The man on the left raked Vlad up and down with an emotionless gaze and said something in Turkish.
Vlad ground his molars together and shook his head.
“This is your language, yes?” the man said in perfect Romanian.
Vlad thought his teeth might crack if he clenched his jaw any tighter.
Val said, “Yes, sir,” just a whisper.
“What other languages do you speak?”
“Greek, and Latin, and Slavic, and Russian, and a little bit of Italian, if we have to.”
The man’s look was neither impressed nor unimpressed. “You will learn Turkish as well. That is the language of our sultan, and of your new home.”
“No.” Vlad said.
The man stared at him. “No?”
“No, I won’t learn Turkish. This will never be my home.”
Vlad was aware of several things: Val staring at him, big-eyed, and shocked, and imploring; the other man moving, pacing slowly around them; the janissaries’ boots scraping on the floor as they made to start toward him.
The man in front of him, stoic as a lake in winter, lifted a single hand to halt their progress. Unconcerned. “You will learn many things,” he said, “and you can resist all you like, but that will only make it more difficult. More difficult, but not impossible. We are here to educate you, but we will punish you if we must.”
Vlad balled his hands into useless fists and bared his teeth. Between them, he hissed, “When my father–”
The blow caught him across the backs of his knees. Sharp, and hot, and stinging. A riding crop, he thought dully, as his knees buckled and he fell to them on the hard tiles, the rest of his threat leaving his mouth as a bitten-back cry.
He sucked in a gasp, and said, “You–”
The next strike landed like a brand on the back of his neck, just under his hairline.
Vlad was proud that he didn’t make a sound this time. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood, and pitched forward to brace his fists awkwardly on the tile.
Above him, the old man said, “I am Mullah Sinan, and this is Mullah Hamiduddin. Tomorrow morning, you will clean your face and hands when the slave brings you water, and you will come to this room with a willing and respectful attitude. Do you understand?”
The leather tip of the riding crop touched his cheek.
“Yes,” he gritted out.
When he finally snuck a look at Val, his brother’s eyes were glittered with unshed tears.
16
A PROPER EDUCATION
The first day they were tutored, and took their meals in private, just the two of them, and their guards, and the stone-faced mullahs. It was a good thing they didn’t have to eat with utensils, Vlad thought savagely, because he couldn’t have worked a knife with his hands cuffed together.
But tomorrow, Sinan told them like a warning, they would begin their education in earnest, alongside the court’s other “political guests.” A “proper education,” he said.
Vlad barely managed to suppress his snort.
When they were finally alone, dressed in linen nightshirts, cuddled up together on one pallet because Val still couldn’t bear to sleep alone, Vlad allowed himself a moment of weakness. The door was locked, and a cool evening breeze sifted through the bars on the window, and it had never been more obvious that they were a long, long way from home.
Vlad shut his eyes, pressed his face down into his brother’s hair, and breathed deep. Under the floral notes of unfamiliar soap, he sought the smell of Val’s skin, and with it the sense memory of home fires, and Mother’s singing, and Mircea’s patient smiles.
“Vlad?” Val whispered.
Vlad tightened his arms around him in answer, and knew that it was a bad idea. He had to put some distance between them, to show Val that it was best he learn to stand on his own two small feet, and be strong, learn to be a man instead of a boy. But right now, all Vlad could be was weak.
Val’s voice trembled when he said, “Why did you do that today?”
Vlad didn’t need to ask for clarification. He swallowed, and felt something stick in his throat. “They’re not my masters, and I will not go quietly.”
“But, Vlad…” His hands tightened in Vlad’s shirt, shaking, bony knuckles digging into Vlad’s ribs. “They hurt you.”
“No, they didn’t.” His neck and his knees stung, but that was already healing; he felt the faint itch of fading bruises already. “Not in any way that matters.”
~*~
The next morning, they were marched to the same schoolroom, but this time they weren’t alone with the mullahs.
