The rosy fingers of dawn woke me in the gardener’s hut, and I found that I once again had full strength in my limbs, the magically imposed weakness having gone completely. The iron cuffs around my wrist felt no heavier than they ordinarily did. It was a weight that I had become accustomed to during my years in the Sultanate. Then I sat up and gazed down upon the beautiful brunette woman dozing next to me. Shame filled my heart. I had fought for the sultan. I had participated in the sack of this virtuous woman’s city. I had ruined Helena’s life. And also, most shamefully of all by the hardened sensibilities I had gained as a noble hostage in a foreign court, I had been completely helpless and at her mercy. And yet—she had mercy in her heart, and more than mercy. I was alive; I had become, in truth, a man, at the cost of her utter ruin.
Helena had chosen to lower herself to my level, to belong to a man who lay helpless at her feet. The perfection of her relaxed face in repose drew my fingers to her cheek, and I gently stroked my beautiful Byzantine prize with the lightest possible touch. She woke in response anyway, startling awake with an unguarded expression of shock, fear, and horror. She thrashed her limbs, toppling out of the small and humble bed with the energy of her surprise.
“Is something the matter?” I asked, my hand nervously rubbing the spot where her foot had struck my upper thigh in her spasmodic awakening.
Helena breathed in and out, chest heaving several times as she schooled her expression. “Nothing—everything. The city really—I really—I am sorry, it is a very unfamiliar thing to wake next to a man and very disconcerting to spend a moment not knowing who he is. My memories of yesterday, they seem as nightmares.” She flushed a fetching shade of pink. “Or dreams, I am sorry, I did not mean to say you were a nightmare… I feel as if I must have gone mad, and I am sorry—you must think poorly of me now. Please do not.”
“Well, you have my thanks for not killing me.” My face felt warm, and my heart beat powerfully in my chest. “And—and you were wonderful. Are wonderful, I mean.”
Hastily, I stood, helped her up from the dirt floor, and brushed away the dirt and loose straw that had stuck to her in various places during her fall. Then we continued exchanging words and gestures that meant both more and less than they should for a little while, for I was full of the confounding passions of youth and less than completely fluent in her language. She seemed less bold in the light of day than she had in the dark of night, faced once again with a man who towered above her and was able to move his own limbs; for my part, I felt less bold now that I was not drunk from battle, both of us perhaps feeling a mixture of pride and shame as we flattered one another with shy murmurs and lingering touches.
After a time, I realized that a prince should not simply disappear after receiving a prize from the sultan and that I might be looked for—with concern for my unexpected departure or death—and broached the subject. “I am sure the pasha will want to speak with me again today, perhaps even the sultan,” I told Helena, my arms by this point wrapped around her slender waist and my nose buried in her hair.
She stiffened in my arms, stepping back. “I need clothes,” she told me. “Real clothing, and makeup, too,” she added, aiming a dismissive wave at my cloak where it lay on the bed.
“I—um—you—” I stammered nervously as I looked down, taking in the gleaming gold necklace with its pearls and the emerald-studded snake bracelets that make up the majority of her attire.
“Perhaps I should practice the proper courtesies, now that I am your prize by right of conquest, plundered and ravished?” She fixed her eyes on mine and dipped in a curtsy, holding up imaginary skirts before addressing me with heavily honeyed tones. “Milord prince, would it please you to clothe me more properly?” She switched back to her normal voice. “Your cloak is warm, but I am sure you will want it around your own shoulders. And if I am to appear in front of the sultan or one of his pashas, it is surely best if I have fresh makeup to put upon my face. I am sure I look a fright.”
I did not want to argue the point about who had ravished whom. “You do not look a fright,” I said instead, then quickly continued. “But if you must…” I hesitated. “I don’t know where the market—or, that is, I do not think the market will be working normally. Even if I knew where it was.” Or, I silently added, if I had spent time acquiring such things in markets before. A prince, hostage or not, usually relies on servants for such things.
“I know of some places to look,” Helena said, caressing my arm gently. “If they have not completely—perhaps I could even get some of my own clothes, but at least, I think if we returned to the palace proper—the servants’ quarters, there will be clothing there not yet stolen, as it is not so fine as to be precious. I could tell you places where to look, and stay here while you fetched them or found a servant to fetch them for you.”
“And then, what if someone else came upon you?” I clutched at her jealously, my hand running down her smooth back. “I would hope they would take you at your word that you are mine, but I daresay that an Osman might not hold my rank in such esteem as to respect it in my absence, especially given your beauty.”
She pulled away another step, a slight smile dimpling her cheeks as her arms crossed over her chest. “I promise I will not run off,” she said. “I have made my choice, and I cannot take back what I have given to you.”
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“But I do not jest—as a foreign princeling, especially one young and unproven in battle, I command little respect.” I shook my head. “Well, I have proven myself just the other day, but many will not have heard, even if Pasha Mustafa saw fit to grant me a prize by the sultan’s order.”
I paused, suddenly remembering that my brother and I had not been meant to be included in the company of fighting princes. Had the sultan heard about my feats in battle? Did he know I had become a man? I shook my head again. “But even then, I am still young, and neither Osman nor even Turk, and—well, I am hardly a hostage whose threatened safety can check misbehavior by Vladislav the Dragonslayer.”
