Val laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and felt him flinch beneath it. “This is Arslan.”
Vlad snorted. “Don’t get sentimental, brother.” Mocking, again. “Someone like Mehmet has no attachment to slaves. Neither should you if you wish to remain his mistress.”
Val took a deep breath. Vlad was baiting him, that was all. He stepped away from the wall and forced a smile. “Thank you. I thought we could go through the garden.”
Vlad dropped his practice sword in a barrel full of others and shrugged, falling into step. Arslan followed them, silent but watchful.
Vlad smelled of fresh sweat, and horses. Himself. Clean, outdoor smells of exertion. He didn’t smell like a lover; like a kept pet. Val found that he’d started to drift toward him, and corrected course, walking straight ahead from the stables to the start of a garden path.
When it became apparent that Vlad wouldn’t speak first, Val said, “How have you fared these past weeks?”
Vlad said, “Better than your ass, I’d wager.”
Val bit back a shocked sound and stared resolutely forward as the path curved and ducked beneath a vine-covered arbor. In a quiet voice, sheltered by the shade of vines: “I didn’t ask for this.”
Vlad didn’t respond.
“I had thought…thought that we might be able to come to some sort of understanding, the two of us,” Val admitted. “It’s true that I’m…” He couldn’t say it. “And I have his favor. I could curry favor for you if you would only–”
“Spread myself and bend over?”
“If you would only behave yourself!” Val shouted.
Belatedly, he realized that he’d come to a halt, and that several doves had been startled into flight by his outburst. A duo of gardeners looked over, curious…concerned once they spotted the source of the disturbance. A few weeks before, Val would have thought they hurriedly ducked their heads to avoid drawing Vlad’s attention. But maybe, now, they didn’t want to make eye contact with the sultan’s boy whore.
Val stared at a topiary shaped like an eagle in flight and blinked back the burn of threatening tears. He took a few steadying breaths. When he spoke, he was surprised by the evenness of his tone. “I am trying,” he said quietly, “to help you, brother. I can’t change what’s happened. This is – this is what I have to do now. But if you can learn to be even a little conciliatory, to bite your tongue, and attend your lessons, then perhaps I could soften Mehmet toward you. Over time. I’m trying to help you, Vlad.”
When he dared to look his way, Vlad was sneering at him. His eyes flashed in the sunlight, cold. “I don’t want any help bought on your back, Radu.” That name; the sting of it. “Keep me out of your bedroom games.” And he turned and walked away, shoulders set.
Val watched him go, lungs hitching and stuttering inside his chest. He hates me, he thought. He’d known it for a long time now, but somehow the evidence always hurt like a fresh wound.
“Your grace?” Arslan asked.
He hates me…and maybe I should hate him, too.
“It’s alright, Arslan,” he sighed. “Let’s go back. I don’t want to be late for my lessons.”
~*~
Mehmet was passionately obsessed with Alexander the Great. His upbringing in Macedon, his childhood exploits; his parents, and his friendships, and his purported bisexuality. His valor in battle, his golden beauty, his conquest and expansion. As weeks bled into months, and Val was kept on as concubine and bedwarmer, and, more and more often, listening ear, the sultan began to speak more freely in the evenings. After he’d ravished Val, when the candles burned low, he picked up the cup of wine on the bedside table and propped up against the pillows. Waxed lyrical about his hero, gesturing with his hands, voice warming to that of an excited young man.
“We are kindred spirits,” he said, lifting his cup, smile bittersweet. “Or, we would be, if we’d lived in the same age.”
Val, lying on his side, arms around a pillow, tried to shift his hips in a way that didn’t aggravate the bruises there. “You admire him greatly.”
Mehmet’s gaze flashed down to his, hazy with pleasure and wine. “What’s not to admire? The most valiant, inventive, inspiring warrior in all of history. A man would be a fool not to admire him.”
