“I never think of you that way,” Petru said, his sincerity earning a snort of laughter from Mehmed.

“Stefan, give me your breastplate.”

Face as impassive as ever, Stefan slowly unbuckled it. Though most of them wore mail for increased ease of movement, Stefan always opted for a full metal breastplate.

Lada took it and fastened it over her chest. It compressed her breasts, but not unbearably so. She took a stick from the edge of the fire, waited for it to cool, then rubbed the charcoal lightly along her upper lip and jaw line. “If we enter under cover of night, I can be a man.”

“Still a Janissary, though,” Nicolae said.

Amal, tiny and clinging to the edges of their group as always, spoke so softly Lada could barely hear him. “No one looks at servants.”

Lada opened her mouth to argue, but she had barely looked at him this whole journey. Even his horse was old and unremarkable. No wonder Radu had chosen him instead of someone stronger or faster. Amal was the least threatening, most invisible messenger possible.

Mehmed frowned. “So I am to enter my city as a servant?”

Nicolae’s smile was as easy as ever, but Lada knew him well enough to know there was none of his usual warmth behind it. “What is a sultan but a servant to his people?”

Lada handed the breastplate back to Stefan, then turned to Amal. “How quickly can you steal me the right clothing?”

He smiled shyly, then ran, disappearing through the trees in the direction of the road.

After they had eaten, the men stripped free of their uniforms. They left their Janissary caps in a pile that glowed faintly in the twilight, looking like nothing so much as a tumbled stack of skulls. They had brought various articles of extra clothing, ones that had no indication of their rank. Simple turbans covered their heads; in the dark, they would pass for servants. Provided that no one probed too deeply or touched them, discovering an incongruous layer of armor.

Lada, however, owned no clothes other than her uniform and the ridiculous dress she had used to sneak into the harem so many months ago. She had left the dress in Amasya. It was not a role she cared to play ever again, even in defense of Mehmed.

She was about to give up and make plans to scale the walls when Amal returned, breathless, holding a bundle of dull brown cloth.

“Well done,” Lada said, covering her armor with a simple dress and draped sash. She tied up her hair and pulled a scarf low over her forehead.

Nicolae coughed to cover up a laugh. “You may want to shave.”

She frowned, then remembered the charcoal she had neglected to clean from her face. “I suppose a bearded woman would draw notice,” she said drily, wiping it away.

It was dark by the time everyone was ready to go. They had stopped half a league from the city and would go on foot in groups of three or four, meeting at an inn they all knew. Lada watched as her forces dwindled until she was left with Stefan, Nicolae, and Mehmed. Amal had gone ahead to alert Radu that they were on their way. His code phrase was to remind Radu that only an ass pulls a shield for a sled.

“I feel like a thief,” Mehmed said as they crept along the trees parallel to the road, waiting until the last moment to emerge into the open.

“We are thieves,” Lada answered. She stopped, the walls of the city coming into view. “Now we steal your city.”

A MAN MELTED FREE FROM the wall behind the inn. He was tall, with a face so blank and eyes so lifeless they made Radu shudder.

“Radu,” the man said, a statement rather than a question.

Radu nodded. He had left Amal behind to keep the boy out of any further danger. “I think I am being followed.” Though the path he had taken was wandering and he had walked with casual, aimless ease, an echo of footsteps—a hint of a cloak—had shadowed him the whole way.

The man pointed to Radu’s own finely woven cloak, worn with a hood against the evening’s chill. Radu unfastened it and handed it over. After two quick knocks on an unobtrusive door, the man threw the cloak over his shoulders, adjusting his posture and gait to match Radu’s, and walked to the end of the alley. The door opened, and Radu ducked inside. Nicolae pulled him into a quick embrace, his smile a bit tighter than normal but still a relief after the strain of the journey.

“Come, we have a room.” He led Radu up an uneven flight of stairs along the back of the building, the bright sounds of fireplace and food growing and then fading as they passed behind a kitchen. “We have a man in the main hall to watch the entrance.”

“You made good time.” Radu reached for more to say to block the painful lump growing in his throat, the breathless flutter of his chest, but nothing came to him.