His stomach clenched, and his pulse fluttered, and his hands curled into fists. But he did not turn back to her. He couldn’t – not if he meant to keep her alive.
“Please, your grace,” he said, tipping his head back a fraction, showing his throat – his obedience. “Please.”
Fenrir whimpered.
Mehmet smiled. “Well. Since you asked so nicely.” He held out his hand.
Val slid his own into it, and went with him, the eyes of his people like hot brands pressed to his back.
This was the way it had to be.
~*~
Vlad and his entourage occupied a series of rooms much finer than any he’d enjoyed during his stay here as a hostage. Sumptuous furnishings, gilt-edged mirrors and thick rugs, coal braziers to keep out the chill of winter. Beds heaped with quilts and furs, and food brought on trays by timid slaves. He’d been offered his choice of female or male companionship, shaking young things with downcast eyes. He’d refused.
“We can’t stay,” he said to Cicero. He sat slumped over his room’s desk, idly paging through a Latin text, an invisible noose tightening slowly, inexorably around his neck as the minutes ticked past. He didn’t believe in premonitions as a general rule, but something was coming. He could feel it.
“I didn’t figure we would,” his wolf responded calmly.
Vlad twisted around in his chair and lifted his brows in question.
Cicero shrugged. He sat at the foot of the bed, sharpening his falx with a whetstone. The weapon gleamed as if new, though its shape suggested a primitive sort of wickedness. One of those little reminders of just how very old Cicero was.
Like the moments when the sun had caught Father’s profile just so, when his hair was swept back from his face, and Vlad had seen the Palatine Hill around him, the modest wooden villages and stone walls that had been Rome at its birth; the Tiber, gleaming like a serpent, and a basket of babies washed up amid the reeds.
“You and the sultan are enemies, I’d say. This was never a long-term plan.”
“No,” Vlad agreed, propping an elbow on the back of the chair. “I supposed I’ll have to flee again. I can be the Prince Who Ran Away. Retreating can be my legacy.”
“Vlad,” Cicero chided gently. “You’re young yet. That won’t be your legacy.”
He snorted.
Rapid footfalls in the hallway preceded the door swinging open. Eira came in red-faced and furious, dashing at the tears on her cheeks with quick movements. Fenrir followed, outwardly somber.
“Mother,” Vlad started, and then caught a sharp whiff of Val’s scent as she paced across the floor, skirt swirling around her calves.
He stood. “Mother. You went to see him? We discussed this.”
She rounded on him, eyes flashing. “He’s my son, Vlad. He’s just as much my son as you are, and he’s–” She cut off with a choked sound and resumed pacing, wiping at her face again. “We can’t leave him here. We can’t.”
Vlad wouldn’t allow himself to think of his brother. Of the things that he did, the way that he lived, in order to stay alive. He could not, or he’d take up his sword and go charging out of this room, ready to face Mehmet one final time.
He swallowed down every expression of sympathy, and kept his voice calm. Reasonable. “And what did Val say when you spoke to him?”
She took an aggressive step toward him, chin lifting. He thought she might strike him. “What?”
He wanted to shrink back, to give – she was his mother, who’d nursed, and raised, and loved him…
But this was bigger than family bonds now.
“I assume you told Val that you wanted to take him with us when we left. What did he say to that?”
She breathed harshly through her nose, face going slowly red. But then she turned away from him, and banded her arms across her middle. Shoulders slumping as if in pain.
The room was silent a long moment save the ragged sound of Eira’s breathing. Then she took a final breath and said, “He said to leave him here. That he was leverage against us. He can’t leave, and we shouldn’t try to help him.”
A surge of pride in his brother. Delicate to look at, but strong inside. “He’s right, and you know he is.”
She didn’t answer.
A knock sounded at the door, and Cicero went to answer it, falx still in his hand.
To his credit, the slave boy on the other side didn’t reel back in shock at sight of the weapon, though his gaze did touch upon it. He then looked to Vlad. “His majesty wishes to speak with you, your grace.”
“Which one?”