Val knew well not to needle his master. He’d been slapped once, across the face, for making what he’d meant to be an innocent remark; a moment of weakness, feeling sorry for himself. Mehmet bore the faintest of scars along the crest of one shoulder, the place where, during his duel with Vlad years before, the bone had shattered, and portions of it had come through the skin. Just a silver line, but as Val knelt on the cool tiles beside the bath, he’d passed a fingertip along the mark and known a moment’s deep satisfaction; Vlad had inflicted that wound. Every time Mehmet saw it in the mirror, he’d be forced to think of the Wallachian prince he’d been unable to best in the ring.
Mehmet had stilled; the story he’d been telling had cut off mid-sentence. “What is it?” A warning in his voice, one that Val had been too absorbed to heed.
“This.” He traced the scar again. “This is from my brother. When he bested you.”
Mehmet had caught his wrist and half-dragged him into the tub. His other hand had cracked against his cheek. Hard enough that he saw stars; hard enough that a red mark lingered there for hours.
He hadn’t made a mistake like that since. But. Sometimes he tested his boundaries. Times like now, when his ass was sore and his throat ached and he knew that he couldn’t get away. Moments when Mehmet compared himself to a man who’d never mistreated a hostage.
“Alexander had golden hair, though,” he murmured, pressing the words into the pillow.
Mehmet heard him, though. There was no getting around vampire hearing. He stilled, and a little of the color drained from his face. “Yes.” Voice flat. “He was.” He reached with his free hand to push his hair back, the sweaty tangles that kept falling forward over his face. His rings caught the light; Val knew the texture of each of those rings intimately. “Do you wish I was golden, then? Like Alexander? Like you?”
“You’re very handsome,” Val said, by rote.
Mehmet bared his teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Ah, handsome. But handsome isn’t beautiful.”
“Handsome is a kind of beautiful.” Val clutched his pillow tighter.
Mehmet chuckled. “It’s not the same thing, pet. You’re far too clever not to know that.”
“Beautiful is for pets,” Val amended. “Handsome is for kings. For sultans.”
His brittle smile softened, truer now. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” He drained off his wine and slid down to lie against the pillows. When he reached for Val, Val went willingly, knowing that he must. He let the sultan pull him up flush to his side, his arm around him, so that Val’s face lay in the hollow of his scarred shoulder. “I frustrate myself sometimes,” he admitted. “Wanting to be Alexander.”
Val hummed a neutral sound.
“It’s only–” His hand tightened on Val’s waist; Val could feel the energy running through him. Some of it was vampirism, but mostly it was true passion. “There’s been no one like him since. There were the Romans. Your people, I suppose.” He chuckled, and this time the tightening of his hand was possessive, taunting ages and emperors past. Oh, mighty Rome, now I have you in my bed, my teeth marks in your neck. “They accomplished the impossible. But nothing was quite so impossible as Alexander, was it?”
Val kept silent, his thoughts unspoken. Chief among them: Mehmet was in love with Alexander. Or at least the idea of him. But a Roman golden boy would suffice for the time being.
~*~
The young sultan loved Alexander, yes, and Greece. But he talked of Rome, too. Rum, he called it in his own language. Val had been raised as both Roman and Romanian, with Spartan warrior and equestrian training, and lessons in Hellenistic culture from his father’s homeland. Mehmet had read widely, and knew much, but when he drank and dreamed aloud, he combined the city of Ro
me, seat of the ancient empire, and the city of Constantinople, the new, eastern seat of an empire that had been winnowed down to one fortified city; one last bastion of the old ways, ruled by a Greek emperor. John, elder brother of Constantine Dragases, whom Val called friend.
It was six months after becoming the sultan’s concubine that Val realized Mehmet meant to sack Byzantium.
He stood at the washbasin, braiding his hair over one shoulder in the mirror there. “Get the slave boy to do that,” Mehmet had said, but Val was enjoying doing this one small thing for himself. It felt almost like having a bit of control.
He’d reached the last inch of braidable hair and set about tying it with a strip of leather. His reflection stared back at him, sleepy-eyed, disinterested. Mehmet had been talking for nearly an hour about Rome as he leafed through his own notes on the subject, spread out on the table amid a platter of grapes and a cup and pitcher of wine.
“I mean to take it,” he said, and Val turned to him, flicking his completed braid over his shoulder.
