“Because they’re not loyal to him,” he said, simply.
Timothée tsked and turned away. “A trivial concern,” he told Mehmet. “We’ll route him, and be about our business.”
But Mehmet had crossed swords with Vlad as a boy, had seen that incandescently cold rage up close, face-to-face, and he didn’t look so ready to dismiss him. “I will have his head,” he said at last, going to back to stroking his beard, “but it will be a true fight.”
He stepped back from the table, suddenly, with a sigh. “Enough of this. My eyes are swimming.” He rubbed them briskly a moment, with a pained sound.
“Very well, Your Majesty,” Timothée said. “There are other things we might do.” He lifted his brows, and Val realized he’d missed something, when Mehmet said, “Ah, you’re right. Has he been talkative?”
“Not so far, but I haven’t inquired yet today.”
“Hmm.”
“What?” Val said, skin prickling with unease.
“Come along, Radu,” Mehmet said, as he and the mage headed for the door. “This will be educational for you.”
“Christ,” Val muttered under his breath, but got to his feet and followed.
In the hallway, the usual janissary guards fell into step, and their party skirted the gardens from the inside, going away from the throne room, and the feast hall, and all the public areas where members of the court gathered, and instead to a darker, less beautiful, less royal part of the palace.
Since his conquest of the city, Mehmet had been expanding, improving, even, upon the old Palace of Blachernae, but here was an area he had not touched, and one it looked like even Constantine hadn’t inhabited. Old, weathered stones, gone soft as cloth to the touch, and floors untidy from a lack of use; dust, and leaves, and rugs that needed beating.
A guard opened a door for them, revealing a staircase, and the scent of blood struck Val: old and fresh. And then he knew where they were going.
The dungeon.
He’d never seen it before, but there could be no other name for whatever lay at the bottom of this staircase, scented with mold, and damp, iron long rusted from the salt air of Constantinople.
Istanbul, now.
Someone came up to meet them with a lantern, and led them on, until they finally arrived in a long, narrow chamber that struck Val as mirroring a stable: an arched stone ceiling, with thin, high windows at the top, no bigger than a handspan, to prevent escape. A central aisle, and to either side, tables, and racks, and places where old manacles dangled from the walls. It was too deep to see all of it, shadows looming at the end. But shafts of light fell in through the windows, slanted bars of it, and there were torches, and candles, and more lanterns.
Enough to see the man chained on his back to a table.
And the scent of blood, viscera, and excrement was so strong that Val cupped a hand over his nose and mouth. He retched quietly, once, and then managed to swallow his gorge before he brought up his lunch.
“Who is that?” he asked, voice muffled by his hand.
It was Timothée who answered him, sounding delighted. “One of your brother’s allies. Mihály Szilágy.”
Val did not know him, but as he walked slowly closer, seemingly pulled against his will, he noted the man’s Slavic features, now twisted up with pain. A young man, built as a warrior. Val noticed, too, the bloody stumps that had once been fingers and toes; the long red stripes where the flesh had been cut from his torso.
One of the torturers gave a report to Mehmet in Turkish: “He’s said nothing still, Your Majesty. Only curses us, and calls down God’s wrath upon us.”
Mehmet waved the man aside, and stepped up close to the table, leaned over it, so that his face hovered above Szilágy’s. The contrast between them, the clean, well-dressed, perfumed sultan, and the sweaty, grimy, bloody prisoner, hit Val’s breastbone like a shove.
“Why will you not talk?” Mehmet asked, congenial, almost smiling. “Surely you must know by now that you will die here. I won’t release you back to your masters, so that they may punish you for revealing their secrets. I wouldn’t do such a thing to a man.”
Szilágy’s hands flexed, the blood catching the lantern-light. Val saw a flash of white bone, where a finger used to be.
“Tell me what Vlad Dracula is planning. He sends messengers to tell me of his loyalty, but he is not loyal, is he? He’s planning to move against me, yes?”
It was silent a moment, save the harsh, wet sound of Szilágy’s breathing. The man’s jaw and lips worked, like he was gathering the strength to speak.
