Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(31)

Nicolae’s grin spread slower than the blood pooling beneath him. “No, Lada. I am already there. I beat you, is all.”

“Be careful, or I really will display your head on a pike.”

Nicolae laughed.

And then he died.



“But who was the assassin working for?” Bogdan asked. He sat at a table in the corner of the kitchen along with Daciana, Oana, and Stefan. The scent of freshly turned dirt clung to them, as did the memory of lowering Nicolae’s body into the ground only an hour before.

Lada kicked a chair. It skittered across the uneven stone floor before tipping and clattering to the ground. “It does not matter who he was working for!”

“It might have been better to take him alive and get information,” Daciana said. “Then we would know who wanted you dead.”

“Who does not want me dead? That would be a shorter list.” Lada paced, prowling the length of the room, angry and devastated, wanting to do something, anything, to stop feeling this way. She rubbed at her arms to keep from tearing at her hair.

The last time she had lost one of her men, it had been Petru, killed in this very castle. That still hurt. But Nicolae. Nicolae she had depended on, had needed in a way she needed very few people. And even though she had doubted him, he remained loyal to her until the end. He had found his end because of his loyalty to her.

“If we—” Bogdan started, but Lada cut him off.

“It does not matter. The assassin failed.” He had not failed entirely. A part of her had gone into the ground with Nicolae. She did not know how large a part. It was still too raw, too new to see how the scar would form. She wished it were written across her face the way Nicolae’s scar had been. She wanted visual evidence of what she had lost.

Lada righted her chair, dragged it back to the table, and sat. “We have too much to do to worry about who sent an assassin. And now we are down one trusted ally, so there is more work for everyone. The first problem is that we do not have enough men. Even if we conscript convicts and vagrants, we are massively outnumbered. I am expecting Mehmed to come with at least twenty thousand, probably thirty or forty. Right now, at most, we have five.”

“Lada.” Daciana leaned across the table with a hand outstretched. “Let me help. Take some time.”

Lada stared at Daciana’s hand, then looked up into her face. Daciana was strong. All Wallachian women were—they could not be otherwise and still survive. Lada smiled. They would help. “The women can fight. This is their country as much as the men’s.”

Bogdan scoffed. “The women?”

His mother slapped his shoulder. “We are no delicate flowers. We break our backs with the washing and the tilling of soil and the bearing of children. We can beat an enemy as handily as we beat a rug.”

Lada nodded. “Anyone strong enough will fight. Men, women, it does not matter. We have a lot of work to do before the actual fighting begins, and we only have until mid-spring. Mehmed will not come until then.” Logistically it was impossible. He would wait until there was no risk of freezing to death, until there was scavenging of the land available to help feed his men. “We will start gathering and training women immediately. Children and the elderly will be sent into the mountains.”

“What about the sick?” Daciana asked, her tone wry.

“Oh, I have other plans for them.” Lada smiled at the woman’s confused look.

Stefan sat motionless, always the last to attract attention. “We will still be outmanned and out-trained. What else do we have?”

“Matthias.”

“You trust him?”

“Not at all. But I have word that he received money from the pope to fight the infidels. And he does not want to face an entire Ottoman army camped on his borders. It is in his best interest to keep Wallachia free. He will help.”

Stefan looked troubled.

“What?” Lada said.

“I do not trust him to use the money for what it is intended. He has been trying to raise money for other purposes for a long time.”

Stefan waited, placid and patient. He already had a conclusion, Lada could sense it. Frustrated, she sorted through what she knew of Matthias. What he would need money for. Then she threw her head back and glared at the ceiling. “The crown taken by Poland. The crown he could not afford to get back.” She swore, grinding her teeth. “That stupid, pointless crown. He is still fixated on it, doubtless. But he took the money with the promise of fighting infidels. He cannot bring the ire of the entire Catholic Church on his head. He will have to come.”

Stefan did not respond.

Lada shrugged against the cold prickling of fear on the back of her neck. “He will come, or he will pay for it, one way or another.”

“I think he will come,” Bogdan said, smiling encouragingly at her.

“I think you know nothing of Matthias, and therefore should not volunteer an opinion on this subject,” Lada snapped. Bogdan flinched as though struck. Oana shifted in her seat, but Lada avoided looking at either of them. She was not fair to him. But she was prince; she did not have to be fair.

“Do we have any money?” Oana asked, neatly changing the subject.

“No.” She should have waited another year or two, let the country settle, let tax revenue come in. But the idea of sitting in this castle, slowly gathering coins, eyeing a future where Wallachia would be free when it was already agonizingly close … She should have waited, but she never could have.