Page 57 of Bright We Burn

There, in front of the gaping castle gates and doors, on a stake above all the others, a final corpse.

Radu knew that cloak, knew those clothes.

He was still sitting on his horse when Mehmed reached him. There were new noises now—retching and curses and a few quiet sobs. Of course there were more men here. Mehmed would not have come alone. Radu did not know how long he had been here.

“Is that…?” Mehmed did not finish his sentence.

“Kumal,” Radu whispered. The man who had given him Islam as a balm and protection for Radu’s terrified young soul. The man who had become Radu’s brother in spirit and in law. The man who had come here in Radu’s place.

Kiril spoke. Radu had not seen him join them. He could not look away from where Kumal’s kind eyes had once been. Did they rot out, or had they been eaten? It seemed important to know, but Radu had no way of finding out.

“…all clear. There is no one here.”

“How can we fight against this?” Mehmed asked. “How can we take a country when she simply walks away from the capital? How can we ever defeat someone willing to do this”—his voice broke as he swept his arm outward—“just to send a message?”

“How could a woman do this?” Ali Bey’s voice was filled with equal parts wonder and disgust.

“She is not a woman,” a soldier near Radu said, spitting. Normally a soldier would not dare speak in the presence of the sultan. But there was nothing normal here. “She is a demon.”

“No.” Radu closed his eyes against the forest of corpses grown from the indomitable will of his sister. “She is a dragon.”

Outside Tirgoviste

IT HAD BEEN ALL Bogdan could do to persuade Lada not to dress as a Janissary and enter the city with Mehmed’s men.

She wanted to be there.

She wanted to see it.

To revel in their shock at an unguarded capital. To see the looks on their faces when they realized they could not fight her. To see their despair when they were confronted with how far she would go to protect what was hers. They could have the city with her blessing. After all, Tirgoviste was not Wallachia.

Lada was Wallachia.

Instead, she sat in the hills and watched from a distance, imagining it. Relishing it. And looking on in astonishment and delight as Mehmed’s army stopped, then turned around and headed back toward the Danube.

Finally Mehmed knew the truth. She would never be his. Her country would never be his. She had won. All it had taken was twenty thousand dead Ottomans on stakes.

And Mehmed thought she did not understand the power of poetic imagery.

Outside Tirgoviste

IT TOOK TWENTY THOUSAND stakes to make a single point:

Lada was not ever giving up.

Radu did not know which had shaken Mehmed more deeply: seeing so many of his men impaled in horrific defiance of Muslim burial traditions, or understanding that Lada truly had intended to kill him during the night attack.

Their retreat from the city had been necessary for both morale and health. At best, the tenor of the camp was one of unease. Radu heard a lot of rumblings about going home. They had to decide what to do before opinion shifted too far in one direction or the other and made the men unruly.

Mehmed had relocated to a far less ostentatious and more anonymous tent. They were there now, and had been for hours. Radu waited in silence next to Mehmed, who sat with his back straight, his eyes on the carpet. He picked mercilessly at the gold stitching on his robe.

“How can I fight this?” Mehmed finally asked. This was the first time since the night of Lada’s first visit that they had been alone. Mehmed seemed a different man. Radu, too, felt different. Far older, again. How many lifetimes could he age over the course of a few years?

“How can I fight this?” Mehmed repeated, but Radu did not think Mehmed was asking him. Radu suspected that, until the double blow of Lada’s true intentions and her horrific display, Mehmed had not actually taken any of this seriously. It had been more than a game to him, but far less than a war. He had faced Constantinople with religious determination. This had been all about getting Lada back.

And now Lada had made certain they could never forgive her. All hope Mehmed had held of reunion was as lifeless and rotten as the sentinels at Tirgoviste.

The camp had moved far enough away from the city that the smell was no longer making men sick. Radu had his own men—four thousand skilled and disciplined fighters—digging graves instead of riding into battle. But his men were not alone. Ali Bey, Ishak Pasha, Hamza Pasha, they had all spared as many as they could for the work of giving the Ottomans proper burials. Shifts were taken with solemn sadness. Some to dig, some to guard, and some to pray.