“But you hate to travel!” Radu looked back at Nazira, triumphant. “You cannot ask Fatima to come.”
“I am not.” Nazira turned to Fatima, cupping her face gently in her hands. She put her lips to the other girl’s ear, whispering something Radu could not hear. Then she said, “You understand?”
Fatima shook her head, silent tears streaming down her face. “I can come,” she whispered. “I want to be wherever you are.”
“And I want to be wherever you are. But I need you to be safe.” Nazira regarded Fatima with a tenderness that hurt Radu to see. “I can weather this storm for both of us, but only if I have the shelter in my heart of knowing that my Fatima is well.”
Fatima shook her head again, then nodded, crying.
“I will come back to you. Always.” Nazira closed the distance between their mouths in the exact way Radu had imagined Mehmed doing with him. But this kiss was infinitely more sweet, more intimate than any Radu had ever managed to dream of. He looked away, unwilling to intrude on the two women’s love and heartbreak.
Nazira cleared her throat. Radu turned back to find her still holding Fatima close. Fatima hid her face in Nazira’s shoulder, but Nazira’s face was ferocious. “When do we leave?”
Cyprian was waiting outside the grand doors to Mehmed’s party. Though the ambassador had carefully composed himself, his nerves showed in the way his fingers tapped unceasingly against his blue-clad leg. Radu did not care for the styles out of Constantinople. He found the deliberate exposing of multiple layers of clothes to be gaudy and vain. But unlike that of the other ambassadors, Cyprian’s layers were coordinated and less jarring. Radu supposed he himself would be wearing clothes like that soon.
He did not realize he was running his fingers along his turban until they caught in one of the folds.
And prayer. When would he pray? Being cut off from prayer with his brothers would be like being cut off from sleep. He could already feel his soul wearing thin and tired simply from contemplating it. He would find a way to pray. He had to. Even if he could only pray in his heart, God would understand.
Light and music spilled from the doorway, a jarring accompaniment to Radu’s bleak thoughts. There was no use in delay. He crossed the hall to Cyprian, whose visage flashed a brief look of happiness before worry claimed it once more.
“You came,” Cyprian said. “I had begun to fear you would not.”
“We are all of us slaves to the whims of the sultan.” Radu hated the way the words flowed smoothly out of his mouth, as though they belonged there. “Cyprian, this is Nazira, my wife.”
A momentary twist of confusion distorted Cyprian’s face as he finally noticed Nazira at Radu’s side. “Your wife?” With movements formed by years of habit, Cyprian reached out and took her hand, bowing and kissing it.
“Hello,” Nazira said, her voice strained. She looked over her shoulder constantly. Radu did not know how much of it was nerves, and how much was acting to sell their deception to Cyprian.
“I—I did not expect you to have a wife.” Cyprian frowned, then shook his head. “I mean, you are so young. My age.”
Radu smiled tightly. “When you find someone like Nazira, you do not wait.” He looked past Cyprian toward the party, and then back down the hall. “Can we speak in private?” he asked in a low voice.
“Of course.” Cyprian followed them out into a side garden. The same side garden Radu had come to so many times to read and then destroy Mehmed’s secret notes. In the face of what he was moving toward, he longed to have even that level of closeness again.
As soon as they were far enough into the garden, Radu turned to Cyprian. “We want to leave.”
“What?”
“Right now. We cannot pretend to support Mehmed anymore. His father kidnapped me, tortured me, stole my entire childhood. I cannot stand by and watch as Mehmed takes Constantinople the same way.”
Cyprian wilted. “So he does mean to attack.”
“As soon as he is ready. Can you get us to the city, to the emperor? I will do whatever I can. I grew up with Mehmed and served him; I am familiar with his true temperament and many of his plans. I can help you.”
Cyprian nodded. Mehmed had been right. Cyprian must have planned to try to get information from Radu. Why else would he be so quick to trust them? “We should leave right now,” he said.
“We are ready.” Radu pulled his and Nazira’s traveling bags from behind a stone bench.
“She is coming?” Cyprian’s surprise was confirmation of what Nazira had said. No one turning spy would risk the life of an innocent woman. Please, Radu prayed, please let Nazira come through this safely. It was one thing to gamble with his own life for Mehmed’s cause. He felt sick knowing he was also risking Nazira’s.
“Radu is my husband.” Nazira gripped his hand. Some of Radu’s fear was soothed. It was selfish to draw any amount of happiness from her sacrifice, but he could not help it. “Where he goes, I go.”
“Very well.” They followed Cyprian to the guest stables, where he found one of the ambassadors’ servant boys. The boy was small, with intelligent eyes and black hair thick and tangled like thatch. After a quick, whispered conversation, the boy saddled three horses.
Though Radu knew perfectly well they would not be followed, Cyprian’s paranoia was contagious. Radu found himself glancing over his shoulder as they rode through the city. His last view as they crested the hill outside Edirne was the same as the first he had ever had of the empire. Spires and minarets were black points against the starlit sky.
He bid them a silent farewell, praying that they would watch over the city in his absence.
14
Early March
LADA WAS NOT certain which was more surprising: that she had been invited to one of Hunyadi’s inner-circle councils, or that his son Matthias had not.
Hunyadi sat at the head of the table, with several similarly grizzled men around him. At the opposite end of the table sat two priests. The seat next to Hunyadi was empty. He stood and gestured for Lada to sit there. The sting of invisibility that had plagued her in the week since swearing her loyalty disappeared as she sat at Hunyadi’s right hand. As soon as she was settled, he leaned forward, slamming a fist against the table.
“Constantinople!” he roared. “Once again it faces a threat. Perhaps the greatest threat it has ever known. We cannot let the heart of Christendom, Rome of old, fall to the infidels. If Constantinople succumbs to the Muslim plague, what is to stop them from spreading over the whole world?”
One of the priests nodded vehemently. The other remained impassive. A few of the men were engaged, but several leaned away from the table as though distancing themselves from the topic.
“What are you suggesting?” the excited priest asked.
“We crusade, as we have before. We gather the righteous until we swell around the walls like God’s own wave, to forever drown the infidel threat.”
The other priest smiled drily. “I believe the last successful Christian crusade actually sacked Constantinople.”
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.”