Lada had never been good at the games women played, the battles fought and won through incomprehensible conversations. So she pushed ahead. “I assume you have had news that my father is dead. So is Mircea.”
Vasilissa lifted her hand to her mouth again. Lada thought it was in horror or mourning, but Vasilissa’s tone was conversational. “Do you ride? I find a brisk ride in the afternoon settles my nerves and rouses my appetite. I have three horses. They have no names. I am so terrible with choosing names! But they are all gentle and sweet. Perhaps you can meet them tomorrow.”
“Why are you speaking to me of horses?” Lada set aside her glass and leaned forward. “You have not seen me in so many years, since you abandoned us. At least do me the courtesy of speaking to me as an equal. Your husband, my father, is dead.”
Her mother made a wounded face, a flash of truth breaking free. Her lips parted in an animal way, and Lada had a glimpse of a mouth full of broken teeth. Not rotted teeth—Lada had seen plenty of those—nor the gaps indicating lost teeth. Vasilissa’s mouth was a graveyard of shattered teeth. Lada did not know what could have caused such damage.
Her mother, crawling away, weeping.
No. She did know what could have caused such damage.
Lada lowered her voice. “He is dead. Gone.”
If her mother heard her, she did not indicate it. She drew her veil back down, making a repetitive clicking noise with her tongue. “Tell me, do you hunt? I find it abominable, but I have word that all the fashionable ladies do it now.” Her laugh was high and trilling, like the panicked flight of a startled bird. “If you would like, I can have word sent to your cousin. He has an excellent falconer. I am certain he would give you a demonstration, should you wish it. He visits every summer. He has to stay in town, of course, several leagues away, but he always stops by when I receive visitors! We can expect him in a few months.”
“I will not be here then. I am not here for a visit. I need help.”
Vasilissa laughed again, the same terrible noise. “I should say so! But my maid works wonders on hair. We will have you settled in no time. Do you like your room?”
Lada stood. “I need to speak to your father.”
Vasilissa shook her head. “He is— He has— I believe he is dead?”
With a defeated sigh, Lada sat back down. “Who leads Moldavia?”
“Your cousin, I think. Oh.” Vasilissa wrung her hands in her lap. “Do you suppose that means he will not come this summer? I am sorry. I promised you a falcon demonstration.”
“I do not care about falcons! I need men. I need alliances.” Lada shook, a wave of unacknowledged anger and grief overwhelming her. Her father had given her a knife, and her mother had left her with nothing. She desperately wanted something to hold on to. Or, barring that, something to fight against. “I need you to ask me where I have been the last fifteen years! I need you to ask where your son is!”
Her mother stood, her dress-draped frame trembling. “It is time for me to retire for the night. The maid will see to you. Your room is the nicest in the house. You will be happy. And you will be safe; this is a very safe house.”
Vasilissa held out a hand. The maid rushed to her side. Lada saw, for the first time, that her mother walked with a pronounced limp. One of her feet, when it peeked from beneath her skirts, was twisted at an odd angle. The way Vasilissa moved without cringing spoke of it as an old, permanent injury. Lada did not know what to say, how to talk to this strange, ruined creature. Her impression of Vasilissa on the horse had been wrong. Her mother was exactly the same person who had left them behind. The only difference was that she had found a safe place to hide.
Perhaps Radu would feel tenderly toward her. Lada knew he would urge compassion.
She felt only rage.
“You never came back for us,” Lada said. “He sold us. To the Turks. We were tortured. We were raised in a foreign land by heathens. Radu stayed behind. They broke him.”
“Well.” Vasilissa reached out as though she would pat Lada’s arm as she passed. Her hand hovered in the air, then moved back to the maid’s arm for support. “You are welcome to stay forever. We are all safe here.”
“I belong in Wallachia.”
Her mother’s voice was as harsh as Lada had ever heard it, finally filled with true emotion. “No one belongs there.”
The maid was loath to part with any information, but as far as Lada could determine, her mother was mad. They had lived together in this house, far away from everyone and everything, for the last ten years. Vasilissa had been given the manor by her father, who doubtless could not stand the broken shell of a woman she was.
Every day was the same. The maid smiled as she described it, saying over and over how pleasant it was, to be safe and to always know what to expect. This was what Lada’s mother had chosen. Safety. Seclusion. The woman had abandoned her children, utterly and completely, to live in pampered isolation instead of dealing with the harsh realities of life.
The harsh realities of her own children’s desperate attempts to survive without anyone to aid them.
Lada did not say goodbye. She stopped in the kitchen and stole as much food as she could carry. Then she closed the front door behind her and walked along the dark lane to where the campfire of her men—her friends—called to her. She sat next to them, drawing heat and strength from their shoulders. Bogdan shifted closer and she leaned against him.
“Well?” Nicolae asked.
“She is mad.”
“Then you do have something in common after all!”
His attempt at levity met with no reaction from Lada. His voice got quieter. “Will there be any aid from Moldavia?”
“None that she can provide. We can go to the capital and appeal to the new king. But I do not think these people will help us. She is just like all the nobility, the boyars. They are sick with the same disease. They lock themselves in finery and wealth, and they refuse to see anything that might jeopardize their comfort.” Lada paused, remembering her mother’s teeth, her mother’s foot. Perhaps she should not begrudge the small measure of comfort a powerless woman had managed to find in a cruel world.
But she would absolutely begrudge her mother the failure to empower herself. Running and abandoning those who needed her was the weakest, lowest thing possible. Lada would not do that. She could not. Whatever else she was, Lada was nothing like the class who could go on living after turning their backs on those who depended upon them.
“What, then?” Nicolae asked. “Do we try to convince more boyars that you are a tame princess and not a warlord prince?”
Lada picked up a canteen of water and poured it on the flames, watching them sizzle and die. “I do not know. I have tried—” Her voice caught. She had tried everything. She had pledged loyalty to foreign kings, she had betrayed an ally, she had trusted that love was the same as honesty. “I have tried everything.”
“The little zealot was always unlikely. None of us blame you for looking for help there, though.”
Lada sat up straight, alarmed. “What do you mean?”
Nicolae’s expression was without reproach. “We are all very good soldiers and scouts, Lada. Did you really think we would fail to notice the sultan camped within miles of us?”
She hung her head, the weight of her shame pulling her down. “I told you I was freeing you. But when he offered help, I leapt at the opportunity.”
“We do not care,” Petru said.
The way Bogdan sat perfectly still next to her indicated that he, perhaps, did.
“We know you fight for us. For Wallachia.” Nicolae shrugged. “The little zealot was a means to an end. It did not work. So we find more means for the same end.”
Lada held out her hands. “I have exhausted my means. I am sorry you have followed me this far.”
“We still have Hunyadi,” Bogdan said.
Nicolae rubbed his beard, leaning back with a thoughtful expression. “No, Hunyadi is not our best option. We have our own Hunyadi in Lada. What we need is someone who can work new angles of power. What we need is Matthias.”
“He is the same as all the other leaders,” Lada said, shaking her head.