And I Darken (The Conquerors Saga #1) - Kiersten White Page 0,97

with Halil Pasha?” he asked Lazar.

“Kazanci Dogan, the commander of all the Janissary corps. You will meet him at some point, I am certain.”

“Is Halil Pasha here often?”

Lazar shrugged. “I have seen him on occasion.” He paused, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Would you like me to keep track of how often he visits?”

“Yes. And of anyone else Kazanci Dogan meets with outside of the Janissaries.”

Lazar put a fist to his chest, then left.

Radu walked back to the palace, deep in thought. Halil had strings of his web everywhere. Viziers, pashas, beys, both major branches of the military, with the native spahi leaders and their regional forces, and the Janissaries with Kazanci Dogan. And at the center, fat and lethal, sat the spider Halil Pasha.

If they killed him, as Huma wanted, the web would remain. All these lines of power, tugged together, aligned against Mehmed. And who knew if another, more dangerous spider, would take Halil Pasha’s place?

No. Huma was wrong. First, they needed to destroy the web. Then the spider would be powerless.

LADA AND NICOLAE LAY on their stomachs, peering over the ledge at the city laid out beneath them. Wood homes stretched above the river, jostling for space as they lined its banks, growing straight up from the water. Amasya was a fairly recent addition to the Ottoman Empire, its long, storied history evident in the Roman tombs casting shade on Lada’s legs. The last time she was up here, she had been with Mehmed and Radu, staring up at the sky and dreaming of stars.

Now, she looked down and plotted flames.

“We could use the river,” Nicolae mused, speaking Wallachian as required by Lada. “Travel down it by boat in the middle of the night, setting fire to the homes. That would keep the locals busy, and many of the soldiers.”

“Who is in charge of the spahi forces here?”

Behind her Petru, a young Wallachian only recently released from training, spat in derision. “Spahi! Lazy, fat pigs. Why should we worry about them?”

Lada had picked him because he had been pulled from Wallachia at a relatively late age—he was already fourteen by the time he came to the Ottomans. But he was arrogant and thickheaded, with a mean streak that reminded her of her older brother Mircea. Sometimes it made her like him more.

Most of the time it made her want to pitch him off the cliffs.

“And who told you the spahis were lazy, fat pigs? Have you fought them?”

“Why would I fight them? We are on the same side.”

Lada and Nicolae shared a glance. Perhaps Petru would need to be released from her regiment. “Are the spahis forbidden from growing beards?”

Petru scoffed. “No.”

“And yet you are permitted only a mustache.”

“If he can ever manage that,” said Matei, a wiry man with a perpetually hungry look whom Lada had recruited from his corps in Edirne. Petru threw a rock at him. All together Lada had ten men, varying in age from eighteen to mid-twenties. There were few Wallachians to choose from, the Ottomans preferring other nationalities as making smarter and better soldiers.

Fools. Lada squinted, looking for which houses could be blown up with the stores of Janissary gunpowder to most effectively block the roads to the keep. “And are the spahis forbidden to marry and have children?”

“No.”

“Another thing our Petru could never manage,” Nicolae said cheerfully.

Lada waited for the laughter to die down. “And are the spahis slaves, stolen from their homelands and brought here to serve another man’s master and another man’s god?”

She was met with silence. “The spahis resent our growing power. They resent our organization, our skill in battle, our position closest to the sultan and the sultan’s heirs. Do not ever think you are on their side, because they are not on yours. They fight to gain land, prestige, and wealth. We fight because it is the only thing given to us.”

She waited for a few moments, then continued. “Who organizes a city’s defenses?”

“The spahi in charge.” Petru sounded focused as he crawled next to her to look over the city.

Lada traced the line of the river as though it were a serpent. “Cut off the head in your first strike, and the body is powerless before you.”

Matei continued sharpening a dagger on a whetstone where he sat on a fallen tomb marker. “Much as I would enjoy cutting off the heads of a few spahis, I am not certain I have time to set fire to the city tonight.”

“Planning imaginary destruction is my favorite training game,