“What?” He’d found that, slowly, some of his deference was wearing thin at the edges. When he was tired, or feeling especially desperate, he slipped; addressed the sultan in a more familiar way – a familiarity he loathed, truth told.
Sometimes Mehmet noticed it, but he didn’t tonight, his gaze nothing but proud. “Constantinople. I’m going to take it. This” – he gestured to the room around them, the palace – “is my father’s palace. I mean to have my own, and I’ll build it on top of the last remaining jewel of Greece.”
Val had grown so numb in the past few months, inured to his new daily routines, that the sudden swell of panic surprised him. The wash of heat and cold, the prickling of his skin, the tightness in his chest. He worked hard to breathe normally, and to keep his face blank. “That – that’s your goal?”
“No. That’s my plan.” He cocked his head to the side, expression almost fond. “Have you even been listening to me, Radu? Or did I tire you too thoroughly for that? Come.” He cleared a space on the table, in front of the chair that faced his own. “Sit.”
Val obeyed. He always did.
“You see,” Mehmet said, voice laced with excitement, eyes fever-bright, “I am, essentially, the heir to Rum.”
Val stared at him.
“You are, undoubtedly, a descendent of the original founders. And therefore Mars,” he added, resigned. “But! Your father was never king. Your uncle was. And I’m your uncle’s designated heir.” He held his arms out to the side. Behold, it is I.
“But…” Val said carefully. “Uncle isn’t the king of anything anymore. He hasn’t been for centuries.”
Mehmet flapped a dismissive hand. “No matter–”
“But–” Val bit his tongue. Too far; he’d gone too far.
Mehmet drew upright in his chair, jaw clenching. “Romulus chose me.” He thumped his palm to his own chest. “Two vampire nephews right in front of him, and a half-breed, no less, and he came to my father to ask for me.” Pride, yes, but also: desperation. Val was seeing it more and more, the way it peeked through the cracks when Mehmet was tired, or drunk, lulled by the sense of safety and acceptance his bed, and obedient bedmate, provided.
He was very young. It was easy to forget, sometimes, but Val could see it now, youth spurring cruelty. He ducked down low, trying to look even smaller, more defenseless.
Mehmet put both hands on the table and leaned forward. His fangs descended a fraction, far enough to catch the candlelight. “Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why? Why your uncle would rather turn a human than leave his riches to his own flesh and blood?”
What riches? Val wondered. Romulus held no titles, or lands. He didn’t even have any Familiars, to Val’s knowledge.
“Maybe,” the sultan continued, voice knife-edged, “he knew there was no hope for greatness from a violent idiot and a little whore. He wanted an heir who could reclaim his old empire. Well.” A harsh laugh. “That’s me, little prince. I will take back the empire. It will be mine. And it starts with the Red Apple of Byzantium.”
~*~
Val had been afraid to dream-walk purposefully, afraid that if Mehmet stirred in the night he might find Val’s lifeless body somehow suspicious; that Val himself might murmur in his sleep, betraying the conversation he was having in his astral shape. Mehmet knew that he was a vampire; knew the texture of every patch of his skin; knew the sounds he made when he was entered, when he pressed his face into the mattress and tried to pass pain off as pleasure. He knew his family, knew more about them than anyone outside of it ever had.
But he didn’t know that Val could dream-walk, and that was a secret he would guard with his life. It was his lone hope in a sea of unending despondency. He hadn’t risked revealing it, but tonight…tonight he had to.
When the room was dark, and Mehmet was snoring, Val rolled over so his back was to the sultan, closed his eyes, and went walking.
He found Constantine in the darkened bedchamber of his quiet palace at Mistra, moonlight filtering through an open window. The despot lay on his back, one arm flung aside on the empty pillow beside him; the place where a wife would lie if he could find one. Dark curly hair framed his head on the pillow, a halo of shadow.
Val stood a long, indecisive moment, not wanting to wake him. He himself could no longer sleep peacefully, but he didn’t want to take such a gift from another, knowing its worth.
