A question to which there was no answer.
“No,” Val breathed, anxiety already skating across his nerves, tightening his stomach.
“Alright, then.” Mehmet slid into a ready stance. “Let’s begin.”
Val wanted to turn tail and run. But. This was the heir. And he was a long way from home.
He adjusted his feet, and lifted his sword.
“En garde,” Mehmet said with a smile, and attacked.
Val lifted his sword. Too late, too slow, he knew–
Sharp clang of metal against metal.
Scent of home, family, brother. Because Vlad had leapt up and thrown his shoulder in front of Val, had stopped Mehmet’s sword with his own.
The collision echoed, bouncing off the utter stillness of the training yard. And then Val heard his brother growl, low like a panther. “Don’t touch him,” he rumbled. “Don’t you fucking touch my brother.”
Mehmet stared at him a moment, expressionless for once. And then a smile slowly bloomed. He chuckled. “Oh. So you do care, huh? We can work with that.”
Vlad opened his mouth and snarled.
“Brother–” Val started, and was elbowed backward. He landed hard on his backside in the sawdust, and had to scramble out of the way as the two princes broke apart, swords held at the ready.
“That doesn’t sound very civilized,” Mehmet taunted.
Vlad roared, and ripped his sword back; lunged forward with a vicious strike.
This was no training exercise, Val knew. His brother wanted blood. Two rival male vampires, no matter how young, would only relent when one was too badly wounded to lift his arms.
“Vlad,” he tried again, but it was no use.
Vlad moved with every ounce of his viciousness, his movements a blur, snarling the whole time.
The heir began with a smile…that soon became a grimace. Vlad was stronger, faster, and a far superior swordsman.
Val scrambled over to the wall, right beside Iskander. “We have to stop them,” he whispered. “Iskander!”
But the older boy didn’t look desperate the way that Val felt, not even troubled. No, he looked thoughtful, damp hair held off his forehead with one hand, the other resting on his hip.
“Iskander!” Val tried again, louder this time.
And Iskander…smiled. Just a slow curling at the corners of his mouth. “Huh,” he said under his breath.
In the center of the yard, Vlad pushed Mehmet back with a sequence of quick, brutal strikes. The blunted steel hissed and cracked as it was met again and again. Sweat gleamed on their brows; both had their teeth bared, gritted, fangs in full view.
The heir tripped, and went down on one knee.
Vlad lifted his sword high, prepared to strike.
Val didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t look away.
The old janissary moved, finally, and took a few lurching strides toward them. “Hey, that’s enough!”
The movement caught Vlad’s attention. He turned his head – just a fraction, but it was enough.
“Vlad!” Val shouted. Iskander caught him by the back of the collar as he tried to rush toward his brother.
Mehmet brought his sword up, a vicious swing. Val heard his brother’s ribs break, the awful faint snap of bone breaking under clothes and flesh.
Vlad staggered back a step.
“Mehmet,” the janissary warned.
The heir surged to his feet, smiling again, face sweat- and dirt-streaked. “Don’t ever take your eyes off me, hostage,” he panted. “That’s a grave mistake.” And his next swing was aimed at Vlad’s head.
~*~
Val was aware of darkness, and a sense that the floor was falling out from under him. When he opened his eyes, he was in a shaded, sweet-smelling place, and he saw a familiar curly-headed figure bent over a table, quill in-hand as he composed a letter.
He’d fainted, he realized, and in that faint, he’d wound up dream-walking.
He scrambled upright with a gasp.
Constantine turned toward him, the quill falling from his hand and rolling across the desk. “Valerian. What are you–” He stood, and moved forward, hands outstretched as if to offer help. He pulled up, though, when he remembered.
Val knew he looked a fright: sweaty, dust-smeared, hair falling down around his face. He tugged at his shirt and tried to sniff back his impending tears. “Your Imperial Majesty.”
Constantine made a sound that was half laugh, and half sigh. “I’m still not the emperor, Val. I’m not even emperor pro tem anymore; John’s back from Rome.”