The rugs were occupied with boys today. Some looked Val’s age, and others were clearly in their early teens, gangly, with prominent apples in their throats and awkward patches of stubble on their chins. These were the Ottoman hostages, the children of important Eastern European leaders.
One boy, Vlad noted as they were ushered in, was older than the others. Twenty, maybe, already a man, tall and strongly built, with European features and wheat-colored hair. He stood against a column of the pavilion, arms folded, casual and negligent. His gaze betrayed nothing as it followed them into the room.
And then–
Vlad came to an abrupt halt and felt Val do the same beside him. Over the perfume of blooming flowers that wafted in through the open archways, over the fear, anxiety, and boredom of the other boys, a very distinct, very unexpected scent reached Vlad’s nose. If he’d been searching for it, he would have detected it halfway across the garden. As it was, it hit him now, like a physical blow, and raised all the fine hairs on the back of his neck and arms.
There was a vampire in this room.
Male. Young. And a whiff of…of something…familiar.
Val made a soft whimpering sound beside him, an inhuman, questioning sound.
“Hush,” Vlad whispered.
“Move,” the janissary behind them said, and pushed them down onto rugs.
At a rug at the front of the assemblage, two rows ahead, an auburn-haired Turkish boy twisted lazily around and sent Vlad a look from beneath his shiny black lashes. Vlad’s age, but handsome, fine featured. His kaftan was an extravagant affair.
He smiled, sideways and sly, showing just enough teeth to flash one sharp fang.
“Brother,” Val murmured beside him, fearful. “Who is that?”
He was the reason the people here knew to cuff them with solid silver and bring them blood with breakfast. The reason boys who growled like tigers weren’t anything to scream about. And Vlad had a feeling–
Sinan slapped a riding crop into his palm in front of the Ottoman boy. “Mehmet,” he snapped.
Vlad swallowed. “I think,” he whispered back, “that’s the heir.”
The boy faced forward, and the janissary cuffed Vlad lightly across the back of the head, and it was time for the day’s lessons to begin.
Or, he thought it was.
Mullah Sinan’s gaze lifted to the entryway and Vlad heard shuffling footsteps, and the heavier tread of an adult. Without turning his head, he watched from the corner of his eye as two boys were led forward by a slave. They were both small, and shared the same hair color and bone structure: brothers.
Both wore bandages wound round their heads, covering their eyes. They held hands, clinging tight, knuckles bloodless.
Warm breath brushed across Vlad’s ear. The janissary, leaning down to speak Slavic in his ear. “Stepan and Gregor Brankovic. Serbian princes. They were caught writing letters to their father,” he said, without inflection, “and the sultan had their eyes burned out with a hot iron. You’d do well to learn from their lesson.”
The slave helped the boys to rugs, guided their heads gently so they faced the mullahs. No books or writing tablets awaited them. How could they read without eyes?
Vlad closed his own hands into fists. Let him try to burn my eyes out, he thought, viciousness curdling the breakfast in his stomach. Let him try.
~*~
Vlad
was a reluctant student, but he was an intelligent one.
A routine developed. In the mornings, all the hostages – and the heir – were educated on the Quran, history, geography, and politics.
In the afternoons, Vlad and Val had Turkish lessons.
Vlad picked it up the way he picked up all languages, the way Father had described as being like a bucket in a well: “efficiently, thoroughly, brimming over.”
But his understanding didn’t make him cooperative. He couldn’t comprehend the gall of these people; that they thought he would go meekly along with their plans to domesticate and educate him. That he would pray over their holy book, and eat their food, wear their clothes, learn their customs, and willingly agree to this imprisonment. It offended him on a visceral level. Wouldn’t it be more honorable to be thrown in a cell and deprived of food and water? To be chained to a dirty wall and left to wallow in his own filth?
To go along with them felt disloyal not only to his family, but to his homeland. To be a happy hostage was unthinkable.
So.