Only he didn’t. He spit in Mehmet’s face instead.
The sultan reared back, and wiped at his offended cheek.
Val let out a low groan. Brave idiot, he thought.
Cold fury settled over Mehmet like a mantle, one he’d worn often, though not well. Blind rage was a better fit for him. He reached out a hand. “Give me the saw, I’ll do it myself.”
Val turned away, and walked for the stairs.
“Leaving?” Timothée asked, high and mocking.
Val didn’t answer; he couldn’t. He’d seen Mehmet cut a man in half before, watched entrails fall out onto the floor while the victim still screamed. He didn’t need to see it again.
Please, Val prayed silently to whichever gods might be listening, give my brother the strength to kill him.
39
CRUSADE
“You agree?” The monk was a small, soft-handed fellow, who nevertheless had managed to look at home aboard the mule that had brought him to Tîrgovişte. He’d been to Bucharest first, he said, chasing after Vlad, sending runners, pleading for an audience. Vlad had scoffed, initially, at the idea that the pope would send a holy man to treat with him. But here the man sat, bearing sealed documents from Pope Pius himself, talking of a crusade.
“Of course, I agree,” Vlad said with a shrug. Cicero made a sound beside him that might have been a laugh. “Am I not the Eastern prince with the most outspoken hatred of Mehmet?”
“Oh. Yes. Well. You are.” The man tugged at his sleeves and shifted in his chair. He didn’t look nervous, though, exactly; nor did he smell it. Eager, maybe. “It’s only that so many of your allies have refused involvement.”
“I’m aware.”
The years since Vlad had taken his father’s throne had brought unexpected changes.
First, John Hunyadi died. No more than a month after his victory at Belgrade, a plague swept the region, and the old governor fell to it, carried off by fever and delirium. His son, Matthias, had taken his throne and governorship, ruling over Hungary, and Transylvania, respectably. He was a shrewd leader, but a convivial one, and Vlad found that, though he didn’t exactly call him friend, he did like the man, and approved of him. And he shared Vlad’s loathing of the Ottomans – even if he was less vitriolic about it.
But then there was the matter of Stephen. Matthias had, during the summer of revolutions, allowed safe passage for the Moldavian prince that Stephen had defeated, and Stephen still harbored a grudge. One so strong that he had, at the Congress of Mantua a year before, declined to join in a crusade effort, wanting nothing to do with aligning himself with Matthias. He’d agreed to a treaty with the Ottomans, instead.
Vlad wasn’t sure if he could forgive his friend for that.
The Congress itself had been pointless. Save Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, and the pope himself, no one wanted a crusade. Peace was easier, and it did not matter that Mehmet was currently trying to conquer the lands along the Danube, cutting off the river, and thereby access to the Black Sea, from Eastern Europe. Frederick had offered funding, and manpower, but the lords of Moldavia, Serbia, and even Skanderbeg, in Albania, had declined to take up the cross. Matthias remained undecided; he would do what suited him, Vlad knew.
And Vlad, well, he hadn’t been invited to the Congress, but he’d made no secret of his leanings. He wanted Mehmet to rot slowly on a spike outside the window of his palace.
“The pop
e really means to declare a crusade?” he asked.
The monk nodded. “He does.” And then he reached into the saddlebag he’d wedged into his chair beside him, lifted the flap, and drew out a bundle wrapped in rough cloth. This he unfolded, and revealed snowy linen, a field of white…and a red cross.
Vlad’s lungs, and heart, and gut tightened a moment, a full-body clench. A thrill.
“Vlad Dracula,” the monk said, adopting a formal tone. “The pope means for you to slay the dragon. If you will.”
Beside him, Vlad felt Cicero shiver, and sensed the racing of his heart.
Malik murmured something low and wordless under his breath.
“A crusade,” Vlad said, and smiled. “I accept.”
~*~
“Vlad,” Eira said later, coming into his bedchamber without knocking. “I want to talk to you about something.”
Vlad hung his cloak up in his armoire and turned to her with lifted brows. So, talk.
