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The man sitting next to her snorted into his cup of wine. “Aron or Andrei, whichever one, what a pity for them. First they lose their father, and then they have to marry the ugliest murderess in existence.”
“Still, it will be good to get the Draculesti line under control.”
Lada stood. Her chair scraped back loudly. “Lada,” someone said from the door nearest her. She turned to see Bogdan. Something was wrong. She could see it in his pale face and downturned mouth. She hurried to him.
“What is it?”
“Come with me.”
No one called after her. She followed Bogdan down the hall and into the kitchen, where a large wooden table had been cleared of food. It was now laden with a body.
Petru’s body.
Lada stumbled forward. His eyes were closed, his face still. His shirt had been pulled up to reveal a ragged hole of a wound that was no longer bleeding, because his heart no longer pumped. Bogdan turned him gently on his side. The origin of the wound was his back. Someone had stabbed him from behind.
“How did this happen?” Lada touched Petru’s cheek; it was still warm. He had been with her since Amasya. She had watched him grow up, into himself, into a man. One of her men. One of her best.
“We found him behind the stables,” Stefan said.
“Were there any witnesses?”
Bogdan’s voice was grim. “Two Danesti family guards who were arguing with him earlier said they saw and heard nothing. They suggested perhaps he fell on his own sword. Backward.”
Lada clenched her jaw. She stared at the body on the table until her vision blurred. Petru was hers. He represented her. And he had been stabbed in the back by men who represented the Danesti boyars. “Kill the guards. All of them, not just those two. Then bring my first men—those who have been with us since before we were free—into the dining hall.”
Lada turned around. She walked back toward the room holding the Danesti boyars. Dining with boyars. Dealing with Hungary. Pleading with the Ottomans for aid. Had she become her father this quickly?
She slammed through the door, the noise drawing the atten
tion of everyone who had not noticed her absence. “Someone’s guards killed one of my men. I want to know who allowed it.”
“Why?” Toma asked.
“Because an attack on my men is an attack on me, and I punish treason with death.”
Toma grimaced a smile at the table, then leaned close. “I am certain it was a misunderstanding. Besides, you cannot ask for a noble life in exchange for a soldier’s.”
“I can do anything I want,” Lada said.
Toma’s expression became sharp. “Sit down,” he commanded. “You are embarrassing me. We will talk about this later.”
Lada did not sit. “How many princes have you served under?”
Toma narrowed his eyes even more. “I would have to count.”
She leaned forward against the table, gesturing toward everyone. “I wish to know how many princes you have all served under.”
“Four,” the rat-faced boyar said with a shrug of his shoulders.
Many nodded. “Eight,” another said. “Nine!” someone else countered.
A wizened old man near the back shouted out, “I have you all beat. Twenty-one princes have I seen in my lifetime!”
Everyone laughed. Lada laughed loudest and sharpest. She kept laughing long after everyone else stopped, her laugh ringing alone through the room. She laughed until everyone stared at her, confused and pitying.
She stopped abruptly, the room echoing with the silence left in the wake of her laughter. “Princes come and go, but you all remain.”
Toma nodded. “We are the constants. Wallachia depends on us.”