“Now repeat it back to me,” Mullah Effendi said. He was a former Serbian prisoner of war who’d fully assimilated. A prisoner no longer, but an educator of boy prisoners.
Vlad looked down at the book that lay open on the low writing table in front of him. He could read the majority of it, and what words he didn’t understand could be figured out easily enough with context clues.
He lifted his head, and stared at the man.
“Repeat it back to me,” Effendi said.
In Romanian, Vlad said, “No.”
Slowly, deliberately, Effendi picked up the riding crop that rested beside his own open book. “Repeat it back to me,” he said for the third time.
“Vlad,” Val whispered from his own rug, where he studied with his own tutor; too far to touch, his voice reaching like a hand. “Brother, just say it. Please.”
A darted glance proved that Val had his lip caught between his teeth, gaze wide and imploring. Begging, really.
“Radu,” Mullah Iyas reprimanded quietly, and Val turned his attention back to his tutor. He really was the sweetest, most cooperative child.
Vlad might have obeyed then, just to wipe the worry and fear from his brother’s face. He was thoroughly convinced his little brother could stop a war with that pitiful look.
But to do so would show that Val was his weakness – which it was. And weaknesses could be exploited; could be made to suffer for the sake of manipulation.
That couldn’t happen. Not ever.
So Vlad turned his shoulder to his brother, blanked his face, and said, “No,” yet again.
~*~
The crop left angry red welts that, despite his healing abilities, faded slowly, painful when his clothes shifted over them.
But he could bear it. If not gladly, then at least willingly.
That night, Vlad curled up on his side on his pallet, facing the window, his back to his brother. He listened to Val’s near-silent footfalls as he crept up close and then knelt down on the cushions behind him.
“Vlad,” he said, just a sad breath of sound. “Are you hurt badly?”
Vlad took a breath in through his mouth, shallow, so the bruised skin over his ribs didn’t stretch too much.
As if a handful of bruises were the real pain.
“Go to sleep, Radu,” he said.
Behind him: a gasp, low and shocked. “Vlad.”
Mother had given him the name Valerian. He loved that name – loved that it was a sign of her love. Vlad had never minded that Val was the favorite, and he’d always used his real name, the one he preferred.
“Vlad,” he said again, voice choked with tears. “Why would you–”
“Go to sleep.”
Long moments passed, Val struggling not to cry. And then he finally shifted away and went to lie on his own, as-of-yet-untouched pallet.
Vlad listened to him quietly cry himself to sleep. He never slept at all, himself; he watched the stars wink out, one by one, until pink dawn touched the sky and it was time to rise and play hostage again.
17
BOYS AT COURT
A great kindness. That was how Sinan described it when he informed them that they would not be forcibly converted.
A slave showed Vlad to a folly in the midst of the palace gardens, a lovely white stone structure with open doors at either end, vaulted timber ceilings, all crawling with ivy and climbing mountain roses. Someone had fashioned wooden pews, and a large, plain wood cross hung above one door, beneath it a makeshift altar with the melted stumps of candles. The chapel, the place was called, somewhere for non-converts to pray.
The slave gave a little aborted bow and retreated, leaving Vlad alone with the jasmine-scented air and the echoing sense that, despite all odds, something holy did indeed dwell here.
He wasn’t in the mood for holy, though.
He threw himself down onto a pew and scowled up at the cross. “A great kindness,” he mimicked. “Fuck you.”
He gave it a moment, expecting to be struck dead.
Instead, a voice spoke up behind him. “Your Turkish is almost flawless. Remarkable.”
Romanian, Vlad registered.
The man had spoken to him in Romanian!
Heart racing, suddenly, Vlad twisted around and saw that the man who knew his language was the oldest of the hostage boys at court. The one with long wheat-colored hair and a decent beard growing in. His posture mirrored that in which Vlad had first seen him: arms folded, leaning negligently back against the wall.
He tamped down his flurry of excitement. “Who are you?”
The young man studied him a moment, expression guarded in a way that Vlad actually found reassuring. In this instance, away from prying eyes, a little caution went a long way toward earning Vlad’s trust.
