Val tightened his thighs around Mehmet’s hips, enjoying the way his pace stuttered, and his eyes and mouth opened with surprise just before Val flipped them over, and surprised him some more. He put one hand on the sultan’s throat, and with the other pulled the knife from beneath the pillow where he’d stashed it before, pressed its tip to the delicate skin just beneath Mehmet’s eye.
Mehmet panted, half from his interrupted exertion, half from shock. Voice admirably steady: “I’ll put you over my knee and beat you ‘til you bleed for this.”
Val growled at him, a proper vampire growl. His hair fell around them, a golden curtain closing them in together, face-to-face. Inside him, he felt Mehmet begin to flag. “Fine. I don’t care. But I’ll have your word on one thing.”
“If you wanted more jewels, all you had to–”
Val pressed in with the knife; a tiny bead of blood welled, and Mehmet’s frantic gaze flicked between the knife and Val’s face. Val could feel the silver pulling at his energy – always pulling, always making him weak – but even then, fresh from feeding, he was as strong as Mehmet. Maybe stronger.
“Arslan,” he said.
Mehmet wet his lips. “Your little eunuch? What about him?”
“I’ve seen your eyes. Following him. Covetous. You will not touch him.”
Mehmet’s gaze tightened. His hips shifted a fraction, a bare flexing of his spine.
Val tightened his grip: on the knife, on his hips, on his throat.
“You want something to fuck, is that it? Instead of always taking it?”
“He is a child. A little boy who had his pants pulled down and his balls cut off. He won’t suffer your lust – not anyone’s. You do whatever you want to me, but don’t touch him. He’s mine – you gave him to me. And I won’t have him used for that.”
Mehmet studied him an endless moment. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly serious.”
It turned out the sultan enjoyed a bit of an even match in bed, a true fight like they hadn’t had since Val had stabbed him that first night. Val hadn’t been able to leave the bed the next morning, Arslan helping him sit upright and bringing him breakfast and blood on a tray. Watching him with outward worry, nibbling at his lip while Val nibbled at flatbread on back teeth that felt loose against his tongue.
But Mehmet had given his word about Arslan, and so far, he’d kept it.
No one else would dare lay a finger on Arslan – Val’s property. Mehmet’s property, by default. And, worried about the impending siege, trying desperately to make Constantine see reason, Val had grown lax. He’d been sending the boy to run errands, take messages, assuming he was safe.
But a war camp was a war camp, after all.
Soldiers bowed their heads in deference as they passed. A few went down on their knees. They turned between two tents, and then two more, moving away from the more orderly rows where soldiers camped, and toward the workmen and camp followers, the modest tents crowded together at haphazard angles, a maze of human and animal filth; and wide-eyed craftsmen and whores, startled to see the sultan and his pet prince in their midst.
Not too startled, surely, because janissaries had been dispatched a half hour ago. A group of uniformed, armored men with crested helms, shiny and out of place in the midst of the blacksmith’s yard. Two tents had been set up, open-sided, and a moveable forge assembled in a patch of trampled grass. A few horses on pickets, waiting to be shod, shifted nervously a short distance away, snorting. They could smell fear, just as Val could, as they entered the yard and saw the rapists.
There were four of them. Two blacksmith apprentices, and two of their friends. Sturdy, thickset men in their twenties. Strong, heavily muscled from physical labor.
Four against one. Brutes against a delicate boy.
One sported a swelling eye – Arslan had admitted, haltingly, that he’d kicked one of them as they tried to hold him down.
Val felt light-headed, and forced himself to take a deep breath. He’d ground to a halt, staring, fuming, aching inside.
Beside him, Mehmet said, “Well. This is your show. Run it how you see fit.”
Val couldn’t believe Mehmet had let him get this far, and now he was handing the reins over fully?
He turned his head and searched his lover’s face.
Mehmet lifted his brows. “They need to be put down. They laid hands on something that belongs to their royalty. But this is your slave. This is your punishment to mete out, my dear.”