She sent an unsubtle glance toward Cicero, who sat perched in the window ledge, on the cushion there, reading by candlelight.
He lifted his head, and slowly closed his book, looking between them, nonplussed, but no doubt picking up on the tension Eira had brought with her into the room.
“Really, Mother?” Vlad asked. “Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Cicero.”
She tipped her head. “Would you say anything to me in front of Fenrir and Helga?”
Vlad worked his jaw a moment, biting back the no that formed on his tongue. That’s different, he wanted to tell her. This is Cicero. He didn’t think she would appreciate the distinction, no matter how he explained it, so he turned to his wolf.
Cicero was already unfolding himself from the ledge, leaving his book behind. “I’ll go,” he said easily, though he radiated curiosity. He gave Eira a deferential bob of his head on the way out, and closed the door.
“What?” Vlad said, and could hear that his tone was short.
She lifted her brows, a mild reproach, and moved to take Cicero’s seat, legs crossing primly.
He gave an internal groan. When she played the lady, it was because she was about to say something he didn’t want to hear. “What, Mama?” he asked, though softer this time, and sat down on the chest at the foot of his bed.
She smoothed her skirt, and folded her hands together.
“Mother.”
“Oh, fine. I’ll just say it straight out: you need to take a wife, Vlad.”
Of all the things he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t one of them. “I need to take a what?”
“A wife,” she said, exasperated. “Princes have wives, and they have heirs. You have neither, and people are beginning to talk.”
“So let them talk.”
“Vlad–”
“No.” He stood up, startling himself with the suddenness of it, rippling with energy, now. He started to pace, needing to move. “If it’s the sense of propriety that bothers you, we can pretend that you’re my wife. You’re with me all the time anyway, and you look like a young woman, still. The only ones who know you’re my mother would never tell a soul that you are.”
“Am I to put on a charade?” she asked, affronted. “Sleep in your bedchamber? Kiss you? And act like–”
“You said so yourself: it would only be a charade. Do you take me for incestuous?”
“No, of course not, but I don’t think your mind is–”
He rounded on her. “Mehmet butchered Mihály yesterday!”
She fell silent, face pale and drawn, though she did not tremble, and she did not shrink from him.
“That was what was in the missive that arrived earlier today. He sawed him in half while he was still alive, because he would not give up information about me.” His chest ached, and he took deep, sharp breaths. “And that was only after he tortured him.”
“You impale your enemies,” she bit back. “And they are still breathing when you do it.”
He felt vicious, suddenly, hungry, and desperate, and clawing. “I do.” He bent forward at the waist, and leaned into her face. “And if you expect me to feel remorse, then I don’t, and if that makes me the monster that he is, so be it. We are at war, Mother. We have been at war my entire life. He has taken Smederevo, and pushed the despot out of Morea, and knocks now at the door of Belgrade. Did you think he would be satisfied with Constantinople?” A growl built deep in his chest, rolled out through his voice. “He will never be satisfied. And every other prince and king and protector is handing over all his gold, and hiding behind his women’s skirts, and appeasing the bastard! I don’t mean to do that, Mother! Do you understand? I will not fall to my knees for the man who nightly rapes your other son!”
Mention of Val brought a sudden, brilliant rush of tears to her eyes. But she stared at him, unflinching.
And Vlad realized he was only inches from her, fangs long and bared, growling constantly.
He pulled back with an explosive breath and moved away from her. Reached to massage the knot at the back of his neck, a near-constant affliction these days. Quieter, he said, “Mama, you don’t understand. I have done what good I can for Wallachia, but I’m not here to leave a legacy. To carry on a dynasty. I don’t need a wife, or an heir. The only thing I care about is killing Mehmet.”
When he looked at her again, she’d blinked her tears away. She sighed. “My darling. We are immortals. We have to plan for dynasties. We have to think beyond blind rage and grief, even when that’s all we care about.” Softer: “I’m only trying to look after you.”
“I know. But my answer stands. Talk to me about a wife if I survive this.”