~*~
Murat.
He didn’t leave Vlad in suspense. “You cannot stay here,” he said, offhand, accepting a jewel-studded cup from a tray-bearing slave. “I’m sure you know this.”
He did, but he ground his back teeth anyway. “Your Majesty, if this is about Mehmet and me–”
The former sultan cut him off with a wave. “It is not.” The slave still stood at his side, and Vlad noticed now that the tray also held a roll of parchment. Murat reached for this now, and unrolled it leisurely. He sipped his wine. Waited, intentionally, to set Vlad on edge.
Vlad could wait, too, and was careful to keep his expression neutral, his hands folded behind his back.
Finally, Murat set aside his cup and began to speak. “I have here in my hands a letter from Vladislav, the man who drove you out of Wallachia, and co-signed by the governor of Transylvania, the Hungarian John Hunyadi. It reads, quote, ‘I wished to inform you as to the stability of my rule here in Wallachia, a rule which intends to work alongside you, Your Majesty, and your great empire in order to achieve peace throughout the Romanian lands. I should also like you to know of the treachery of your puppet Vlad Dracula, who, I have it straight from witnesses’ mouths, gave a traitorous speech in the town square of Tîrgovişte, in which he promised to free the people from your tyranny. He promised to turn on you, fight you, and push you out of Wallachia altogether. He is a violent, petulant boy, Vlad Dracula, and he wants only violence, and never peace. I’m afraid you have misplaced your trust in him, Sultan Murat.’”
He set aside the letter and leveled his gaze at Vlad, heavy, implacable. There would be no arguing his case, Vlad saw in his expression. The decision had already been made.
“Do you deny that you did such a thing?” Murat asked.
“No, Your Majesty. I said it.”
“Do you have an explanation?”
Would it matter? No. The axe was already poised and ready to fall.
So with the same stubborn spirit that had earned him daily beatings as a schoolboy in this palace, Vlad thrust out his chin and said, “I said it because I meant it.”
Murat stared at him a long, still moment. Not bothered, not angry, but watchful. Calculating. Finally, he nodded. “So I thought. Your stay here has come to an end, then. You will be escorted back to your rooms where you will gather your things and what people belong to you, and you will leave the city of Edirne tonight. Understood?”
“Understood.” Vlad gave a short bow and turned to leave, though his heart was pounding.
“Vlad Dracula,” Murat called, and Vlad paused, glanced back over his shoulder.
It would be the last time he ever laid eyes on the old sultan.
And to his surprise, emotion glittered in the man’s eyes. Carefully checked – but he gave off the faintest hint of fear.
“I don’t know what your uncle is planning,” Murat said, quietly. “But the older I grow, the more and more I begin to think that it isn’t something sanctioned by any god of any king. Take care of yourself, your grace.”
Shock froze Vlad in place for a moment.
On his walk back to his rooms, he found that, though hatred was a living spirit inside him, he hated the old sultan a little less, and pitied him a little more.
No one was surprised when he relayed the news.
Silent, crystal tears slipped down Eira’s cheeks, and she clenched her jaw tight against the crushing
guilt and rage that having to leave Val behind brought. But she wiped her face and said, “I think I know somewhere that we can go. Someone who will help us.”
Which was how Vlad Dracula was forced to leave his little brother behind a second time, and how he ended up completing his Romanian education and knighthood training in the principality of Moldavia, alongside the pretend cousin who would become his best mortal friend…who would become Stephen the Great.
28
THROAT-CUTTER
Winter of 1451-2
The March Home
Prince Radu Dracula of Wallachia currently carried his title because he was the son of a prince, and had been told that he would someday rule as one, when the appropriate time came to place him on the throne in his homeland, a dutiful ally to the Ottoman Empire.
This was his official title. To the slaves and guards and janissary captains, he was Prince Radu. They accepted small orders from him, so long as they did not conflict with orders given by their sultan, and they bowed and saluted him as was proper for his station. He was, officially, no longer a hostage, but an advisor and confidante of their sultan, Mehmet.
