Page 14 of Bright We Burn
Mehmed abruptly straightened in his saddle, no longer leaning toward Radu. The eagerness in his voice had shifted, just like his posture. “What were you making coins for?”
Radu sighed, letting the memory slip away. “To buy food. People were starving.”
“How did that help our cause?”
Radu dismounted and paused, stroking his horse’s flank. He did not look to see if Mehmed was studying him. “It did not help. Not you, and in the end, not them. But it felt right at the time.” Radu walked inside the foundry, blinking at the sudden dimness. His conflicted past, confusing present, and unknown future were all harsher and more difficult to breathe through than the blistering air inside.
Just like silver melted down, its impurities burned away, Radu felt himself as molten and unformed. He could pour himself into any shape. He could fill a mold as Mehmed’s dearest friend and confidant. He could fill one as Radu Bey, powerful force in the Ottoman Empire. He could probably even return to Lada and fill one as the lesser Dracul once again.
But the mold he found himself longing for, the shape that felt truest, could not be formed. Because the people he wanted to form it around were lost to him. Maybe forever.
Lada had always known exactly what shape she would take. She had never let it be determined by the people around her. But Radu could not escape the need for love, the need for people in his life to help him see what he should—and could—be. Lada shaped herself in spite of her environment. Radu shaped himself because of it.
He would stay in the city because Mehmed still shaped some part of him. But he could not become what Mehmed wanted or even needed him to. And he feared that a refining fire would reveal he had never been silver to begin with; he was simply dirt and impurities, burned away to ash while desperate to become something worth valuing.
Tirgoviste
LADA ENTERED HER RECEPTION room with Bogdan at her back and Nicolae at her side. Two men were waiting for her. One, the king she knew. And the other, her cousin.
Matthias Corvinus stood and threw a sheaf of parchment on the stone floor. “You monstrous little fool,” he snarled.
Lada smiled.
“Now, now,” said the other man, Stephen, King of Moldavia. He leaned casually in his chair, one leg stretched in front of him, and eyed Lada with curiosity. “Cousin.”
Lada acknowledged him with a dip of her head. “Cousin.” She did not know much about him, other than his penchant for picking fights and winning them. She already liked him better than Matthias.
But as much as she would have preferred to meet only with Stephen, it was good that the two kings had arrived at the same time. It made things quicker.
Stephen sat up straight. “It is good to finally meet you. Your mother is—”
“I care nothing for my mother.” She did not want to bring that woman—and her weakness—into this discussion. Stephen needed to see she was nothing like the woman who had given birth to her. Lada took the chair opposite the two men. She sat as a man did, back straight, legs apart, arms crossed over her chest.
Matthias sat back down, anger in his stiff posture. He had probably hoped for more of a reaction from her. She was determined to give him nothing that he hoped for. When they had last been together, he had been almost a king, and she, fighting for the chance to be prince. Now she was prince. She would not let him forget it.
“I assume you got the same letter I did,” Matthias said to Stephen.
Raising an eyebrow, Stephen pulled out his own sheaf of parchment. He cleared his throat, then read aloud. “ ‘I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia….’ ” He paused, looking up. “How is Chilia this time of year?”
“Quite pleasant,” Lada said, not failing to notice Stephen’s pointed question. Nor had she forgotten that Moldavia had a vested interest in Chilia. She had mentioned it specifically for that exact reason. Over the years it had shifted between Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia. Now it was hers, because she had taken it.
Stephen lifted an eyebrow in amusement. “I am happy to hear it. Continuing, more locations, following the Danube, ah yes, this is my favorite part: ‘We killed twenty-three thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four Turks without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose heads were cut off by our soldiers. Thus, your highness, you must know I have broken the peace with Mehmed.’ ” Stephen lowered the letter, laughing. “I should say you have.”
“Why would you do this?” Matthias demanded. “We cannot afford a war with the Ottomans!”
Lada met his intensity with a cool gaze. “We cannot afford not to have war with them. They take our fortresses, they take our villages, they take our land, they take our children. I, for one, cannot bear the cost of their stewardship any longer. I will have Wallachia free of them. And I have proved it is possible. They rule because we allow it. No more.”
Stephen tapped the letter on his knee. “Your numbers are impressive.”
“I did it all with only three thousand men of my own.”
Matthias grunted in disbelief. “You exaggerate on one end or the other.”
Lada pulled out a dagger and cleaned her fingernails with the tip. “We moved fast and surprised them, fortress by fortress. We never faced more than a thousand men at a time. So, no, I do not exaggerate, and you know it is the truth. Do not pretend you are not aware of precisely how many men I have at my disposal, Matthias. And do not do me the dishonor of implying I would falsify my accomplishments. Those of us who actually do things have no need of falsehoods.”
Matthias rose like a storm once again. Stephen stood, too, holding out a hand. “Calm yourself. Think it through. She has handed a devastating loss to the Turks. And, as she pointed out, she has proved that such a thing, however surprising, is possible. So tell me, Cousin: Why are we here? What else do you have planned?”
“We are going to crusade,” Lada said.