And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1) - Kiersten White Page 0,48

in my hands.”

The door slammed behind her, punctuating her exit. Radu sighed and rubbed his face, wondering what he had hoped to accomplish by needling his sister. Did he want her to stop training with the Janissaries? Or did he want her to admit that she had accepted this as their home? Because if she admitted it, then he finally could, too.

The unfairness pricked at him—that she could hate them and enjoy them at the same time. If anyone deserved to be friends with the Janissaries, it was him. He had never found Lazar again and wondered about his fate, wishing he were here to joke with and to help Radu find a place he belonged, as he had so long ago in the stables.

His soul sputtering like a candle at the end of its wick, Radu went in search of Molla Gurani. The tutor was in his chambers, studying. He weighed Radu with his eyes and stood. “Let us walk.”

Lada loved to make comments about how dull Molla Gurani was, claiming he was the bastard son of a shepherd who had become too amorous with the sheep. She used to repeat his lessons at night in a bleating monotone until Radu begged her to stop, worried her version would replace the real lessons in his mind.

Radu found Molla Gurani deeply comforting, his ascetic demeanor restful and safe. When they were standing in front of a fountain, Radu blurted out what he could not admit to Lada. He had come so close, had even thought that if he presented it as a secret plan to save their lives she might agree. But he was alone in this, as always. “I want to convert.”

Molla Gurani simply blinked and nodded, as though Radu had commented on the weather.

“No one can know. I mean, would that be acceptable? If it was just between God and me?”

“A true conversion is always only between a man and God.”

Radu wiped his brow, relieved. If Lada found out that he had made it official, he worried it would break what remained of their bond. Whatever else she was, Lada was his family, his childhood, his past. They had to stay together.

A man walked past them, his robes formal but unfamiliar. He was slender with a pronounced belly, like his middle was a bulb anchoring slender branches. His face was devoid of hair. Not clean-shaven, but hairless. Molla Gurani inclined his head, and the two men exchanged a greeting. The hairless man looked toward Radu as though expecting an introduction.

“Radu is one of my students. Radu, this is the chief eunuch,” Molla Gurani said.

Radu knew it was a title of some sort, but he did not know what level of respect he was supposed to show. Embarrassed, he asked, “What is a eunuch?”

For the first time he could recall, Molla Gurani looked ill at ease.

The chief eunuch smiled, though, and gestured for Radu to join him. “Walk with me and I will tell you.”

Radu stood neck-deep in the water, then bent his knees to leave only his nose and eyes above the surface. The steam rising all around him obscured the patterns of blue and white tile, everything a dizzying blur of heat and color. In Wallachia, they had only bathed during the summer when they stayed on the banks of the Arges. The rest of the time they washed with cloths and basins. Baths were a luxury of the Ottomans he savored.

Lada enjoyed no such comforts. Though the palace bath had certain hours set aside for women, Lada refused to use them. There was a permanent private bath for women, but it was in the harem complex. Lada, of course, could not and would not set foot there. Radu had heard tales of women who entered the harem as a method of divorcing their husbands. The chief eunuch had more stories than anyone in the whole city, and Radu loved hearing them.

But no matter. Lada could spend her free time with the soldiers and their crude jokes and their worse smell. Radu spent his studying the scriptures and the teachings of the Prophet. The feeling he found in holy words was one he could only compare to the long afternoons he had spent with his nurse, sitting by the fire, safe and separate from the rest of the world. He could not quite describe it, and hid it as well as he could from Lada, but when he listened to the call to prayer it felt like