LADA LAY SPRAWLED ACROSS Mehmed’s bed, her head hanging over the side. “No, no, no.” She pushed his hand away from where it pointed at a map of Constantinople and the surrounding areas. “Your father could see only the wall, and that is where he failed.”
“But if we cannot take the wall, we cannot take the city!”
“Ignore the wall. The wall is your last step. If you want the city, what do you need first?”
Mehmed scowled at the map, fingers unconsciously tracing the wall surrounding the city. But then his gaze shifted, his expression turning thoughtful. He moved his finger from the outline of the wall to the Bosporus Strait. It was the point through which all ships carrying supplies, soldiers, and aid from Europe had to pass. “We need to cut the throat,” he said. He threw himself off the bed, grabbing an inkwell and pen. On one side of the narrow stretch was a tower built by his great-grandfather Beyazid, the last point of Ottoman holdings before Byzantium land. He drew a matching tower on the other side, the side that was Byzantium territory. And then he slashed his pen across the water between them.
Lada clapped her hands together, the sharp crack echoing through the room. “Deny them aid. Meet them on the sea and the land. Make them fight you on all fronts—stretch them as thin as they go—and somewhere they will snap. Knock on every door; you need only one of them to open.”
Mehmed’s smile dropped away, his hands hovering reverently above the map. He touched Lada that way, sometimes, and it stirred a strange jealousy in her breast to see him look at a city with the same worshipful hunger.
“If I fail,” he said, “it will be the end of me.”
Lada laughed. “Then do not try, little sheep. Tend to your flock. Patrol your borders. No one ever said you had to take Constantinople. It is only a dream.”
Mehmed’s eyes burned when he looked up at her. “It is not simply my dream.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know all about your precious prophet’s dream.”
“That is not what I am speaking of. My whole country was founded on a dream. Less than two hundred years ago we were nothing but a tribe, running from the Mongols, with no home of our own. But our leader—my ancestor—Osman Gazi dreamed we could be more. He saw a moon rise from the breast of a great sheikh and descend into his own. From his navel grew a tree, and its branches spread to cover the world. He knew then that his posterity, his wandering, homeless people, would rule the world. Is how far we have come not a testament to the truth of his vision? I have inherited that, Lada. It is a calling and a dream I cannot deny. The tree is mine to spread, and I must.”
Lada wanted to mock him, wanted to argue, but her soul would not allow it. She understood that idea of something bigger than you, all encompassing, impossible to ever truly leave behind. She knew Mehmed would never be whole without the city that demanded his conquest, just as she knew she would never be whole without her country.
Mehmed leaned closer to her. “I can do this. We can do this. Together.”
“We cannot always have what we want, no matter how much we want it,” she whispered.
Misreading her mood, Mehmed leaped onto the bed, nuzzling his face against her breasts and trying to sneak his hand lower along her stomach. As always, she caught his fingers, twisting them until he cried out in pain and gave up his attempt.
“You are cruel,” he said, lifting her hair to his nose and hiding his face in it.
“Do you really want to discuss this now?” They had found a sort of peace, come to a truce on the matter of his harem: Lada pretended it did not exist, and Mehmed never acknowledged it. But she still refused to give him all he wanted. Holding her maidenhood to herself was the only way she knew to protect herself, to keep her heart from becoming fully his.
And she was afraid, too, that if she ever allowed him in, he would cease seeing her as Lada and dismiss her the same way he did the mother of his son. She was even more afraid of having a child, of being broken from the inside. She wanted nothing to change. She wanted to live in these sharp winter days, curled together against the evening chill, the two of them forming their own secret society. But she could not deny that every passing day made it more difficult to want him to stop.
She left the warm cocoon of his bed, seized with a sudden panic that if she did not break free right then, she would emerge different, unrecognizable to herself.
“Where are you going?” Mehmed reached out to grab her, but she twisted free of his hands.
“Training.”
“You have the most deadly force in the entire Janissary ranks. What more can you possibly need to do today?”
She did not answer, but instead rushed out of his room and ran to the barracks. There, Nicolae was crouched on the floor, throwing dice with Petru, whose face indicated he was not doing well. “Ah,” Nicolae said, looking up. “She graces us with her presence! To what do we owe the honor?”