Now I Rise (And I Darken Series, #2)(66)

Mehmed had sent a small force against one of the weaker sections of the wall. It was a sudden, ferocious attack. But after a couple of hours, two hundred Ottomans were dead and only a handful of defenders had been lost. It was a huge victory for Giustiniani, evidence that his claims of being able to defend the city had some weight.

Or at least, that was what was being said. Radu suspected that Mehmed had been playing, like a cat with its prey. Because what no one knew, what they did not take into account, was that throwing men at the walls was not how Mehmed meant to break them. The cannons had not arrived yet. Until then, he was content to bat at the walls and watch the mice scramble.

Radu saw a familiar building in front of them. He steered Cyprian toward the Hagia Sophia and propped him against the wall while he picked the lock. The door clicked open. Radu grabbed Cyprian and pushed him into the church. Cyprian stumbled, looking up at the ceiling instead of at his feet. “Why are we here?”

“Because it is quiet.”

“Have you come here before? You picked that lock very easily.”

Radu smiled, because Cyprian could not see it in the dark. “It took me forever to pick the lock. You are too drunk to remember. You fell asleep in the middle.”

“I did not!”

Laughing, Radu guided Cyprian toward a corner, where the drunk man slid down against the wall and leaned his head back. Radu sat next to him, mimicking his posture.

“I am so sorry,” Cyprian said.

“For what?”

“For bringing you here. I condemned you to death. I should have— I thought of taking us somewhere else. To Cyprus. I should have talked you out of this madness. Now you are trapped here, and it is all my fault.”

Radu put a hand on Cyprian’s arm, hating the anguish in his friend’s voice—no, not his friend. He could not view him as a friend—would not. He quickly pulled his hand back. “You saved us from Mehmed. Do not apologize for that. We came because we wanted to help the city. We would not have accepted running and hiding, just as you could not bring yourself to do it.”

“You call him Mehmed.”

Radu turned toward Cyprian, but the other man was staring straight ahead into the darkness. Radu could not make out his expression. “What do you mean?” he asked, his voice careful.

“The sultan. You try not to, but when you are not being careful, you call him Mehmed. You were close to him.”

Radu searched the shadows around them for the right way to answer. Cyprian spoke before he could, though. “It was not all bad, was it? Being with him?”

Now Radu was fully alert. Could Cyprian’s drunkenness have been an act to lull Radu into security, to get him to reveal something he should not? Was this a follow-up to the prying questions about Radu’s relationship with Nazira? He chose his words with as much care as he had ever given anything. “The sultan was kind to me when we were boys. I looked up to him. I thought he had saved me from the pain we endured from his father’s tutors. He was all I had.”

“Your sister was with you, though.”

Radu laughed drily. “Again, you have never met my sister. She responded to our torments by getting harder, crueler, further away. It made her stronger, but it was breaking me. So when Mehmed—the sultan—offered me kindness, it was like someone had offered me the sun in the midst of the longest, coldest winter of my life.” Radu cleared his throat. He walked as close to the truth as he could, so that his lies would be masked in sincerity. “But as we grew older, he became different. More focused. More determined. The friend and protector I thought I had was not mine at all, and never had been. I valued him above everything else, and he— Well. Everything in the empire belongs to him, and he uses people as he sees fit.”

Radu knew Cyprian would think he was referring to being part of a male harem. But the sadness in his voice was not hard to place there. Mehmed had used him—sent him away on a fool’s errand. He would rather have been a shameful secret than a banished one.

“But did you love him?”

Radu stared hard at Cyprian. Cyprian, in turn, stared only at the frigid marble tiles beneath them, tracing his finger along a seam. The question sounded oddly earnest, not as though he were teasing or trying to provoke Radu.

Radu stood. “It does not matter, because I betrayed him. He never forgives betrayal.” Radu held out his hand, and Cyprian took it. He pulled Cyprian heavily to his feet, and they both lost their balance and stumbled. Cyprian held on to his collar, his face against Radu’s shoulder.

“I would forgive you,” he whispered. There was a moment between several breaths where Radu thought, maybe, perhaps—

Then Cyprian bent over, hands on his stomach, and ran for the door. Radu followed, then wished he had not as Cyprian vomited into the street just outside the Hagia Sophia.

Confused and cold, Radu closed and locked the door behind them. I would forgive you echoed in his brain, sticking where it should not.

Would he really? If he knew?

Radu turned to help Cyprian, whose wretched retching noises were the only sound in the dark. A movement caught his eye. Across the street, in the shadows of a pillar, stood a boy. Radu peered through the darkness and then inhaled sharply with surprise.

It was Amal. The servant who had spied for him while Murad died. The servant who had raced through the empire to bring word to Mehmed so he could claim the throne before it was taken from him. The servant who had most definitely been in the palace at Edirne when Radu left.