He’d never punished anyone in his life.
He’d rarely ever raised his voice.
(Holding a knife to Mehmet’s eye didn’t count. Of that he was sure.)
Val took a deep breath and walked toward the accused. He didn’t have to interrogate them – he could smell Arslan on them. But he found himself speaking anyway.
“The slave you raped,” he said, voice surprisingly even. “Did you know who his master was?”
The men looked down at the ground; shuffled on their knees.
“I am speaking to you. Look at me. Did you know who his master was?”
They tipped their heads back, seeking his face with reluctance, shrinking down into their coat collars.
A crowd of onlookers began to gather, motion and murmurs at the edges of Val’s awareness.
“Had you,” Val continued, beginning to pace a tight line in front of them now, “seen him around camp? Fetching water? Carrying a letter for me? Did you notice his fine clothes, and the jewels around his neck? Did you think to yourselves, ‘He must belong to a wealthy master? To a prince, even?’”
He turned a slow circle, hand on the pommel of his sword, and met the gazes of those around him. Faces full of shock, of worry, of anticipation.
He turned back to the captives. “A whole camp full of whores.” A sweep of his arm to the gathering crowd, still growing, their whispers getting louder. “But no. The four of you decided to have a go at my personal slave. You took from me. From your sultan. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
Silence. Even from the crowd; Val could sense them straining to hear the answer.
The one with the injured eye finally licked his lips. “It – he – it wasn’t rape, your grace. He wanted it.”
Mehmet had dispatched janissaries right away, and in the time before a breathless messenger returned to tell them the criminals had been found, Val had eased Arslan’s ruined clothes from his wrecked, trembling body and ordered a bath drawn. A pair of Mehmet’s slaves had seen to him, and Val had bit his lip until he tasted blood, cataloguing the scratches, scrapes, and bruises on the boy’s skin.
“He wanted it,” he said in a flat voice, and the murmurs started up again, a ripple moving through the onlookers like a wave. “He wanted you. You fat, smelly louts. To take turns at him.”
The other three had the grace to duck their heads once more.
The speaker shivered. “I – I – but he–”
Val pulled his sword and swung.
A chorus of low shouts from the spectators.
The blade caught the man in the side of the neck. It was a sharp, well-made weapon, and Val’s swing had been powerful. But still – swords weren’t made for taking off heads.
Blood spurted, splashing across the face of the man beside the speaker. The blow severed the spine, killed him instantly, but the head fell sideways, connected to the body by a stretch of muscle and skin.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Val was screaming.
He swung again, and the head rolled across the grass.
He couldn’t breathe.
“Your grace,” one of the janissaries said. None of them had flinched. “If you’d like for one of us to–”
“No. Line them up. I’ll do it.”
His arms ached afterward. Blood on his blade, on his hands, on his clothes. He wet his lips and tasted it there, too, hot and salty. He could kneel down, in the puddle on the grass, and drink straight from the stumps of their headless necks.
He tur
ned instead to face the crowd, and they shrank back, though their gazes stayed fixed on him, fascinated. “This” – he gestured with his sword – “is what happens when you touch something that doesn’t belong to you! This is a lesson!” He turned his sword on them, aimed its bloody point at his audience. “Learn it well!”
It grew fuzzy after that. He walked away, and everyone let him go. He was aware of his legs and his lungs working, the weight of his sword in his hand.
He walked right out of camp, and no one stopped him. Into the trees, the shade and pine-scented cover of the forest, away from all the stink, and the flies, and the tightly-packed humanity. The gentle chuckle of a stream drew him, and when he reached it, he knelt on its bank, sword falling from numb fingers to a cushion of moss.
Val stared down into the clear water, its bed of smooth, brown rocks. His distorted, broken reflection stared back, just clear enough to make out the pattern of droplets and spatters on his face. Blood, gore, chunks that he didn’t want to think about.
He leaned down and braced his hands on the moss, stuck his face in the water. It was shockingly cold, its source some deep underground spring, cool beneath the soil. It trickled past him, washing away the blood, the sweat, the tears.
