Bright We Burn (The Conqueror's Saga #3)(5)

“Come,” Amal said, grinning. “They are waiting. We will ride between the walls and go straight there.”

Radu did not know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He had thought about riding through the city, but he knew where his heart would take him. An empty house where no one waited for him. Better to go straight to Mehmed.

“Thank you,” Radu said. Amal took the reins of Radu’s horse and led him through the space between the city’s two defensive walls. Radu did not want to be here. He would have preferred to visit ghosts that were, if melancholy, at least tinged with sweetness. Here at the walls there were only the ghosts of steel and bone, blood and betrayal.

Radu shuddered, dragging his eyes from the top of the wall and toward the gate they were heading for. The gate Radu had unlocked in the midst of the final battle, sealing Constantine’s fate and bringing the city down around himself.

Amal gestured to the walls on either side. “They finished repairs only last month.”

Radu glanced up at the nearest Janissaries. He wondered if these men had been part of the siege. If they had flooded the wall, spilling over it. What had they done when they got into the city after so many endless days of anticipation fueled with frustration and hatred?

Radu swallowed a bitter, acidic taste, unable to look at the walls any longer. “I would like to go the rest of the way alone.” Radu took the reins back.

“But I am to—”

“I know the path.” Radu ignored Amal’s panicked expression and turned his horse around. He entered at the main gate amid the press of humans, the crush of life. It was something, at least.

Once inside, he let his horse meander, guided by the crowds. He was desperate not to be alone. There was much to be distracted by. This portion of the city had been nearly abandoned before. Now windows were thrown open, walls repainted, early flowers planted in tiny pots. A woman beat a rug, humming to herself, as a child toddled on unsteady legs after a dog.

Where the spring had been unseasonably cold, the winter was moderate and pleasant. It did not feel like the same desperate, starving, suspicious city. Everywhere Radu looked, things were being built and repaired. There was no evidence of fire, no hint that any tragedy other than age had ever befallen this city.

Radu was so distracted that he missed the road he was supposed to follow and ended up in the Jewish sector. He had not spent any time there before. It, too, was humming with activity. He paused in front of a building under construction.

“What is this?” Radu asked a man carrying several large wooden beams.

“New synagogue,” the man said. He wore a turban and robes. He passed the beams to a man wearing a kippah on his head and ringlets at his ears.

Radu rode through the sector, then found himself in a more familiar area. Boys surrounded a giant building that had been a derelict library. They lounged on the steps, talking or playing. A bell clanged, and the boys jumped up and rushed inside. Radu wondered what their lives were like. Where they had come from. What they knew of what had happened to create a city where they could play on the steps of their school, safe. At peace.

Radu stared down the street. If he went farther this way, he would reach the Hagia Sophia.

He turned and headed for the palace instead. The ride had been enough to clear his head a bit. He had anticipated how difficult it would be to see the walls again. But seeing the vitality of the city was a balm to his senses. He would not risk that by revisiting the Hagia Sophia so soon.

Amal was waiting near the palace entrance, nervously wringing his hands. Doubtless Radu had complicated his day by taking a detour. It was not Amal’s fault Radu felt the way he did, and Radu really was glad to see Amal alive and well. He dismounted and passed his reins to his former aide. “Forgive me,” Radu said. “Coming back has been … emotional.”

“I understand.” Amal smiled, and suddenly he looked even older than the young man he had grown into. Radu had shielded Constantine’s two young heirs from the horrors of the city’s fall, but Amal had been in the thick of it before Radu pulled him free. “I will see to your horse. And, if you do not mind, I have asked to be assigned as your personal servant while you are here.”

“I would like nothing more.” Radu watched as Amal led the horse away, putting off his own entrance into the palace.

A small bundle of motion rushed toward him. Radu barely had a chance to hold out his arms before a boy threw himself into them.

“Radu! He said you were here!”

Radu pulled back, looking into the saintly face of Manuel, one of the two heirs to the fallen emperor Constantine. Radu had stayed behind when Nazira, Cyprian, and Valentin left so that he could save Constantine’s child heirs. They were his attempt at redemption for all he had done during the siege and everyone he had betrayed. He had fallen far short of redemption, but holding Manuel—alive, healthy, happy Manuel—in his arms, Radu felt joy for the first time in months. Laughing, Radu pulled him close, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

Of all the life he had seen return to the city, this little life was the best he could possibly have hoped for. “Where is your brother?”

Manuel squirmed free, adjusting his clothes. He wore silk robes in the style of the Ottomans. It was a far cry from the stiff and structured Byzantine clothes he had worn before. “Murad is inside, waiting. He is too old now to run, he says.”