Finally, he pushed off the wall and extended his right hand for a shake. “My name’s George Castrioti. Of Albania. You’re Vlad Dracul’s son, right?”
Vlad stared at the proffered hand. And then the boy’s face. He felt a tug somewhere under his ribs, the pull to talk, to trust, to confide. He’d been pushing Val away more steadily each day – they slept separately now, and Val looked to him for comfort less and less – and the thought of stealing even half a conversation with someone who wasn’t a captor made him ache.
But he frowned and said, “They don’t call you George.”
The boy’s hand dropped, but he smiled and shrugged. Kicked off the wall and came to rest with both palms leaned casually against the back of the pew. Nothing about his body language nor his scent spoke of a threat, but still, Vlad didn’t relax.
“They don’t, you’re right,” he agreed. “They call me Iskander now. Iskander Bey. That’s how the Turks refer to Alexander the Great.”
Vlad felt his brows jump. “Oh, and you’re great?”
He shrugged again, an offhand gesture, dismissive. “I don’t know. The sultan seems to think I’m a fierce warrior, though. As far as monikers go, it’s not such a bad one.” He offered a smile. “But you’re welcome to call me George.”
Vlad turned away. No one had smiled at him since his arrival here, and he didn’t know what to do with it now.
George pulled back – Vlad expected him to leave – but then he came around the end of the pew and sat down beside Vlad, a reasonable arm span between them.
Curiosity got the best of Vlad – the kind that burned, the kind that made him angry, that left his teeth grinding and his voice tight. Most emotions led to anger for him; he didn’t understand why, and he hadn’t figured out how to control it yet. “How old are you?” he asked, ducking his head when he heard the bite to the words.
But George answered easily, unperturbed. “Twenty-one. The oldest here, by far.”
Surprise wiped the frown from Vlad’s face. He lifted his head. “But why have they kept you so long?”
“Several reasons, I suspect. He needed to keep a tight rein on my father. And I was” – he grinned a
nd it was more a baring of teeth, a low chuckle building in his throat – “not the most cooperative hostage at first. I took some convincing to behave. You know what that’s like.”
Vlad hummed an agreeing sound.
“Also, I managed to convince them that I’d converted, and I think they want to make sure that I really have.”
Vlad blinked. “You did what? But – why–?”
George studied him a moment, gaze narrowing. He offered a less friendly smile, one that was calculating. “I’m playing the long game here, Vlad. You might want to consider doing the same.” He stood, and his expression smoothed. “I’ll let you pray in peace, then. See you at supper.”
“See you…” Vlad murmured. He twisted around in his pew and watched him walk away, noting the breadth of his shoulders, the way even the loose sleeves of his kaftan couldn’t hide the muscle development in his arms. A warrior worthy of the title Iskander?
Maybe.
Vlad wasn’t at all sure what had just happened.
~*~
Val was ashamed. No, he was worse than that, but he didn’t think there was a proper label for the knot of shame that sat heavy in his belly, weighing every breath and darkening every thought. The majority of his energy went to keeping himself from crying; checking tears with rapid blinks and biting his tongue until it bled.
Vlad hated him. And he didn’t know why. And he needed him.
He never called him by his real name anymore. Their captors had known him as Radu from the start, but not Vlad, never Vlad. And now Vlad wouldn’t touch him, or look at him, or assure him that everything would be alright. That they would get fee, and run home.
They weren’t friends anymore. Weren’t brothers.
Val had always been told that vampires weren’t like wolves – they weren’t pack animals, and tended toward solitary existences. More like cats. But he felt like a wolf now, deprived of his pack, without the chance for closeness, and skin contact and the familiar scents of home. Maybe he wasn’t a wolf, but he wasn’t a human, either, and he wanted, needed, to be in close contact with someone he loved. To be held, and soothed, and allowed to smell the faint copper traces of his own kind.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 17