40
GIURGIU
Vlad received a missive from Matthias Hunyadi that read: May the sun shine upon your health and good fortune. It was a pre-arranged code between them, one that meant the Ottomans had intercepted one of their messages.
“Well,” Vlad said, folding the parchment. “They’re onto us.” He felt a grin threaten. “At least, they think they are.”
“Beg pardon, your grace?” the vizier in front of him said, brow furrowing. Mehmet had sent a special delegation, fronted by the bey of Nicopolis, Hamza Pasha, who waited now upon Vlad’s answer to an agreement proposed by the sultan. Matthias’s letter had arrived in the midst of the negotiations, and had Vlad believed such things possible, he would have called the timing poetic.
“Nothing,” Vlad said, refocusing on the man. “So, let us review. Mehmet wishes to meet, face-to-face, in Constantinople, so that we may negotiate the terms he’s laid here.” He gestured to the parchments strewn across his desk.
“Yes, your grace.”
“Though he’s asking for thirty-thousand gold ducats, and no less than five-hundred boys for his Janissary Corp. Yes?”
“Correct. But numbers are, after all, negotiable.”
“Of course.” A dagger lay on the desk, in plain view, and when Vlad traced his fingers idly along the desk’s edge toward it, Hamza’s eyes followed the movement, throat bobbing as he swallowed. Sometimes he loved having a reputation. “Hmm. I would rather start negotiations now. Here.” He snapped his fingers to get his scribe’s attention. “Draft a missive to the sultan, from Hamza Pasha himself. Tell him that I will meet, but that I won’t come to Istanbul. It must be a point between our thrones, respectively. Somewhere along the river would be amenable. But be sure to emphasize that I am most willing to bargain with him. It shall be a pleasure to see him in person once again.”
“Yes, your grace.” The quill began to scratch.
“As for you,” he said to Hamza. “Malik, put him in irons. Him and his entire party.”
The vizier’s eyes flew wide. “Your grace–”
“And confiscate all their baggage. I need their clothes.”
~*~
“There’s a very good chance we’ll all die,” Malik said, matter-of-factly.
Vlad adjusted his turban, tucked a stray piece of hair back into it. “That’s what makes it a g
ood plan: it’s too crazy for anyone to expect it.”
“You’re not wrong on that,” Cicero said.
They marched forward, surrounded on all sides by Vlad’s best mercenaries, and trailed by cavalry, all of them dressed rather haphazardly in Turkish garb. Ahead, the fortress gates awaited his trickery.
Giurgiu was an island fortress, built out into the Danube river; built by Vlad’s father, in fact, at his personal expense. It had been in Ottoman hands since ’47, which was exactly why Vlad, writing as Hamza Pasha, had suggested it. His mother might think him foolish for being so hell-bent on revenge, but he wasn’t stupid, and never had been. He knew that he was outmanned in every sense of the word. He would have to outsmart Mehmet.
He walked now, his own sword fitted into a pilfered Turkish sheath at his hip, to the barred gates of the fortress, dressed as his own enemy, and approached the captain of the guards on duty there.
“Ho, there!” the captain called, raising a hand to stop them. He cast a critical look across Vlad; gaze flickered briefly to Cicero’s eye patch, conspicuous with his hair bound and secured in a tight crimson turban. “We’re awaiting Vlad Dracula’s party. Where have you come from?”
They had been expecting Vlad’s party. Bits of the costumes they all wore had been plucked from the corpses of the would-be ambushers that Vlad and his men had killed several miles back down the road.
Vlad, dressed in Hamza Pasha’s finest kaftan and armor, lifted his chin to a regal angle and spoke in perfect Turkish. “Dracula knows about the ambush. His party re-routed, and they’re approaching now from the other direction. I need to send a message to the sultan. I need more men.”
“More…men?” He glanced all the way down the line, toward the stamping horses of the cavalry. “But…”
“Open the damn gate, you fool.”
The captain hesitated a moment longer, but then he turned and barked a command, and there came the thumping of the big double gates being unbarred from the other side.
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