In the end, he didn’t have to. Constantine shifted, the bedclothes rustling, and cracked his eyes open. When his sleepy gaze landed on Val, he bolted upright with a gasp, reaching with one hand to dash the grit from his eyes, and with the other toward a sheathed dagger that lay on the night table.
That was new.
“I’m sorry, your grace,” Val rushed to say. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
The despot froze. “Val?”
“Yes, your grace.”
“Oh.” He let out a deep breath. “Christ.” A sleep-roughened chuckle. “I’m sorry, you startled me.”
“I’m sorry,” Val said. “I wouldn’t have bothered you now, while you’re sleeping. It’s only – I have unfortunate news.”
A beat. “Hold on a moment.” He had human eyes; Val watched him fumble across the night table for a candle. Wished he could reach out with corporeal fingers and take it from the man, help him flip back his covers and slide down out of bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, miserable.
“No, no, don’t be.” Constantine crossed slowly to the hearth and knelt to light his candle on the smoldering coals there. When he stood, flame cupped behind one hand, the light glinted off his eyes, alert now, troubled. He walked up to Val, sat down on the large chest at the end of his bed, so they were on eye level. “What’s the matter, son?”
Val took a breath to steady himself. It was immense, what he’d come to tell. Impossible and unimaginable. “Mehmet,” he said, and the name brought a foul taste to the back of his tongue. “He – he’s been dreaming. Talking.” Deep exhalation. “Your grace, he’s set his sights on Byzantium. He means to march on Constantinople and take it for his own.”
Constantine’s brows jumped, but his face remained otherwise calm, light from the candleflame dancing over it. “He’s ambitious.”
“He’s insane,” Val blurted out before he could help it. He’d been stuffing all his emotions down deep, willing himself not to feel any particular way about his current situation. If he allowed himself to actively hate it…he knew there was no coming back from that. He’d go mad. But here now, alone in the company of a true friend…it all came spilling out. “He’s terrible, and violent, and he thinks he can make himself a Roman emperor, just because he wants it. He talks publicly about glory for the Ottomans, but he just wants to style himself as Alexander and conquer the whole damn world!”
He was panting by the end, arms flung wide. Constantine’s gaze moved down, flicking toward the join of shoulder and neck that had been exposed by the slow slide of his night shir
t. Too late, Val remembered the sultan’s fangs there, the sharp sting of a bite as passion overtook him. He reached to tug the shirt back over the mark, but the damage was done.
When Constantine met Val’s gaze again, his own was almost wounded. “Val.” His voice sounded like a sore throat; like an ache. “What has happened?”
Val felt a tremor start, bone-deep. Tiny little quakes that would spread out and out until his hands shook if he didn’t gain control of them. “Only what I told you. That Mehmet means to sack–”
“Val. I don’t care about that. What has the sultan done to you?”
Pride warred with shame. And with yearning – he wanted badly to tell someone, a childish need for comfort. Vlad had always told him not to act like a baby, but…but…
He took a shattered breath, and then another. Nothing died on his tongue. A dozen other protests formed, but he couldn’t voice them. He felt the burn of tears, and wondered why he was forever crying in front of this man, who had much greater worries than the emotions of a Wallachian child who couldn’t manage to keep himself out of a sultan’s bed.
“Son–”
“It’s my fault.” Val closed his eyes, fighting the tears back, unable to face the sympathy on the man’s face. “I could have…could have refused…or…”
Constantine sighed. “It is not your fault,” he said patiently, and when Val cracked his eyes open, he was surprised to find that it wasn’t sympathy, but anger on the despot’s face. Hardening his jaw, throwing the tendons on his throat into stark relief. “There’s nothing you could have done to stop it.” His hand tightened around the candlestick in his hand until the flame wavered. “It is the job of men to stop that sort of thing from happening. And apparently there is a shortage of those among the Ottomans.”
A shudder moved through him, and he bared his teeth. But then he took another breath and calmed visibly. Another sigh. He shook his head. “Emperors, and kings, and sultans will do as they want, though.” And here came the sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Val. I wish I could…” He trailed off. There was nothing he could do, and they both knew it.
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