Cyprian closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. Then he nodded, resolve hardening all his features. “Where do we go?”
“The horn.” Radu turned to leave, then paused. “Wait!” He sprinted up the stairs, throwing open the chest in the room he had shared with Nazira. At the bottom, carefully folded, were the clothes they had worn on their journey to Constantinople. Radu yanked his robes on over what he already wore, then hastily wrapped a turban around his hair. Better to look like friend than foe to the invading army.
Cyprian nodded. “Like the flags,” he said. For a terrible moment Radu thought Cyprian knew what they had done at the palace. But then he remembered the flags on the boats to help them sneak past the Ottoman fleet.
“Yes. Speak in Turkish,” Radu cautioned. “Valentin, you say nothing.”
The four of them paused on the threshold of the house. They had been happy here, after a manner. As much happiness as could be found in the slow, agonizing death of a city falling around them. Then they ran. Cyprian was in the lead, taking them on a winding route around the edges of the city, skirting populated areas in favor of abandoned ones. They were nearly to a gate on the seawall when they came across the first group of Ottoman soldiers.
A clump of citizens had been caught in the alley, and the soldiers ran at them, screaming and brandishing swords. Half of the group had been cut down before the soldiers realized there was no resistance and stopped. Radu thought nothing could be more horrifying than watching unarmed people hewn down.
Until the soldiers began claiming them. One young woman, her clothes already torn, was being tugged between two men. “I had her first!” one shouted.
“She is mine! Find your own!”
“There will be plenty,” their commander said, going through the bags of the dead. He did not even look at the girl as the soldiers pulled off what remained of her clothes, arguing over who could keep her and how much she would be worth. The girl stared at Radu, her eyes already blank and dead, though she still lived.
If Radu were truly good, if he were not a coward, if he valued all life the same, he would risk drawing the sol dier’s attention and kill her right now. But he had to save Nazira, and he had to save Cyprian. “Come on,” Radu whispered. They slipped back the way they had come.
At a gate to the thin shore of the horn, two remaining Greek soldiers huddled, debating whether or not to open it. Cyprian stalked up without pausing. “They are already in the city,” he said.
“We will drive them out!” A small soldier, barely past his youth, stood in Cyprian’s way. “The angel will come! We must hold them off until then.”
“Does he have the key?” Cyprian asked the lanky soldier next to the boy. He nodded. Cyprian punched the boy in the face, then pulled the key from his vest. “The city has fallen. Do what you see best.”
Crying, the young soldier stumbled away. The lanky soldier slipped out the gate as soon as Cyprian unlocked it. They followed him onto a narrow stretch of rocky beach lining the seawall. No boats were docked here. The Venetian boats had not fled yet, but from the movement onboard, they would soon. And, just as Radu had predicted, several Ottoman galleys were drifting not far from shore, completely abandoned. Someone had dumped logs into the water, where they floated by the hundreds, bobbing gently on the waves.
No.
Not logs.
Radu watched as a man who had managed to swim as far as the Venetian ships attempted to climb up the side. A sailor on the deck reached down with a long pole, pushing him off into the water.
“Why? Why not help him?” Nazira whispered, her hands covering her mouth.
Cyprian leaned back against the wall, the hollows beneath his eyes nearly as gray as his irises. “They fear being swamped. There are too many people trying to get on the boats.”
Valentin shook his head in disbelief. “All these people. They could have saved them.”
Many of the bodies in the water had wounds no pole could cause, though. The Ottomans must have gotten here at the same time as those people who had figured out the horn was a means of escape. The delay to get Cyprian and Valentin had likely saved all their lives.
“What do we do?” Nazira asked, turning to Radu.
“Can you swim?”
“A little.”
He looked at Cyprian, who nodded. Valentin nodded, too, eyeing the corpse-strewn water with resigned weariness that had no place on such a young face.
“The smallest galley. We can row it out until we catch the wind. Once we have that in our sails, we can slip down and away.”
“And then?” Cyprian asked.
“And then we keep going.”
The bells of the Hagia Sophia, deeper and older than any others in the city, began clanging. Radu bade the church a silent farewell. Valentin slipped his hand into Radu’s.
And Radu remembered two young boys. Still in the church, where he had left them. You will protect us, John had said.
Radu looked at Nazira, and Valentin, and Cyprian, and he knew then that the scales would never be back in his favor. But he could do this one thing. He could die trying to save two boys who meant nothing to him. Who meant everything to him.
“I am staying,” Radu said.
“What? No!” Nazira grabbed his free hand, tugging him toward the water. “We need to leave now.”
“I have to go back.”
Her full lips trembling, Nazira nodded. “Fine. We go back.”
Radu kissed her hand, then held it out to Cyprian. “No woman is safe in the city. Not today, not for the next three days. I cannot let anything happen to you. I promised Fatima. You have to go home.”
Nazira stamped her foot, tears streaming down her face. “We have to go home together.”
“You cannot go back in.” Cyprian stepped past Nazira. He ignored her hand and grabbed Radu’s, the intensity of his gaze overwhelming. “You will die.”
“I know where John and Manuel are. I can save them.”
Cyprian looked as though he had been struck. He closed his eyes, then stepped even closer, pressing his forehead to Radu’s. “Their fate is in God’s hands now.”
“It was never in God’s hands.”
“No, it was in my uncle’s, damn him and his pride. He has killed them, not you. Not us. If you stay, Mehmed will find you, and he will kill you.”
Radu’s final punishment was announced by a new bell pealing nearby, harsh and unyielding. He would not be allowed any mercy for the things he had done. He could not escape, and he could not keep anything he hoped to. Radu shifted his face, resting his cheek against Cyprian’s for the space of one eternally breaking heartbeat. “He will not kill me,” Radu whispered. Then he pulled back, forcing himself to look Cyprian in the eyes. Those eyes that had caught his attention even when Mehmed was his whole world. Those eyes that had somehow become the foundation of a hope that maybe, someday, Radu could have love.
“He will not kill me,” Radu repeated, waiting for Cyprian to understand. The foundation in Cyprian’s eyes crumbled like the walls around them.
Cyprian stumbled back, shaking his head. “All this time,” he whispered.
“Will you still keep her safe?” Radu asked.
Cyprian stared at the rocks beneath them, as mute and stunned as he had been when lightning nearly killed him. “You could have escaped,” he finally whispered. “You did not have to tell me. I would have— We could have—we could have been happy. We could have?” he asked.
Radu knew what Cyprian was asking, and if he had not already lost all hope it would have ended him. “I do not deserve happiness.” The bells of the Hagia Sophia rang out more insistently. “John and Manuel are running out of time. Will you still keep Nazira safe?”
A single tear ran down Cyprian’s face. He did not look at Radu. But he nodded. “I will,” he said.
This one good thing, then, Radu had managed to do. He had not broken all his promises. Nazira threw herself forward, hugging him fiercely. “You come back to us,” she hissed in his ear.
“Be safe,” he answered. Then, his heart breaking all the more for knowing that he could trust Cyprian even now, Radu fled back into the city.