“He…” Val was too distraught and tired to make much sense of that.
Constantine spread his arms wide, inviting a look around the room…which proved not to be the palace solar in which Val had visited him before. This room was lavish, yes, but it was much smaller, cozy even, and the incoming golden sunlight fell across piles of books, and a dusty mantlepiece, and a half-dozen mismatched chairs.
“John is back from Rome,” Constantine repeated, gentler this time, as if speaking to a frightened child – which he was. “We’re at Mistra, son. I’m the despot here now.”
It shouldn’t have been possible – given that he wasn’t physically here – for Val’s legs to give out. But give out they did, and he sat down hard on the stone floor, elbows landing on his thighs. “I…”
“Are you alright? You don’t look well. What’s happened?”
Val wasn’t really listening; he was marveling. “I found you,” he said, and looked down at his hands, at the floor, at the rich Turkish rugs laid out across it.
Constantine crouched down in front of him so they were on eye level, concerned. “Yes, you did.”
“No, don’t you see – I thought I had to walk to a place, but it’s people! I dream-walked to you, even though you weren’t in the palace anymore! I–” His excitement caught, like a sleeve snagging on a door handle, and the blooming joy dissolved like the dust that layered his boots. “Your Majesty,” he said, fresh tears burning his eyes. “It’s so terrible!”
“What is?”
Val took a hitched breath and then told him everything. The meeting that was a trap in Gallipoli, their capture, their trek to Edirne. In too-fast, unsteady pulses between breaths, Val spilled the whole story, right down to today’s sparring lesson gone horribly wrong.
“He struck Vlad, and I – I think I fainted, I…” He clenched his hands into fists, and bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “I fainted just like the baby I am. Because I’m useless. And now my brother might be dead, and I’m lying in the sawdust like an idiot.”
“Val. Valerian,” Constantine said, and shifted forward, catching Val’s attention. “Can you look at me?” His handsome features were twisted with sympathy, a grave sadness etched into the lines around his eyes. “I’m very sorry,” he said, and Val knew that he meant it. “I’m sorry you’ve been taken hostage, and your father and brother as well. And I’m sorry that I can’t be of any help to you.”
“Oh, well, I understand. I don’t need you to – to – to do anything, I just–” He bit his lip again, mouth full of blood-taste, on the verge of sobbing. “I only – I – I was scared, and…”
“It’s alright.” Constantine hugged him. Did his best to, anyway. He put his arms in a circle around Val’s shaking shoulders, close enough to block the room from sight, but not so close that Val’s projection dissipated into smoke. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, so gently, and that made Val cry even harder. “It’s alright. You can cry. I’m sorry.”
Val wanted, instinctually, desperately, to put his arms around a friendly neck, press his face into a kind chest, and feel an embrace. To feel the warmth and caring of a person who didn’t mean him any harm. But all he could do now was band his arms around his middle and let the sobs shake him to pieces.
Softly, Constantine said, “You can always come to visit me when you need to see a friendly face.”
Val closed his eyes because it was too much, too much–
And his body called him back.
He tumbled through the stars and woke on the ground, his head pillowed on someone’s strong leg, his mouth full of his own blood.
He scrambled to get up. “Vlad!”
Hands caught him by the shoulders. “Easy, easy now,” Iskander said. “Just rest a minute until you get your bearings back.”
“But Vlad.” As the black spots cleared from his vision, the training yard began to take shape in front of him. Iskander had moved him up against the wall, in a patch of shade, and if the cool water trickling down into his collar was anything to go by, had been mopping his face and throat with a wet cloth.
Vlad was gone, as were all the other boys…save the heir.
Mehmet knelt on the ground, his sword laid across his lap. Hair clung to his face, skin sun-dark and shiny with sweat. He breathed raggedly through his mouth – his smiling mouth. Blood flecked his cheeks, and the bridge of his nose, and his throat – grisly freckles.