Everyone had to know that he was also the sultan’s lover, though none made mention of it in his presence. Sometimes, his vampiric senses pricked, he could pick out bits of gossip. Mehmet was possessive, outwardly affectionate, and did not try to conceal their relationship. For his own part, Prince Radu had learned that he rather liked…messing with the men around him. If he could make them uncomfortable, petty though it was, it brought him a small, guilty sort of joy.
In his own mind, however, he was still Valerian. Val. His true name was his most closely guarded secret outside his immortality. He carried it close in his heart, letting it warm him on the coldest of nights, when the Greek wind whipped at the sides of the tent, and bent the flames in the braziers double.
He wasn’t proud of any of the things that he’d done, but he was proud that he’d survived. That he’d learned to be a real prince, and a knight; learned how to manipulate, and succeed, even.
He was sixteen, and he figured that, if he could stay alive, he had the rest of forever to try and heal the scars on his soul; to carve himself out a life that was good, and gentle.
Until then, he was clever, and beautiful, and he would use those things to his advantage.
He still wore silver: a thin, solid band around his throat that rested along his collarbones. Too tight to pull off over his head, studded with three small sapphire chips so that it looked like a decoration, and not a dog collar to keep him obedient. It sapped a little of his preternatural strength, enough that he was more dependent on blood, and it was a tether he could not break should Mehmet see fit to lock him away for some infraction. For a time, when he was younger, the silver had dulled his psychic abilities as well. But he’d practiced. And practiced, and practiced, and he’d learned how to dream-walk while wearing it.
Which was why he sat now in the private study of Constantine Dragases Palaiologos, Emperor of the Romans, at the Palace of Blachernae.
The emperor himself, sworn in after his brother John’s death in 1448, wore a few more sun lines around his eyes, and streaks of silver in his black curly hair, but his face was still kind. That of a friend.
“I appreciate your concern, Val. And your attempts to warn me. But I feel I made the right decision. And, honestly, this city has stood – and resisted most siege attempts – for seventeen-hundred years. I’m not too worried about young Mehmet accomplishing the impossible.”
Val, cross-legged on a tabletop, tossed his long braid over his shoulder. Impatience bled through in his voice. “But he’s building a palace – a fortress! A massive one, just on the other side of the Bosphorus. He’s already clearing the forest and hauling lumber. Do you know what he’s calling it? The Throat-Cutter.”
Constantine shrugged. “I don’t own the land on the other side of the Strait. He can build as many fortresses there as he likes.”
“You’re not taking this seriously.”
“On the contrary. But, forgive me, I’m a bit older and more experienced than you. I don’t think it’s time to panic just yet.”
Val bit back a frustrated growl.
“Besides,” Constantine continued. “I’m up to my neck in this thrice-damned religious war.”
Val took a breath and resettled – he wasn’t going to convince the emperor of anything today. He found a smile. “Which side is winning at the moment?”
“Certainly not me. I’ve been declared a heretic by the Orthodox and Catholic leaders. That’s what I get for trying to broker an accord between them – I’m a bloody heretic! Those fools. Our economy is in crisis, your sultan’s building fortresses called Throat-Cutter across the Strait, but oh no, the Schism between one faction of Christianity and another is our greatest problem. God.” He slumped back in his chair and massaged his forehead, smoothing the furrow between his brows. “I hate them all. What idiots.”
“Civil wars can topple entire empires,” Val observed.
“So I’ve told them. But rather than listen to reason – they both worship the same God, carry the same cross, share the same enemies beyond our walls – they would just as soon paint me a villain and bicker with one another endlessly until our entire religious system breaks down into chaos. Why is there no tolerance? Why can’t people just let things go?” He threw up his arms in supplication.
Val shook his head.
Constantine aimed a forefinger at him. “Men are categorically allergic to peace,” he said. “They ought to be content with happy wives, and healthy children, and enough coin to eat their fill, but they aren’t. They never have been, and they never will be, and I will never understand it.” He raked both hands through his hair, curls springing up in the wake of his fingers. He looked tired, his shoulders slumped beneath his burdens. He was a widower, and childless, and though he had close friends and advisors, Val knew him to be a lonely man. He could relate.
