Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga #2)(25)

Lada clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth together. “I do not need anyone’s help with anything.”

“Where is your brother?” the nurse asked. “He should be here. I thought you would take better care of him.”

Anger flared. Who was this woman to tell Lada how to take care of Radu? The nurse had not been there in Edirne. She had not seen what they had gone through, what Lada had had to do to survive. “He is coming,” Lada said through still-gritted teeth. She extricated herself from her nurse’s arms.

“Let me brush your hair,” the nurse said, reaching for Lada’s snarls.

The sensation made Lada feel like a child again. She stumbled back, flinging her hands up to deflect the woman’s touch. “I do not need a nurse!”

“You said the same when you were five. But at least your hair was presentable then.”

“Take yourself to the devil,” Lada snapped.

Bogdan looked hurt, but her nurse just laughed. The woman’s eyes shone with something. Mirth or affection, neither of which were tolerable to Lada. Worst of all, Hunyadi was sitting nearby, watching the whole encounter.

“Where is my cloak?” she snapped, yanking clothes out of her saddlebag.

“Let your nurse help you find it,” Nicolae teased. He and Petru were sitting at the campfire. Had no one missed this spectacle? What had Bogdan been thinking?

“She is not my nurse!”

Petru shrugged. “You are lucky. I wish I had someone to take care of me. Maybe I should find a wife.”

“Maybe you could marry the nurse,” Lada spat out.

Giving up on the cloak, she threw herself onto her horse and left camp. They had moved from the location of the slaughtered Janissaries and were working their way toward the capital. The increasingly frequent sections of frosted farmland made Hunyadi’s hands twitch. When asked where they were going, he would merely shrug. “The castle.” It sounded like a foreign word when he said it.

Today, though, they were in a heavily forested section of the countryside. They had not seen another soul all day, but that did not mean they were alone. Lada scanned the trees as a matter of habit, one hand always on her sword.

The trees were as bare and cold as the air. The sun was overhead, but all it did was blind her. How could something be so bright and give so little warmth? After so long in the temperate climate of Amasya, she had forgotten what winter felt like.

Right now, she wanted nothing more than to be back there. No! she screamed at her traitorous heart. She did not mean back in the empire. She meant back at camp. Around a fire, with her men.

The nurse would be there, lingering, hovering, much like a fly that buzzed incessantly, but at least a fly Lada could swat. She did not need another woman. She did not need to be taken care of. That woman was not her mother. Her own mother had fled to her home country of Moldavia when Lada was four. That was what mothers did. Nurses, apparently, were more dependable. And embarrassing.

Hunyadi pulled his horse alongside hers. “It might be good to have someone to help.”

“I do not see your nursemaid following you around, combing your hair.”

Hunyadi ran his fingers through his thick auburn locks. “I would not object!” His tone softened. “All leaders need help. Let someone do the mundane tasks so you can focus on the bigger ones. Surely Mehmed does not do anything himself.”

Lada rolled her eyes. “He has a man whose only role is to follow after him carrying a stool.”

“Does he even clean his own ass, I wonder?”

Lada grimaced. “Why would you put such an image in my mind?”

Hunyadi laughed loudly. Then he settled more deeply into his saddle, sighing happily. “This is a beautiful part of my country.”

“It reminds me of the forests outside Tirgoviste. I used to make our tutor take us out there to study. The castle was an oven in the summer and an icebox in the winter. I always suspected the architect was a cook.”

“Do you miss it?”

Lada frowned as she followed the trail of a dark bird across the pale blue sky. “Miss what?”

“Tirgoviste.”

“I never cared for Tirgoviste. I prefer the mountains.”

“But you still want the throne.”

“I want Wallachia.”

Hunyadi huffed a laugh. “Is that all?”

“It is far less than what Mehmed—” She stopped, biting off the rest of the sentence. How dare he slip out of her mouth uninvited.

Hunyadi leaned closer to Lada, his horse following the movement and nearly brushing its flanks against her legs. “So he does mean to go for Constantinople, then.”

Lada had avoided talking about Mehmed’s plans. It felt disloyal, which made her angry. He had shown no loyalty to her by entertaining the usurper Danesti prince.

Hunyadi pressed on. “The general opinion is that he is young and easily swayed. More interested in lavish parties and well-stocked harems than expansion.”

If Lada flinched at the mention of the harem, Hunyadi pretended not to notice. He continued. “Everyone has solidified advantageous treaties with him. No one fears him. Murad’s death was seen as the end of Ottoman expansion. But I wonder. I think the sultan is settling us all down so his way to Constantinople is clear.”

The word harem still rang in Lada’s ears. Obviously Mehmed was not loyal to her. He spied on her. He supported her rivals. She owed him nothing, and would cut this traitorous impulse to protect him out of her heart. “Constantinople is his only desire. Everything he does, however innocent seeming or counterintuitive, is to achieve that goal and that goal only. He will not stop until it is his capital, until he is both sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caesar of Rome.”