When Val met his gaze, he laughed, breathless. “What, do you think I killed him? I only hit him in the head.” He lowered his own head, and looked up at Val from beneath slanted brows. “Your brother needs to learn his place, little one. Today was a lesson. Nobody gets in the way of what I want.”
“Your grace,” the sword master said, stepping up and offering a hand down to the future sultan.
Mehmet held Val’s gaze a long, uncomfortable moment, then put his practice sword in the master’s hand and climbed to his feet without assistance. “Don’t worry, Radu,” he called over his shoulder as he headed for the arched doorway that led into the weapons room, “I don’t have any interest in fighting you.”
Val swallowed thickly, the taste of his own blood threatening to gag him. Cold sweat prickled at his hairline and it had nothing to do with his fainting spell.
“What does he mean?” he asked, turning a look up and around to Iskander.
He got a grim frown and a shake of a head in response. “Stay away from him, Radu. Don’t do anything to catch his attention.”
“But…I haven’t.”
The hands tightened on his shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Where’s Vlad? Is he…?”
“Breathing, when they carried him off. I suspect he’s in the infirmary. Just like I suspect…” He lifted a brow, knowing. “That neither of you boys is altogether human, are you?”
~*~
In years past, Vlad had spent a probably-embarrassing amount of time wondering what it would be like if he could dream-walk like his brother. Val had explained it to him, talked about vast spaces, and pinpricks of light like stars, and the sense of flying. Like a dream, he’d said. But that wasn’t any help, because Vlad dreamed of concrete things: the scent of rain, the feel of a horse beneath him, the taste of Helga’s sweetcakes fresh from the oven. The way his muscles burned pleasantly when he drew a bowstring, or swung a sword. The taste of fresh blood over his tongue – once he’d dreamed of a hunt he’d taken with Fenrir, when the big wolf had shifted into his shaggy four-legged shape and helped him fell a deer. Fenrir had lay on the still-alive beast, and Vlad had crept up, quiet, careful, and bared his fangs, set his teeth in the stag’s neck. That day he’d drunk living blood, pumping across his tongue in pulses, the beat of the animal’s heart, and he’d dreamed of it often, afterward.
But he couldn’t control his dreams. Couldn’t go visit with the people he wanted to see, convey messages he needed to send. He couldn’t control himself in his dreams, couldn’t stop the awful coursing anger; most nights he screamed through dreams that were really nightmares, and woke to find his throat tight, phantom leftover threads of his subconscious fury.
This sleep, now, was dreamless. He woke to dizziness, and pain, and heavy eyelids that he cracked open slowly. It was dusk, the light angled and thick, a dull blue shaft that slanted over the bed where he lay. His head throbbed, and his chest ached, and there was a sharp pain that undercut both of those hurts: the familiar sensation of bone knitting faster than was humanly possible.
Three broken ribs, he thought. A skull fracture, for sure, the way the pain blossomed bright and white and sent stars wheeling across his vision. Huh. Were these anything like the stars Val meant when he talked about the astral plane?
An amused thought, just before nausea overwhelmed him and he jackknifed upright, shouting as the movement jerked his ribs. A physician materialized beside the bed, bowl held ready to catch the watery bile that Vlad vomited up.
The room spun and he shut his eyes. Mama, he thought, once, piteously. He wanted his mama.
“You should rest, young lord,” the physician said in Slavic.
He put a hand to Vlad’s shoulder and helped him to lie back down. Carefully, Vlad eased his eyes open again. The ceiling swayed above him, and the bed seemed to tilt.
He knew three things:
The heir wanted to fuck Valerian.
An heir of whom Vlad had just made an enemy for life.
And if it was the last godforsaken thing he did in his miserable life, Vlad was going to kill him.
18
LIVING BLOOD
It was three days before Vlad was able to be up and about on his own, bandages wound round his head and chest.
Three days without lessons.
Three days without any contact with Val.
When he shuffled into the schoolroom, he saw Val’s narrow shoulders stiffen; saw his nostrils flare and knew that, though he gritted his teeth and stared resolutely ahead, he’d sensed Vlad’s entrance.