Could I drown? he wondered. If he breathed in now, and let the water fill his lungs, could he die like this? It wouldn’t be so bad. In the cool, and the dark. Alone.
Or would he pass out, and eventually expel the water, all his immortal powers pushing him toward life and health, like always?
He finally sat back on his heels with a gasp, water streaming down his face, his throat, onto his clothes. His hair stuck to his cheeks, and he reached to push it back, pausing when he saw the blood still on his hands, caked in under his nails.
The killing had happened so quickly – how had he gotten so thoroughly coated?
He washed his hands in the stream, doing the best he could without soap, scrubbing beneath the nails and between each finger.
He waited for his gorge to rise, but it didn’t.
Waited for shakes that never came.
He felt…nothing.
When his hands were clean, he reached for his sword and washed it as well, using water and a clump of pulled-up moss. He noticed a nick along one edge: a place where bone had proven stronger than steel.
There was nothing to do for his clothes. He’d have to bathe and then burn them later.
Footsteps approached from behind, not trying to be stealthy. Mehmet.
“I’m impressed,” he said as he drew up behind Val. His shadow fell across the creek, blotting out Val’s reflection in the water.
Val’s heart throbbed in his chest. One strong beat, where before it had felt like there was nothing. He was aware of the organ, suddenly. One painful contraction. Followed by another, and another, and another.
Mehmet walked closer, right up beside him, to the edge of the stream. “That sword will need to be seen to.”
Val tilted it in his lap, so it caught the light.
“Is that the first time you’ve killed a man with your own two hands?”
“You know it is.” His voice came out a gravelly scrape of sound, like the edge of a door grating across a floor.
“Hmm. You did well. Stronger than I expected, actually. And I’m surprised you got through all four without handing it off to one of the janissaries.”
His heart pounded, and his skin prickled, and he thought of Arslan, his bruises and bloodied lip. Thought of himself at age ten, fingernails digging into the bark of a tree limb, trying to stay small and hidden. Thought of drool-damp silk against his mouth, hands digging into his hips, sharp burning pain in a place he’d never even touched himself before.
He turned his head so he looked up at Mehmet.
The sultan looked down at him with mild interest, brows raised. “Are you finished?”
Val climbed to his feet and sheathed his sword. The sun beat on his back as they walked back to the tent, until sweat trickled between his shoulder blades.
But chills rippled up and down his arms the whole way.
~*~
When Mehmet reached to touch him that night, Val refused, ducking and shrugging away. Mehmet glared at him, but left him be. He went, flanked by guards, into the torch-smudged night, and Val knew he would seek to spend his passion elsewhere – Val was glad of it.
He went to the small tent that abutted the royal one, the tiny, but private place he’d given to Arslan, and found his slave bundled up in blankets, sweet-smelling and clean and pampered as any prince.
Nestor sat on the edge of his makeshift bed; Val caught his sad, sympathetic expression before he whirled around to face him…only to relax when he saw who it was.
“Thank you, Nestor,” Val said quietly, and the scribe took it for the dismissal it was, patting Arslan on the shoulder before taking his leave of them.
Val moved to take his place. Reached slowly to brush Arslan’s shiny black hair off his forehead, tuck it behind his ears. The boy flinched, but looked up at Val, gaze trusting.
Fresh tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, no, hush that,” Val murmured, stroking his face. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Arslan closed his eyes, and the tears slid down his cheeks.
Val climbed up onto the pallet fully, and stretched out beside him. Arslan came unresisting when Val gathered him into his arms, bundled him in against his chest. Val himself was slender, but Arslan felt like a bundle of twigs, breakable and tiny. Tremors coursed through his body, and he pressed his tear-stained face into Val’s throat.
“I’m sorry,” Val whispered. “This should never have happened to you.”
Mehmet’s words came back to him, spoken on their walk back to camp earlier. “I think you’ve made your point about people touching your things.”
“He’s not a thing. He’s a boy.”
