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“Oh. Right.” Even when Radu had the best idea for keeping them safe, everyone always knew more than he did. He stopped outside the guard gate, a side entrance to the vast harem complex. A guard stood posted, his white turban a bright spot in the dark night. On his first trip, Radu had tried to see a difference in the eunuchs as opposed to uncastrated men, but other than their voices not being as deep as a man’s nor as high as a woman’s, he was not able to tell who was a eunuch and who was not.
The guard, whom Radu had met before, cocked his head curiously at Radu before noticing Mehmed behind him. He bowed low to the ground, then stood at attention.
Mehmed did not acknowledge him as he walked straight past. Radu nodded, and the man’s eyes followed them. Without knocking, Mehmed entered the outer apartments of the chief eunuch.
Though it was late, they had not been in the room more than a minute before the chief eunuch joined them. He was an older man, nearing forty, skin wrinkled and features indistinct, as though his face had never decided quite who it wanted to be. He bowed to Mehmed, then straightened with a smile for Radu. He took in Lada’s bloodstained appearance with a mere flick of his gaze. “How can I serve you, My Sultan?”
“I need a conference with the valide sultan. Also lodging for the night.”
“Of course. Whose company would you like?”
It took a moment for Radu to follow the easy way in which the chief eunuch asked the question. And then another moment to process what it meant. His face grew heated with embarrassment, and also curiosity. Was this— Did Mehmed come here regularly? Was he already enjoying the benefits of being sultan? How many concubines could he have amassed after so short a time? Did he have a wife already? Islam had rules about how many wives a man could have, but exceptions were made for sultans.
And what was it like, being with him? Did they love him? Did they wait every day, hoping to see him?
Radu glanced at Lada to see if she was wondering the same things. Her eyes were fixed determinedly on the far wall, a scowl set on her face. They had cleaned the blood from around her mouth and off her hands, but there were traces of it still. She looked wild and angry, nothing like a concubine. At least, not how Radu imagined them to look.
Radu pictured concubines like his nurse, matronly and soft and always sewing or fussing. He knew that was not their purpose, but whenever he tried to imagine that, everything got hazy and confused.
Mehmed’s voice was strained. “None tonight. I am here on business. Prepare a room for my companions as well. Lada will need a bath.”
“Shall I have the servants escort her to her new room?”
“No!” Mehmed’s voice came out a shout, making the chief eunuch startle. “No. She is here as a guest, not as a…resident. House us in the guard wing.”
“And no one can know that we are here,” Radu said, unsure if he was allowed to speak, but worried that Mehmed was too distracted.
Mehmed gave him a brief, grateful glance. “Yes. My business is with the valide sultan alone, and no one—not even my guards, should they inquire—is to know that we are here.”
The chief eunuch nodded, then bowed again and left the room to make preparations. As soon as he was gone, Mehmed’s shoulders slumped. He put a hand over his eyes, head hanging low. Lada had found a bit of dried blood on her hand and was furiously rubbing it against her skirts, trying to get it clean. The fact that her skirts were stained with blood did not seem to occur to her. Radu stood between her and Mehmed, not knowing what either needed, suspecting they both needed the same thing.
He went to Mehmed instead of his sister, and put his arm around the sultan’s shoulders. Mehmed leaned gratefully against him. Radu looked up at Lada and held out his free arm. She considered it, eyes heavy with exhaustion and something that looked suspiciously like sorrow. Before she could move, the chief eunuch returned. Mehmed straightened and stepped away from Radu, and Lada resumed staring at the wall.
“Follow me,” the chief eunuch said, and Radu once again found himself in the back, the pool of light from the eunuch’s lamp not quite reaching him.
MEHMED’S MOTHER MOVED WITH a sensuous grace that terrified Lada.
Lada could not seem to get comfortable, no matter where she sat in the opulently perfumed and padded room. The valide sultan occupied too much space here, with her silks and her veil and her dripping jewelry, with her careful face and her calculating smile and the way she lay across several pillows with as much precision as any Janissary sword.
If Halima and Mara were different seasons, Huma was nature itself.
“Sit down.” Her voice was kind, but a narrowing of her eyes indicated that she would brook no argument. Mehmed ceased pacing and sat across from her. He seemed as out of sorts as Lada. He had never known his mother, not in any real sense, and now came to her from a place of weakness. It was not ideal.
Lada remembered the sensation of the dagger meeting the resistance of flesh, the unyielding bone that made it turn course, always seeking more, deeper, deeper….
Not ideal. None of this was ideal. She had bathed, her hair still wet, but her hands felt sticky and her mouth would not surrender the memory of the bright, metallic taste of blood.
Radu, however, seemed fascinated, even delighted by the valide sultan. He sat near her, a rapt, worshipful look on his face. As though sensing the weight of his admiration, the valide sultan turned to him. Her lips, so much like Mehmed’s, parted in a way that was almost like their nurse’s smile. A way her lips had not moved for Mehmed.
“You were very clever, to bring him here. Radu, is it?” She sat up, leaning forward and putting her finger under his chin to lift his face. “Beautiful,” she murmured. Her gaze flicked toward Lada, whose spine stiffened and jaw jutted out defiantly. She knew how she would compare. The valide sultan’s smile shifted into something less maternal, but Lada did not know what it was.
“Valide Sultan,” Lada said, scowling over the show they were being forced to endure, “we need to—”
“You may call me Huma. Both of you.” She turned back to Mehmed, settling back down and resting her lovely cheek on her palm. “And you may call me Mother.” A small laugh, like coins being dropped into a well, escaped her lips.
“We do not have time—”
Huma held up a hand heavy with gold, cutting off Mehmed. “We do not have time to panic, or to display weakness. We have all the time in the world to allow you to engage in your much-deserved holiday as you take full advantage of the pleasures of your harem. Indeed, were the new sultan to spend an entire week of debauchery and riotous celebration with his women, no one could blame him. Or interrupt him. Or access him. And no one could discover how tenuous his power truly was and how close he came to being murdered before he could rule.”