The emperor said, “I don’t even have a preference myself. If I thought it would help, I would gladly convert and order the whole city to observe the Catholic faith. But this is an Orthodox city. I might very well be dragged from this palace and stoned to death in the street.” He chuckled hollowly. “You don’t know of any peaceful religions, do you?”
“My mother still worships the old gods.”
“The Roman ones? Jupiter? And Mars?”
“Er, no. The Norse ones.”
“Norse? Now there’s an idea. We’ll erect a great statue of – what’s the most important one?”
“Odin.”
“A great statue of Odin right in front of St. Sophia. Invite the pope to witness it.” He grinned. “The old codger would have an apoplexy on the spot.” When he laughed, Val joined him.
Then he sobered. “I’m sorry, son. I don’t mean to go on about my problems when…” He trailed off.
“You’re allowed to complain, and I like to listen, when I can. I’m your friend just as you are mine. It goes both ways.”
The emperor smiled. “Yes, I suppose it does. So I will now stop complaining, and allow you to do so.”
Val shook his head. He’d already done what he’d come here to do – warn of the new fortress, of Mehmet’s vigorous response to Constantine’s last letter claiming that Byzantium and the Roman people would no longer pay for Orhan the pretender to live in luxury within the city walls. His brother had threatened the same thing, once. But that was when Murat had been emperor; his son took such threats as calls to arms.
Instead of rehashing any of that, Val said, “I don’t think my brother believes in peace.”
Constantine frowned. “He was run out of Wallachia, wasn’t he?”
“And then Edirne.” Val had dream-walked to visit his mother in Moldavia, where Vlad was said to be thriving under Romanian tutelage, enjoying the friendship of Prince Stephen, a year younger and of a boisterous, fun-loving disposition. “But he’s always been serious, even as a very young boy. I t
hink my earliest memory is of him frowning.” A fleeting smile, a flash of fond memory. “But after our capture, he became angry. Furious. He wants revenge.” Another smile, this one bitter. “He certainly wouldn’t be trying to find a peace between the Catholics and Orthodox worshippers.”
“He’s young yet.” Consoling. “And revenge is a young man’s game. He’ll mellow over time.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“I try to be.”
A tug on Val’s toe startled him upright. It was easy to forget, in friendly company like this, that he was here only in spirit, a vaporous projection. The tug came again, a pinch of slim fingers, insistent.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, but I must leave you now.”
“I’m sorry you have to. You’re always thoughtful company, Val.”
He smiled, grateful for the man’s kindness and patience, his attention, when he’d never been obliged to give it.
“Until next time,” Val said, waved, and returned to his body.
He opened his eyes to the cream canvas ceiling of Mehmet’s campaign tent, head cushioned on a pile of furs.
Arslan’s face popped into view above his, narrow, finely-drawn, wide-eyed and worried.
“Your grace,” he hissed. The tug at Val’s toe had come from him. He reached now to gently shake Val’s shoulder. “He’s coming!”
Val blinked a few times and sat up. “Thank you, Arslan.” The room swayed around him, and he waved at the boy, who quickly scurried to the sideboard to grab a cup of wine mixed with blood.
Val shut his eyes a moment, and pressed a hand to the side of his head. He’d been gone longer this time; he was weaker, shaky, dizzy. The damned silver collar turned his magic into a physical weakness.
He heard the tent flap open; agitated, booted footsteps across the hard-packed ground. He cracked his eyes and saw Mehmet, fine clothes coated with a layer of dust from the road, face set in a scowl, striding toward the sideboard, where Arslan was already pouring a second cup of blood and wine for him.
Just as Val had grown tall, and willowy, and leanly muscled, the sultan had grown into a proper warrior: broad-shouldered, strong, imposing. His face had gone from pretty to handsome; he’d gained a greater degree of control over his expressions, so that he looked stern, and inscrutable, rather than angry all the time.
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