“He’s only three years younger than you. And he’s a slave. This is commonplace – it isn’t as if he never expected to be fucked at least a time or two.”
Val’s hands curled into fists, gripping Arslan’s robe tight, and he forced himself to relax his hold. He stroked the boy’s back instead, the fragile line of his spine through the silk.
“I promise you,” he vowed, “that nothing like that will ever happen again. I won’t let it.”
Arslan whimpered and squirmed in closer, but he didn’t say he believed Val. How could he?
~*~
The camp never truly slept – guards always patrolling, soldiers always staying up to drink, or find whores, or tell ghost stories by the firelight – but the aimless chatter of it became a discernable heartbeat about an hour before dawn. When people stirred with purpose, ready to begin the arduous process of breaking camp and moving on.
Val woke then, in the pitch black, all the candle stumps burned down. He could see. Somewhat. Arslan slept against him, body finally limp, no longer trembling, warm and still. He clung loosely to Val’s clothes, face turned toward him, utterly trusting.
A trust he didn’t deserve after he’d sent the boy off on his own, totally vulnerable.
Val pulled away from him slowly, careful not to wake him, and slipped next door into the sultan’s lavish tent.
Mehmet was awake, and bore the look of a man who hadn’t slept for very long, eyes shadowed, his hair mussed, a silk robe open over his naked chest. He sat at his war table, sipping something from a gold cup. His two preferred slaves bustled about behind him, making up a sleeping pallet that didn’t look at all slept in, bundling clothes into trunks and pulling out fresh garments for the day ahead.
Val plucked an orange from a bowl on a side table and went to occupy his usual chair. No one else ever sat in it; it boasted the print of his own narrow backside, and no one else’s, on the crushed velvet seat.
Mehmet acknowledged him with a low hum that was half a purr. He smelled like sex and male sweat.
Val peeled the orange in long, satisfying strips,
enjoying the sharp scent of citrus. He very purposely didn’t think of anything; his mind felt brittle and fragile as old glass this morning.
“How’s your pet?” Mehmet asked.
Val popped an orange wedge into his mouth, bright burst of sunshine on his tongue. “It isn’t like that.”
“Of course it isn’t like that. I wouldn’t allow it,” the sultan said, light and matter-of-fact. He sighed and lifted his head, finally, gaze that of an adult exhausted with a child’s antics. “The boy will heal, Radu. Have one of mine braid your hair for you until he can attend you again. But right now we have to focus on bigger things.”
“The war,” Val said flatly.
Mehmet didn’t seem to notice his tone, nodding and dropping his gaze back to his map. “We’ll reach the fortress today. From there we’ll…”
Val listened with half an ear as the sultan launched into his assault plans. He would need to know these things so he could relay them to Constantine. But thought of the emperor sent him off down another mental path.
He’d spent so long trying to convince Mehmet this was folly, if only to spare the people of Constantinople – and his friend, Constantine – the horrors of a protracted, impossible war. But perhaps he’d been going about this all wrong.
Perhaps he should have been helping Mehmet. If he could get to the city – not just as a projection, but as a flesh-and-blood person…
If he could earn enough trust to be sent beyond the walls, perhaps for the sake of a diplomatic mission…
Val set his orange aside, licked his fingers, and sat forward. “Might I make a suggestion?” he asked, reaching toward the map.
Mehmet’s brows lifted. “Of course.”
And as Val began to talk, the sultan smiled.
32
IMPOSSIBLE
Mehmet’s suite of rooms at the Throat-Cutter – finished early, while the outer walls and towers were still being built – were sprawling and lavish. The building as a whole was a practical military installation, but Mehmet wanted to sleep in his usual style for their short stay here, before they marched down to Galata, and the inevitable skirmish that would take place across the Strait. Val had his own room, all to himself, save for the nights when Mehmet wanted his company – which was often. Still. It was as comfortable and lavish as the sultan’s own quarters, and that was where Val headed now, Halil Pasha huffing and puffing to keep pace with his long legs.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 46