Huma laughed darkly. “A baby with a concubine is hardly a guarantee. And a marriage to a Turkmen tribe we are already allied with? This is a move of strengthening, not building. Not expanding or creating power and connections for Mehmed. This strengthens Murad and gives no benefit to Mehmed. The baby and this bride mean nothing. They change nothing.”
Something in Lada’s chest loosened, made it easier for her to breathe in the cloying atmosphere.
Huma looked at where Sitti Hatun’s father was talking with inebriated passion to several pashas who stared over his shoulder at where they would rather be.
“Did you know Murad welcomed a son two months ago?” Huma asked. “Such a blessing to have produced yet another boy.” In the pause, Lada heard a horrible grinding noise she suspected came from Huma’s teeth. “And such timing, staging a marriage so soon after, so that everyone can learn of the new heir from Murad himself. Who is to say that, with the heavy encouragement of his trusted Halil Pasha, Murad has not decided to wait out another decade or two in favor of a more pliable heir?”
“None of this is for Mehmed.” Lada leaned heavily against the wall, seeing the celebration for what it was. She knew she ought to feel sick, worried for Mehmed, angry on his behalf, but all she could feel was overwhelming relief. This world, this glittering poem of power that contained no words for her…none of it was his. Did he know?
“No. Murad is reminding us all that he is strong and virile and going nowhere. That Mehmed belongs to him and—” Huma was cut off by a fit of coughing, something rattling deep inside her. It was the same cough she had had when she visited them in Amasya, but grown much worse.
Huma wiped her face with a cloth pulled from her sleeve. A layer of powder came off, revealing dark circles beneath her eyes and hollows where her cheeks had once been full. Her lips pulled back over her teeth, all sensual fullness stretched back to grim hatred. “Everything I have built, all that I have worked toward, is being ripped from me. I cannot bear it. I took everything I could from him, and still he took more.” Her eyes tracked Murad as though she were sighting prey too far off to kill.
And, in that moment, Huma was no longer threatening to Lada. She was her sister. Murad had taken both of them, forced them into a country and a life neither had wanted. “We will kill him,” Lada whispered.
“I have tried.”
“I could do it.”
Huma tilted her head, considering, then sighed. “No. I do not doubt you could get a knife into the chasm between his ribs, but you could not get out alive. That is not a real victory for you. Stay with Mehmed, help him. He is our best hope. We must protect our investment.” She put a dry, cold hand on Lada’s cheek, her face almost tender. “Marry him, too, if you wish. I was wrong to warn you away. Carve out a life for yourself however you can. No one will do it for you.”
She nodded toward a group of turbaned and caped young men standing in a cluster near Mehmed’s enclosure. Radu stood in the center, laughing, sharply outlined even amid the incense haze. “Your brother, though. People will pluck out their own hearts to create a place for him. He will never have to get his hands dirty.”
She held her hands beside Lada’s and smiled. “But hands painted red are hands that do what needs to be done.” She straightened, letting the mask of playful sensuality fall back onto her face, though it did not fit as well as it had the last time Lada saw her. Then, in a whisper of crimson, she drifted away.
Mehmed was inaccessible as the weeks dragged on. They were now four weeks into the wedding and Lada did not know how they had not all died of excessive enjoyment. Even Radu would have been an acceptable distraction at this point, but he was always at the center of gatherings or simply gone. She did not know where he disappeared to. Probably celebrations of the celebration, where even more glittering people would fawn over him and his clever, beautiful mouth.
Huma’s words had stuck with her. Mehmed’s position was as precarious as it had ever been, if not more so. And Lada could not forget what had happened the last time they were in Edirne. She still awoke with the taste of blood in her mouth sometimes, the memory of bone beneath teeth, her hand curled around a dagger that was not there anymore.
Nicolae, recently off duty, sighed as he walked with her. The barracks were dark, and they stopped to lean against a wall. Floral perfume hung heavily in the night, but at least out here Lada could breathe. She liked the dark better than all the forced, false light of the wedding nonsense.
Nicolae took off his white Janissary cap and rubbed his sweat-slick hair. “I understand why you are concerned about Mehmed’s safety, and I agree. But there is a difference between the last time Mehmed was here and now.”