A look of regret and worry flashed across Helena’s face. “You may check his behavior more than you think,” she said, reassuringly. “As you are alive and in the sultan’s hand, he has a ready replacement Vlach prince if Vladislav should prove intransigent and require removal.”
I had not thought of it that way before, though it made sense. A moment of further exercise of my faculty of reason revealed to me that Radu would serve equally well in that role if I were to vanish—perhaps even better, as he had been younger when we left our father’s court behind for the Osman one, making him that much more of a Turk and that much less of a Vlach.
“Very well,” I told her. “You speak sense—but I still want to come with you. Will you tell me the way?”
Helena nodded, and after I wrapped her once more in my cloak, she came with me. We walked through the gardens and then through what had been—and likely, I suspected would be again—the women’s wing within the palace. In accordance with expected custom, I led the way. She kept my cloak wrapped tightly around herself and bowed her head, guiding me from behind with light touches and soft murmurs, following me so closely that if I stopped suddenly, the top of her head would bump into my back.
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A palace is not looted all at once, not even with an army sweeping through it, and the servants’ quarters proved fruitful. Helena found a modest gown that she felt suited her even if it did not well flatter her figure, along with a small polished bronze mirror and a stash of makeup, busying herself with the urgent application of cosmetics while I packed away more clothing into a sack for later use. After all, if Helena was my prize, it was on me to keep her clothed and fed.
“There you are,” a voice said in my native tongue, interrupting my reverie. “I wanted to find you—I’ve been looking all around—and here you are in, what was this, the maidservants’ quarters?”
I turned, seeing my towheaded brother. “Radu! It is good to see you!”
“It is not my fault you flew off into the night as soon as you picked your prize,” Radu said. “Though now that I see her in the light of the day, I am the more surprised you picked her—brother, for all that she looked pretty from across the room, she is rather ugly up close. She must have been very well born indeed to be one of the sultan’s prizes with a face like that. I would hate to see what she looks like without any makeup.”
I looked over at Helena, who was packing away the pots of makeup into a little box. Her face was transformed, one eye seeming slightly smaller than the other, her nose a little bit crooked. A bruise discolored one cheek, and a small wart perched on the opposite side of her chin. Fine dark hairs dotted her upper lip while her lower lip swelled, crudely overlarge. Her forehead was dotted with small, ruddy pimples. The overall effect was disconcerting, her beauty dissolved by a hundred artificial imperfections.
Helena stood, albeit not quite all the way up—her upper back stayed hunched, like an old woman—and curtsied, speaking in Greek. “Prince Radu, I am honored to meet you.”
I did not know what to say as I stared at my prize, but I knew I must defend my choice to keep my brother’s respect, even if I could not convince him in any way that the imperfect creature standing before me was a beauty to match the others that were collected as the sultan’s prizes.
“Little brother, I looked more closely than you think,” I said, grabbing Helena’s hand and tapping the bracelet on her arm. “You see that she wears golden serpents with emerald eyes upon her wrists? And the pearls on that golden chain around her neck? And the sapphires set in gold upon her ears? When I chose my prize, I gained a considerable value in jewelry with her—enough to purchase two beautiful women if I chose.”
Helena gave me a silent look of disgust. Radu laughed. “You are clever, brother. I should not have doubted you. And with her being well-born, you may be able to get a good price for her anyway—do you know her breeding?”
“No,” I said as Helena’s look of disgust turned to worry. I did not know how much, if any, she understood of our conversation, but the worry in her eyes tugged at my heart. “Enough about my choice—what of you? What prize did you choose?”
Radu beamed. “I picked the sword,” he said.
I looked down at his waist, seeing only a plain blade there. “You are not wearing it?”
“There was a council of sorts among several of the pashas, the sultan’s uncle, and the sultan’s half-brother—and of course that meant coffee and dice. I lost it in a wager against Pasha Halil,” Radu said. “The vizier’s luck was bad the rest of the night except for that. But before I lost the sword, I won a horse as black as night from one of the other pashas, a beautiful blonde woman from the sultan’s uncle, and fifty gold ducats besides—my luck was afire!”
“And so, you have a beautiful blonde now instead of a sword?” I asked.
“No—I lost the horse trying to win back the sword and then the woman trying to win back the horse,” Radu said. “It was a pity, she was quite pretty and I got to touch and feel her all over. But I lost her to the sultan’s half-brother after he cleaned out Pasha Halil’s table stakes. I might yet win her back, the prince said we were nearly too pretty a pair to separate, what with our matching hair, so I think he may be ready to wager her again the next time we play at dice. But come quickly with me—the sultan is breaking his fast, and if he was pleased well enough to grant us such rich prizes last night, he will surely have praise to offer for us in front of the others when he holds court, as long as we are there to be praised.”
Praise from a sultan was a good currency at court, or at least it had been with the old sultan, and I assumed it would be with the new one. Conversely, being absent at court when the sultan made decisions could cause trouble, and I did not doubt that Sultan Allaedin would have decisions to make on the day after he conquered what had once been the greatest city in Europe. I did not want to be seen as shirking, so I set a quick walking pace as Radu showed me the way, leading me outside and then back inside to where the sultan was holding court. Helena followed behind, her sandals flapping against her heels as she jogged in my wake.