Цитаты из книги And I Darken

"Perhaps that is what I need. Maybe if I went to Mecca, if I saw it..." Kumal smiled kindly. "Someday you will go, and your life will be blessed for it. But it will not fix you — all your troubles will still be here, waiting. First you should strive to find peace where you are, and then you can make the pilgrimage to celebrate that peace." Radu shook his head. "I do not know where peace can be found in this city." "That is your problem, then. Peace is not to be found in this city, or any city. Not even Mecca. Peace is to be found here." He pointed to Radu`s heart. Radu put a hand over his chest, feeling the beat of his life beneath it. The pulse that thrummed for so long to the nam of Mehmed. "I think my heart is the problem."

"You will never be one of us," he said, putting his face right above hers so she could look nowhere else as he wrenched her tunic up and grabbed for her underclothes. She slammed her head into his nose. In his momentary distraction, she pushed up, knocking him off-balance enough to free one leg. She brought it between his, and he howled in pain, rolling of her. He pushed himself to his feet, and Lada jumped on his back, fastening her legs around his waist and wrapping her arm around his throat. She grabbed her own wrist, pulling the arm tighter. Ivan staggered backward, slamming her into a tree, but she held tight. He clawed at her arm, trying to get a good enough grip to yank it away. She slammed her heel down into his stomach and groin, three sharp jabs. Finally, he stumbled forward, falling to his knees. "I am not one of you," Lada said, her mouth right next to his ear. "I am better."

"But you cannot leave the harem! How could you have done all this?" "Did you notice the men who work here?" Lada shook her head. "Exactly as it is supposed to be. My precious eunuchs, they make everyone so deeply uncomfortable. Men cannot stand to look upon them, tormented with imagining what they must have endured to become what they are. The eunuchs are slaves, just as I am, but they, too, have sacrificed. They have had something precious and irreplaceable taken from then, and in doing so, have created a place of power for themselves. They are everywhere in this country, in every important household; they are clerks, they are guards, they are mine." Huma sat up, her movement so sudden and violent compared with her lazy, sensual motions that Lada jerked back. "You see this" — Huma gestured to the room, the building, and finally to herself — "as a prison. But you are wrong. This is my court. This is my throne. This is my kingdom. The cost was my freedom and my body." Her fine eyebrows raised, mouth playful, eyes hard. "So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?"

When he spoke, he lacked his usual jesting tone. "I have been here since I was seven years old. I have trained alongside brothers from every nation under the shadow of the Ottomans. We fight, we bleed, we die for a country that is not ours, commanded in a tongue our mothers never spoke to us, instructed in a religion that allows us to be enslaved because we were not born into it." He paused, their horses` hooves meting out a discordant rhythm. "And yet my life is better than it would have been at home. I am educated and better trained than anyone we fight. I have enough to eat and clothes on my back, opportunities to advance. Until I am broken against the walls of a city that should be my ally, or die on the ned of a sword held by a cousin I never knew. We are the most valuable force of this empire, and we exist here because we are not actually part of the empire. Most days I think I owe my life to the Ottomans. On the field at Varna, I realized I do not want to give my life for them. But in my heart, I am a soldier, and I wish to do nothing else." He shook his head, a heavy sigh punctuated by his hands lifted into the air, palms up. "I would like to be as certain as you are, Lada, who my side is." She looked at his palms, open, waiting to receive. "In your heart, where you know you are a soldier, tell me: What language beats there?" Nicolae`s eyes fell, his face going soft and far away. "Wallachian." She reached out and put her hand on his, resting it there, palm to palm. "We are on the same side."

Mehmed threw his hands up in despair. "I know I am not ready to face Hunyadi! That was never the plan. I need my father!" His voice broke at the end of the sentence, and Lada realized with a pang that he had been thrown to the wolves just as she and Radu had. His father had abandoned him, sacrificed him, as assuredly as their own had. If this war did not devour him, men like Halil Pasha would. Lada sighd, sitting down near Mehmed and leaning back to look at the grandeur of the ceiling`s carved geometrics. "Your father says you are the sultan." Mehmed clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Yes, that is the problem." "That is the solution. If you are the sultan, he must obey your command to come and lead your armies. And if you are not the sultan, he must come back and lead his armies." A slow smile spread across Mehmed`s face. "Lada, I think I love you."

"Why do you like him so much?" Lada asked, the wonder of the night above her stealing the sting from her question. Mehmed was quiet for a long time before answering. "That day you found me in the garden? Molla Gurani is the tutor who struck me." "You should have had him killed," Lada said. Mehmed laughed softly. "It sounds odd, but I am glad he hit me. Before him, no one, no tutor, no nurse ever stood up to me. They let me rage and rant, allowed me to be a terror. The more I pushed, the more they looked the other way. My father never saw me, my mother could not be bothered to take so much as a meal with me. No one cared who I was or what I became." Lada tried to shift away from the think poking into her heart and making her so uncomfortable, but there were no rocks beneath her. "And then Molla Gurani came. The first day, when he hit me, I could not believe it. I wanted to kill him. But what he said the next day changed me forever. He told me I was born for greatness, placed in this world by the hand of God, and he would never let me forget or abandon that trust." Mehmed shrugged, his shoulder pressing against Lada`s. "Molla Gurani cared who I was and who I would become. I have tried ever since to live up to that."