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“That was very pragmatic of you.” Nicolae had ridden out to the road to meet her. Now they were side by side, their horses meandering through the ice-glazed trees. This winter was preferable to last, though, oddly, she found herself missing the camaraderie of camping as a fugitive alongside her men. Now they were scattered. All doing important work for Wallachia, but any chance she had to reunite with them, she took. She had been looking forward to this time with Nicolae.
He guided them toward the estate that had formerly belonged to her advisor, Toma Basarab. Before Lada’s rule, Toma had been alive and well, and these roads had been nearly impassable without an armed guard for protection. Now, Toma was dead and the roads were safe. Both of those—death of boyars and safety for everyone else—were patterns of Lada’s rule so far.
The frigid air stung her nostrils in a way she found bracing and pleasant. The sun shone clear, but it was no match for the blanket of ice that Wallachia slept under. Perhaps that also contributed to the safety of the roads. No one wanted to be out in this.
Lada preferred it to the castle with a fierceness that was as sharp and pointed as the icicles she passed beneath.
She waved the parchment with the story of her unusual methods of solving family disputes. “The most offensive part,” she said, “is that the story is unoriginal. The Transylvanians got that one from the Bible. The least they could do is make up new stories about me, rather than stealing from Solomon.” She should print the stories the woman and her daughter had told last night. Spread those rumors instead.
Nicolae gestured to the bundle of reports he had given her. “Did you see the new woodcut? Very skilled artist. It is the next page.”
She was sorting through as best she could while riding, dropping each page to the road as she finished. None had been anything but slander. Nothing important. Nothing true. Her thick gloves were not suited to manipulating thin sheets, but she shuffled until she found the illustration. “I am dining on human flesh amid a forest of impaled bodies.”
“You are! Meals in Tirgoviste have changed since you sent me out here.”
Lada adjusted her red satin hat, a jeweled star in the middle representing the falling star that had accompanied her ascension to the throne. “He got my hair wrong.”
Nicolae reached out and tugged one of her long, curling locks. “It is difficult to capture such majesty with simple tools.”
“I have missed you, Nicolae.” Her tone was acidic but her sentiment sincere. She needed him where he was, but she missed him at her side.
He gestured to the star in the center of her hat, beaming. “Of course you have. I dare say I am one of the brightest—nay, the very brightest—point of your existence. How have you scrambled in the dark these long six months without me?”
“Peacefully, now that you mention it. Such blessed quiet.”
“Well, Bogdan’s strength never has been conversation.” Nicolae’s smile twisted, puckering his long scar. “But you do not keep him around for talking.”
Lada gritted her teeth. “I can kill you. Very quickly. Or very, very slowly.”
“As long as the Saxons make a woodcut of my demise, I will accept it with grace.” He stroked his chin. “Please ask them to get my face right. A face such as this should never be poorly represented.”
Nicolae was not wrong about Bogdan, though. Bogdan, her childhood companion and now most stalwart soldier and supporter, did not speak often. But lately even that had been too much. A break from him had been one of her motivations in making this trip alone. She was meeting him in Arges, but she had deliberately given him a task that took him from her before then.
Bogdan was like sleep. Necessary, sometimes enjoyable. She needed him. And when he was unobtainable, she missed him. But she liked that she could take him for granted most of the time.
Mehmed would never have tolerated such treatment. She scowled, pushing him from her mind. Mehmed deserved no place among her thoughts. He was a usurper there, just as he was everywhere.
They passed a frozen pond, patterns of frost telling a story she could not read. The trees opened up ahead to rolling farmland softened with snow. “Why did Stefan not stay after delivering these letters? He knew I was due here soon.”
“He wanted to get back to Daciana and the children. And he was probably worried if he saw you before that, you would send him away again and he would not get a chance to stop in Tirgoviste.”
Lada grunted. That was true. She wanted him in Bulgaria, or maybe Serbia. Both were active vassal states of the Ottoman Empire, and likely staging areas for any attacks. She did not expect an attack. But she would be prepared, and for that, she needed Stefan. He had spent the last couple of months scouting in Transylvania and Hungary to get a feel for their political climates, whether there were any active threats toward Lada’s rule. She wanted to speak with him in person. Daciana should not take priority over that. Nothing should.
Daciana ran the day-to-day business at the castle, all the details and mundanity that Lada could not begin to care about. Lada was grateful for her work. It had been a stroke of luck, finding her during their campaigning last year. But there was nothing at the castle that required Stefan’s attention. Daciana was safe and busy. He should know better than to waste all their time.
Lada scanned the neatly ordered reports impatiently. Stefan had written his own observations and coupled them with the woodcut printings. In Hungary, Matthias was king. He did not go by Hunyadi, as his father did, but had styled himself Matthias Corvinus. Lada was not surprised. Matthias’s relationship with his soldier father had been fraught. Of course he would not honor the man who had cut the path to the crown for him. And Lada had helped, in the end. She had betrayed Hunyadi’s legacy and committed murder for Matthias.
And then she had had to do everything by herself anyway, because the aid of men was never what they promised. It always came with hooks, invisible barbs to tug her back when she got close to her goals.
Matthias was not having an easy time of being king, at least. According to Stefan’s report, he spent all his time and money flattering nobles and trying to buy back his crown from Poland. The Polish king had taken it for safekeeping years before when the previous king had been killed in battle. It was an important symbol, and Matthias was desperate for the legitimacy it would give his questionable claim to the throne.
Lada skimmed that information. Matthias was a fool if he thought a piece of metal would give him what he wanted, and she did not particularly care about any of his machinations as long as they were directed toward other countries. It also served the benefit of keeping him distracted. As far as Stefan could tell, he had no designs on Lada despite her refusal to defer to his authority.
The woodcut printings demonstrated Transylvania’s continued opposition to her rule, but aside from the artistic flair, they had no organized opposition. There did not seem to be any attempt to destabilize her militarily. Stefan mentioned the downside to losing them as allies—they had long served as a buffer between Wallachia and Hungary—but there was nothing to be done. She had, after all, spent much of the previous year burning their cities. But if they had not wanted her to do that, they should have allied with her sooner.
All things considered, it was as good of news as she could have hoped for. But she had questions for Stefan. And concerns, now. Daciana was hers. Stefan was hers. She did not like them being each other’s before that.
She tucked the papers into her saddlebag. “And how have you managed?”
