During the day, people walked freely between the cities, but at night both closed and locked their gates. Radu wished everyone in Constantinople would walk across the bay to Galata and stay there. He did not understand why they stayed in Constantinople. When Mehmed arrived, Radu hoped they would finally see the futility.

“There,” Constantine said, pointing. Cyprian was taking detailed notes. Radu moved closer, following the direction of Constantine’s finger. “We need as many men as can be spared on the Lycus River section.”

Though Constantinople was on a hill, there was one section of the wall that did not command high ground. The Lycus River cut straight through it, making a fosse impossible to dig, and lowering that section to a dangerously accessible level. Radu knew all this from Mehmed’s maps, but it was still a strange thrill to see it in person, and from this side of the wall, too, where he had not expected to be until after the siege.

Constantine detailed which men and commanders should be stationed where. Radu committed it to memory, secreting it away with all the other information he heard. Everywhere they went, Constantine stood straight and confident, complimenting the men on the work in progress, giving suggestions for further improvements. He may have been jeered in the streets, but among the soldiers it was apparent that he was deeply respected—and returned the respect.

“Here,” he said, stopping again. They had come to a patchwork section. Where the other walls were shining limestone with a red seam of brick running through, this one had a haphazard look to it. And, unlike the rest, there was only one wall, rather than two. It jutted out at a right angle, the palace where Constantine lived rising behind it.

“Why is this section so different?” Radu asked, though he knew the answer.

“We could not leave a shrine outside the walls.” Constantine’s tone hinted at annoyance, but his confident smile never left. “We are better protected by one wall and a holy shrine than by two walls without one. Or at least, that was the reasoning a few hundred years ago when they built the wall out to encompass the shrine.”

Constantine noted several weakened and crumbling points as he talked with a foreman directing repairs. Finally, the three men descended the stairs and went back into the city through a sally port, a heavily guarded gate used to let soldiers in and out during attacks. “Tell me, Radu, what do you think of my walls?” Constantine asked.

“I think they deserve their tremendous reputation. They have stood for this long for a reason.”

Constantine nodded thoughtfully. “They will protect us yet.”

They had lasted a thousand years of unchanging siege warfare. But Mehmed was not the past. Mehmed was the future. He brought things no one else had yet imagined, and that no walls had yet seen.

Constantine spoke again, his thoughts apparently on the same man as Radu’s. “I hear the sultan is repairing roads and bridges all over my lands. It is very generous of him to perform maintenance while I am busy. Do you think he would spare some of his men to help us repair the walls while he is at it?”

Radu laughed weakly. “I am afraid I am no longer in the position to make that request.”

Constantine’s face turned serious so quickly that Radu feared he had betrayed something. The emperor’s hand came down on his shoulder, but instead of a blow, it was a reassuring weight. “I know why you fled. Everyone has heard of his depravity, his harems of both women and men. You are safe here, Radu. You never have to go back to that life.”

Several moments passed while Radu worked through Constantine’s words and tone. He looked at Cyprian, who was staring determinedly up at the palace. And then everything made sense. The sneering guard they had passed at the Rumeli Hisari. Everyone’s willingness to accept that Radu would so easily turn from Mehmed. Eyes filled with scorn or with pity.

“I— Yes, thank you. I have to— Excuse me.” Radu turned and walked stiffly away. When he had rounded a corner and was out of sight, he sank against the wall, pushing a fist into his mouth in horror.

Was that the rumor, then? That Mehmed had a male harem? And that Radu had been the jewel of it? Radu the Handsome. Someone else had called him that recently, before the soldier. Halil Vizier, back in Edirne. Was he the source? Was this another tactic of his to demean Mehmed, to make him seem evil?

Radu did not know which filled him with more despair—that everyone had heard this rumor except him, or that the mere suggestion of Mehmed loving women and men was seen as evil. His feelings for Mehmed had never felt evil or wicked. They had been the truest of his life, bordering on holy. To hear his love so casually profaned made him sick to his stomach.

And then another, more horrible thought occurred to him. Mehmed must know about these rumors. Surely he knew. Was the ruse of Radu’s distance from Mehmed not simply for their enemies? The way Mehmed had jumped on the chance to send Radu away, too, with so little preparation or aid. Mehmed had been eager to take the opportunity without any information or guarantees. Radu had thought it was because Mehmed trusted him. Now he wondered.

Did Mehmed know the rumors and Radu’s true feelings, and had he sent Radu here to end both of them?

Radu collapsed into bed next to Nazira. He had spent a long day helping repair the walls. The irony of being sent behind the walls to undermine them while physically repairing them was not lost on Radu’s aching muscles.

Sighing heavily, he put an arm over his face. “You first.”

Nazira shoved him onto his stomach, then began kneading the muscles in his back. Radu sank deeper into the uneven mattress, not caring about the feather spines that jabbed into him. Simple human contact with someone who cared about him did more healing than Nazira’s small hands ever could. He realized how little anyone had actually touched him over the last few years. Lada had never been physically affectionate, unless he counted her fists. Lazar had frequently accidentally touched him, but Radu tried his best not to think about his dead friend. He could remember every moment of physical contact with Mehmed, but each was too short, too formal, never enough.

And then there had been the horrible kiss with Halil’s son, Salih, a kiss that still filled Radu with self-loathing for how much he had liked being wanted, even when he did not return the feeling.

So this friendly intimacy with Nazira had its benefits. Of course, the downside to being married was that they were given the same room, and same bed, to share. Sometimes Radu woke up from dreams—aching, desperate dreams in which his mind somehow knew the sensations his actual body had yet to experience—in a state he really did not want Nazira to witness. Frequently, in spite of his exhaustion, he could not fall asleep for fear of what he might dream about while lying next to her.