“She still needed a man,” Lada said, her eyes slits.
Huma showed her teeth in a predatory approximation of a smile. “You understand the story perfectly.” She coughed, a dry, rattling sound, and it was a while before she could speak again.
“Can I get you anything?” Radu asked.
She waved him away. “I understand your position, better than you know,” she said to Lada. “But you are holding Mehmed back. Make a decision, Lada. If you do not wish to marry my son, release him.”
Lada stood straight, sputtering. “I have no hold on Mehmed!”
Radu, too, could not believe what he was hearing. “There has never been talk of marriage, to anyone!” He looked to Lada for confirmation. It was the three of them—together—and had always been. There was no love between Lada and Mehmed that Radu and Mehmed did not also share. No, he would have seen it. And Radu and Mehmed shared the bond of a brotherhood of faith, which surely drew them closer than any bond Mehmed shared with Lada.
Huma shook her head. “Mehmed wanted to return to Amasya immediately. I persuaded him to stay in Edirne to create connections, build a foundation of strength. Little has changed since he left. I have nothing, not the esteem of my husband”—she spat the word like a fig gone rotten—“and not the promise of a son who will ever be able to keep the throne I have secured for him. He should be capitalizing on his success against Hunyadi, not yearning to return to this forsaken place. But he has been so content with his dear, faithful friends here that he has not been paying attention to the things that matter. So I tell you again: let him be free of your hold.”
A chill flowed from Lada’s mouth, her cold fury palpable. “You will have to excuse my confusion. Freedom is not something with which I am well acquainted.”
“This is foolish.” Radu held out his hands and tried to sound l
ighthearted. “Mehmed has spent all this time studying, preparing to rule. And we would never hold him back from that. You know that we would do—have done—anything to protect Mehmed.”
“Oh yes, I know. But he does not know, does he? And if I ever suspect you two are getting in my way, I will not hesitate to remove you.”
Radu’s blood went cold. Huma could have them killed, doubtless. But worse, still: she could tell Mehmed the truth of how he had lost the throne. They would lose him forever. Radu could not imagine a life without him.
No, that was not the problem. The problem was that he could perfectly imagine a life without Mehmed. He had lived it all the years of his childhood, and he never wished to go back to that cold and lonely state, even if Lada was forced along with him.
Huma stood, letting her embroidery drop to the ground. “I have other business to attend to. Do not forget what we have spoken of.” As she left, she stepped on the cloth as though the hundreds of hours of work that had gone into the stitches were nothing.
T WO WEEKS AFTER HUMA’S painful visit and quick return to the capital, a full month after the Janissaries returned but Mehmed did not, Lada once again made excuses for why she could not join Nicolae’s contingent for practice. Everything was different now. Before, she had striven to prove herself the fastest, the cleverest, the most ruthless. But after Ivan’s lewd attack and Nicolae’s protective response, she had seen that none of it mattered. She would never be the best Janissary, because she would never be a Janissary. She could never be powerful on her own, because she would always be a woman.
She had thought the return of the soldiers would signal an end to the directionless melancholy that had plagued her during Mehmed’s six-month absence, but it only sharpened it. Even Radu was distracted and cranky, worried that Mehmed would never return, worried about what Huma would say to keep him away.
The sun beat brutally overhead as Lada stripped down to her underclothes. She had taken to wearing long tunics, tied with a sash, with loose breeches underneath. Huma disapproved, but if it scandalized anyone in the fortress or the village, no one bothered—or dared—to say so. She had also had new leather cuffs made to wear on either wrist, a hidden knife in both. These she unbuckled and laid on her clothes, alongside her boots. Finally, she undid the white scarf that bound her tangled and knotted hair, and lifted it from her neck. She held the scarf out, looking at it. Wondering if she always chose white because it looked like a Janissary cap.
But nothing would ever look enough like one.
With a sigh, she slipped into the hidden pool, nestled among rocks and hidden by trees. The water was a deep green, and so cold it took her breath away and left her toes numb.
It was still their glorious secret, a place that felt truly theirs. When they got back to Amasya, Mehmed had been so sad, so frustrated. He had not wanted to lose the throne. So Lada and Radu had bent all their attentions to distracting him. They made a game of how often they could evade Mehmed’s guards and retreat to the pool. It had been an escape they had all needed. But with Mehmed gone, Radu had not wanted to come here. Lada, too, had not been here since, dreading the quiet and the solitude.
Until today. Everywhere she went, no matter how many people surrounded her, she knew now she was alone. She may as well be alone in a place that was beautiful.
Closing her eyes, she floated on her back and let herself hang, only her face above the water, the sunlight brilliant and hot in contrast to the cold water. Her breasts floated up beneath her clinging undershirt, which she found both amusing and oddly disturbing. While she had not grown much in stature, becoming thicker and more solid instead of taller, her breasts had become soft, full things. She had been forced to adjust her knife-throwing and her archery—always her weakest skill—to account for the unwieldy changes. And now here they were, bobbing gently in the water, unavoidable.
There was something claustrophobic about breasts.
Her nipples, too, seemed animated with a will of their own. Sometimes they were flat and small; other times they puckered and stuck out. She suspected it was the cold now, but on a few other occasions it had happened. Her nurse could have explained it to her.
Or Huma. Though she would cut off her breasts before asking Huma for advice about her body.
Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a mother. Would she have guided Lada through her traumatic first bleeding, reassured her that no, she was not dying? Helped her hide the evidence for longer than she had been able to?
No. Her mother would have crawled away in terror or made the nurse do it.
Lada let her face go underneath the water. A mother. A nurse. Even a friend. Perhaps if she had more women in her life, she would not feel so outraged at the physical and social demands of being one.
She thought of needlework. Of the weight of layers of dresses and the pinching of shoes. Of downcast eyes and well-timed smiles. Of her mother. Of Huma, Halima, and Mara. All the ways to be a wife, all the ways to be a woman.
No, more women in her life would change nothing.