They drifted away, and Lada lost the last of their gossip. Their complaints were not unfamiliar, though they sounded more widespread and accepted than she had thought they were. The Janissaries were a privileged class, educated and paid, but they were still slaves. She wondered how much actual force was behind their words, and how much was empty complaints.
Nicolae rejoined her some time later. They rode out behind the corps, done for the day. He let his horse slow, putting more distance between them and the rest.
When he spoke, he lacked his usual jesting tone. “I have been here since I was seven years old. I have trained alongside brothers from every nation under the shadow of the Ottomans. We fight, we bleed, we die for a country that is not ours, commanded in a tongue our mothers never spoke to us, instructed in a religion that allows us to be enslaved because we were not born to it.” He paused, their horses’ hooves meting out a discordant rhythm. “And yet my life is better than it would have been at home. I am educated and better trained than anyone we fight. I have enough to eat and clothes on my back, opportunities to advance. Until I am broken against the walls of a city that should be my ally, or die on the end of a sword held by a cousin I never knew. We are the most valuable force of this empire, and we exist here because we are not actually part of the empire. Most days I think I owe my life to the Ottomans. On the field at Varna, I realized I do not want to give my life for them. But in my heart, I am a soldier, and I wish to do nothing else.” He shook his head, a heavy sigh punctuated by his hands lifted into the air, palms up. “I would like to be as certain as you are, Lada, who my side is.”
She looked at his palms, open, waiting to receive. “In your heart, where you know you are a soldier, tell me: What language beats there?”
Nicolae’s eyes fell, his face going soft and far away. “Wallachian.”
She reached out and put her hand on his, resting it there, palm to palm. “We are on the same side.”
He wrapped his fingers around hers, then opened his eyes and smiled wryly. “We had best not tell anyone else, then, seeing as how we are deep in enemy territory.”
Lada pulled back her hand and took the reins. “For now.” She kicked her horse to a gallop, past the soldiers, hair whipping around her face as she raced toward home. Toward Edirne, she corrected herself, silently cursing her traitor mind. Maybe she was not so certain whose side she was on after all.
In spite of Ilyas’s allowances, the leaders in Edirne were stricter than they had been in Amasya, and too often Lada had been prevented from training with Nicolae’s men. She stomped into her chambers, startled to find Radu deep in conversation with Molla Gurani, whom she had not seen these last three months since leaving Amasya.
Her brother looked up, guilt painting itself across his face like the sun disappearing behind a cloud.
“Lada! I thought you would be with the Janissaries.”
“Are we being forced to endure his lessons again?” She scowled. In their time here, with the war and Mehmed’s constant duties as sultan, she and Radu had not yet received regular tutelage. While she wanted to resume the history, logic, and strategy lessons, she had not missed Molla Gurani’s insufferable dronings on Islam.
Molla Gurani’s eyebrows lifted slowly, heavy with the weight of his disdain. “I am here at your brother’s request. You are welcome to be elsewhere.”
“What is he talking about?” Lada snapped, lapsing into Wallachian for privacy.
Radu shrugged, head tilted to one side as though he were trapping something between his ear and shoulder. “Know your enemy?”
Caught off guard, Lada barked out a sharp laugh. “You will have to know this enemy enough for both of us.” She bowed mockingly toward the teacher and went into her own small room. While this freed her from Molla Gurani’s fetid-water voice, it left her with nothing to do and no refuge.
She flopped onto her bed and boredom made her eyes heavy with sleep. She dreamed of Amasya, swimming in the pool with Radu and Mehmed, stars swirling and burning around them. When she awoke, it was with Mehmed’s name heavy on her tongue, his absence in her life a palpable pain.
She hurried out of their rooms before Radu could ask where she was going, before she had to admit to him—and herself—how much she longed for a few private moments with Mehmed as her friend, not as the sultan.
In the halls of the palace, she felt invisible. There were so few women here. In Tirgoviste women had been far more present, less separated from the regular courts. She wondered, sometimes, what her life would have been like had her mother not fled. Would she have had an ally? A friend? Would her mother have stopped her father from leaving them here?