He was angry, then. Good.
Vlad recalled the sound of his own name ringing across the training yard three days ago, a terrified cry from his brother. Vlad! Like the world was ending. Maybe it had been selfish to allow Val to see him injured like that – it was – but he told himself it was to spare what would have happened if he hadn’t intervened. The heir looked on Val with open lust, and Val, innocent as a lamb, didn’t recognize that particular craving, not even when it picked up a sword and offered to spar with him.
He’d been going to keep his distance, Vlad decided. But then came Mehmet, with his boldly showcased fangs, and his open want, and Vlad couldn’t be anything but an enraged big brother. So enraged that he’d fought blindly, and allowed an opening.
It had been three days since he’d taken blows that would have killed a mortal boy, and now Val was the one turning away and ignoring, feigning hate.
He supposed that was the plan all along. But not…
In the front row, Mehmet turned a fraction to glance back over his shoulder, expression closed-off, one green eye gleaming. He had glass eyes: they reflected, but they projected nothing of their own light.
…now this wasn’t just about surviving as hostages.
Vlad slipped into the back row, settling gingerly on crossed legs, teeth gritted against the jostling of his ribs.
Beside him, George spoke quietly, eyes trained ahead, lips barely moving. “Didn’t expect you up and about so soon.”
Vlad opened the book in front of him with one hand – the side that wouldn’t pull at his healing fractures. “I heal quickly.”
“I can see that.”
Vlad didn’t want to cooperate, but he found, as the morning ticked slowly into afternoon, and Mullah Sinan’s voice droned onward, that he didn’t have the strength to be rebellious today. One lick from the crop would send him back to the infirmary – or make him pass out, something that seemed more and more a possibility the longer he sat swaying on his mat.
In the last three days, Vlad had come to realize something. Either the heir had never been seriously injured after his turning, or the Ottomans didn’t care that he was weak; maybe they even wanted him that way. Because they’d given him his daily cup of sheep’s blood, but when his bones knit themselves back together this quickly, it required a massive amount of energy. Ordinarily, a vampire in his shape would need to either drop into a deep sleep, or feed round the clock. And feed on something stronger t
han sheep’s blood.
When he was four, he broke his arm falling off his horse. A bad break; he’d come to and found the bone had split the skin, a jagged, red-streaked stump of white protruding just beneath his elbow. Cicero had reset the bone, and then fed him straight from his own vein. Regular doses of wolf blood had left him fully-healed within a week’s time.
But right now, the room spun lazy circles around him.
“You’re pale,” George said, once.
“I’m fine,” Vlad said, and swallowed down his rising gorge.
He pushed through the day, forcing food down his throat, mumbling answers to questions during his lessons. The mullahs lifted their brows in surprise when he offered none of his usual vitriol, but every answer given was correct, so they didn’t lift the crop to him. The sword master excused him from sparring, and the archery master took one look at his pale face and sent him away.
When he was free, finally, he dragged himself to the chapel and fell into a pew. It was the only place he could think to go where he might be alone. And he had to be alone, because he couldn’t fall to bits in front of anyone – not his brother, and certainly not his enemy.
He finally let go of the tension that was all that held him together and slumped forward, arms braced on the back of the pew in front of him. Sweat slid down his face, and down his spine, and he breathed in ragged gulps. Black spots crowded his vision. What would happen if he passed out here? Would anyone come find him? How badly would he be beaten?
“…Vlad?”
Awash in his own weakness and pity, he hadn’t sensed anyone approach, and now there was a voice in his ear, and breath against the side of his face.
Vlad tried to leap to his feet, to turn, brace himself for a fight. But he ended up sprawled across the flagstone floor, one arm held up as a useless shield, a pained shout catching between his teeth as his ribs pulled.
But it was only George, hands held out in a gesture intended to calm. “I said your name several times,” he said apologetically. “You didn’t seem to hear.”
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 19
