Now I Rise (The Conqueror's Saga #2)(82)

“I am neither stupid nor a gossip. When was your last bleeding?”

“Weeks. Maybe eight? Or nine.” It had been before Hunyadi, when they were in the mountains of Transylvania. Her underclothes had frozen when she hung them to dry after washing.

“Do you bleed regularly?”

Lada shook her head. “No. Only a few times a year.”

“That is fortunate. I am—” Daciana paused, taking a deep breath. “I was so steady you could track the moon by my blood. And when did a man last know you?”

Lada whipped around, snarling, “No man knows me.”

Again, Daciana did not respond with any apparent emotion. “Your breasts would be tender and swelling already. You would be sick. Exhausted beyond anything you have ever known.”

Lada shook her head in relief, then realized she was confirming Daciana’s assumptions. Of course she was. She was a fool. Moving with Mehmed in the darkness, the feel of his skin, the feel of him inside her …

She closed her eyes, because she had worked so hard not to think of it. But as soon as she allowed the memories back in, she wanted to kill him. And she wanted to be with him again.

She did not know which impulse was stronger.

“My sister is like you.” Daciana spoke as though they were discussing the weather. “She bleeds rarely. She is one of the only ones who has never been with child, despite many visits from our boyar, may his soul be damned forever.” Daciana spat on the ground. “She was the lucky one. You will probably have similar fortunes.”

Lada swallowed down some of her fear. It tasted like blood and bile. Daciana turned to go back to camp.

“You may stay with me,” Lada said.

The girl smiled. “I know.”

“You can sleep in my tent, if it makes you feel safer.”

“That is very generous of you. I will be sharing Stefan’s tent soon, though.”

“You will?” She had never known Stefan to take up with a woman. Though, of all her men, he would be most likely to do it without being noticed.

Daciana’s smile grew into something sly and sharp. “He does not know it yet.”

Lada laughed, and then the two women walked back together. It was a pity no one had given Daciana a knife when she was a little girl. Lada suspected she was as formidable as any of the men in camp.





37





May 5–16




UNWILLING TO SPEND more time repairing the wall—a huge section of which had fallen the day before with losses on both sides but no real change—Radu visited Orhan’s tower, where all the Turks in the city were stationed. Here, at least, were Ottomans he did not have to kill.

Radu stopped to sit with the guard. He knew them all by sight, if not by name. They were outsiders here, committed to the city but never truly a part of it. Everyone viewed them with some measure of distrust.

“There is little food,” the guard, Ismael, complained. “And no coin to buy it with. Orhan does as well by us as he can, but it is not easy.”

Radu nodded. “The Venetians tried to flee yesterday. Giustiniani barely stopped them. Men are missing their shifts on the walls, staying in the city to try to find food for their families.”

“Such is the nature of a siege. Death from without, rot from within.” Ismael smiled ruefully. “We may yet make it out of this, though. Back to the way things were before. How I miss walking the streets and having mud thrown at me simply because I am Turkish. Now we cannot leave our tower for fear people will think we are the sultan’s men, inside the city.”

Radu leaned back, the crate he sat on groaning in protest. Something inside caught his eye—an Ottoman flag. The crate held the rest of the flags they had not used for their messenger boat deception. Now, sitting here, useless and abandoned. Radu felt a surge of solidarity with the flags.

“Why did you stay?” Radu asked. If Mehmed won, Orhan’s men were all dead. And even if Mehmed failed, they would still be pariahs in the city. Orhan would never be able to claim the Ottoman throne, not now that Mehmed had heirs. He was useless politically.

Ismael rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Orhan is a good man. He has grown up as a pawn, but he never let it turn him cruel or bitter. I have not heard the same of the sultan.” He shrugged. “Either way, my fate was always at this city. Die inside the walls or against them. We chose to stay with a man we respect.”

A few weeks ago, Radu would have wanted to strike Ismael for accusing Mehmed of cruelty. Now every time Radu closed his eyes, he saw a forest of stakes bearing their monstrous fruit.

The two men looked up as a procession of horses trudged through the mud in front of them. In the middle was Constantine. His shoulders drooped and his head hung heavy. The day before it had been his presence at the walls that kept the defenders fighting long enough to repel the attack. But Radu could see he was cracking under the pressure.

Mud flew through the air, landing on the flank of Constantine’s horse. The soldiers at his side were immediately alert, looking for the assailant. Constantine sighed and shook his head.

“Heretic!” someone shouted from an alley. “Our children starve because you betrayed God!”

Constantine glanced to the side and saw Radu. He smiled ruefully. “Our children starve because the only silver left in the city belongs to God himself.”