouch, cursing her generosity with the little girl that left her with only one knife out of the three she had brought. Why had she felt compelled to give the brat one?
The daughter of Wallachia wants her knife back.
She shuddered at the distant memory. Her father had given her a knife, and it had changed her life. She only hoped her own gift would change that little girl’s life, because Lada might very well die for the gesture.
“Quiet, boys,” a man whispered exaggeratedly, his voice carrying through the night. He spoke Hungarian. “We seem to have found a small predator. They are very dangerous when cornered.”
Lada backed up against a tree so at least she could face whatever was coming. Her muscles were tight with the cold. She flexed her hands rapidly, trying to work some blood back into them.
She heard someone dismount. He made no attempt at hiding his footfalls as he approached. He sat close enough for Lada to see him, but too far for hand-to-hand combat. She would not throw her last knife. If she missed, she would be weaponless.
With a groan, he picked up a rock from beneath him and tossed it to the side.
“I have been looking for you, Ladislav Dragwlya. You are terrorizing the Transylvanians. It is in very poor taste.”
Lada lifted her chin defiantly. “I owe them nothing.”
“You were born here.”
“And will I die here?”
The man laughed, pulling something from his vest. Lada tensed, but he leaned forward, striking flint until it caught on a pile of tinder. He fed the fire a few sticks pulled from the frozen forest floor. As the flames grew, the face of her enemy revealed itself. The face of the man who had driven her father from Tirgoviste and into the arms of the sultan, where he had abandoned his children. The face of the man who had returned to kill her father and her older brother.
Lada leaned back. She did not relax her grip on the knife, but it was an odd relief to have a connection to the man who would be her undoing. “Hunyadi.”
His auburn hair gleamed as red as the fire. His forehead was broad, his eyebrows were strong, and his nose bore the evidence of multiple breakings. He did not seem to have grown older since Lada had last seen him in the throne room at Tirgoviste. He was around the same age her father would have been, if Hunyadi had not killed him. It was not fair that Hunyadi had remained unchanged when his actions had altered Lada in unimaginable ways.
Hunyadi dipped his head in acknowledgement. “What mischief have you been up to tonight?”
Lada saw no advantage to lying. “Arson. Threats of death. Gathering information.”
Hunyadi sighed. “You have had a very full night. What did you burn?”
“The cathedral.”
He coughed in surprise. “I paid for the new altar.”
“It was a poor investment.”
He snorted. “I suppose so. I was vaivode of Transylvania for a few years. I have never been so happy to be relieved of power. Saxons.” He shook his head, breath fogging the night in a silent laugh. Then he put an elbow on one knee, reclining to the side. “Tell me, what did burning the church give you?”