“It is. Fresh from my Fenny.”
“Helga–”
“You’ve been on the march, sir, and haven’t taken a bite all day besides. And if you’ll pardon me saying so, you didn’t smell a thing like a wolf when you got here. I’m guessing those lousy Turks don’t even have wolves to feed you from, and–”
“Helga.”
She froze, hand hovering beside a platter of cheese and fruit. Not just grapes, he saw now, but figs, too. The last of the year that had been crushed into jam.
“Fen can’t afford to give any blood now,” he said, firm, trying not to sound cruel. Cruelty rolled naturally off his tongue; he scowled the way other boys smiled. It frightened him, if he was honest. “There are horses in the stable, and cattle in the field. I need not for blood.”
She studied him a moment. Swallowed. “With all due respect, your grace–”
“Fen’s blood,” he said, even firmer, so that she straightened up with a tiny yelp, clutching the tray to her chest, “stays inside his veins until he’s stronger. Mother and I shall be just fine until then.”
She bobbed a quick curtsy. “Yes, your grace.” Eyes downcast: “Also, I ought to tell you, that fellow with the scar, the one with the Far East look about him, wants to see you.”
He nodded. “Send him up, please. Thank you, Helga.”
She hurried from the room, looking much smaller than she had when she’d entered.
When she was gone, Eira resumed her seat, candlelight flickering around the room now. She sat upright, head lifted, disapproving. “That was harsh.”
“It needed to be. You know how she is: she loves mothering everyone. If I don’t put my foot down, she’ll continue to bring us Fen’s blood.”
“Vlad,” she said, serious and low, “it’s a Familiar’s honor to provide for his or her vampire–”
“I’m not her vampire,” he said, turning to her.
Her gaze was narrow, sharp, lips pressed together.
For a moment, a half a heartbeat, he knew a boy’s uncertainty.
But he wasn’t a boy anymore – he hadn’t been since the day he woke in silver cuffs in a janissary tent, bound for Edirne. “I’m not,” he insisted.
“You’re right. She is mine. And you are my son.”
“Who is now the prince of Wallachia, and who can make his own decisions. I won’t risk the health of your Familiar for the sake of a little rich blood. I’ve grown used to going without wolf blood. I can make do now. I will not be a boy on apron strings anymore, not while I’m trying to secure our home.”
She stared at him a long beat, then finally nodded and turned her attention toward the food, plucking up a bundle of grapes. “You need your own Familiar,” she said, quietly. “Cicero will offer. He would not bind himself to me.”
“I have no need of a Familiar.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I don’t–”
“Don’t say that.” She turned to him again, eyes flashing. “You are a man now, and a prince, and I can’t imagine what you’ve lived through at the Ottoman court. But you are young, and I’ve lived a long, long time. Do not disparage the idea of a loyal Familiar. I couldn’t have survived this long without mine. If Cicero offers, don’t dismiss him lightly. He will offer out of love and loyalty, and I believe you’ll need all the allies you can get.”
He was angry; angry at her; angrier than he should have been. But he felt a wry smile lift one corner of his mouth. “You speak boldly, Mother.”
“Well, someone has to. You might be the most savage prince that ever lived,” she said, throwing his earlier proclamation back at him, “but that just means you’re more likely to need someone to help you see reason.”
A knock sounded at the half-open door. Malik.
“Come in.” To Eira: “I thank you for your counsel.” He turned to face the cavalry captain as he entered.
Malik still wore his armor, even carried his armored turban beneath his arm, the long white and red tail of it swaying against his legs, layered over the hem of his kaftan. “Your grace,” he said, ducking his head briefly in greeting. In that moment, Vlad saw his lashes flicker, and knew he’d stolen a glance at Eira.
Vlad drummed his fingers on the desk. He’d end up having to do something about this…curiosity. “What is it?”
Malik straightened, admirably unphased by Vlad’s tone. “The troops have all been settled, your grace. I took the liberty of forming up groups for guard duty and scheduled shifts. The rest are stationed in the barracks beyond the stable.”
“The horses?”
“Happily eating, your grace. There were plenty of grain stores, and the hay is set to be reaped next week, the stable boys said.”
“Very good.”
“All the messengers have been sent as well.”
“Yes. Thank you, Malik.” A clear dismissal.
He lingered, unmoving…save his eyes, which shifted to the desk, to the food laid out…to the cups of blood.
“Something else you needed?” Vlad asked.
Malik’s gaze lifted again. “I only wanted to ask, your grace, if your earlier errand was successful.”
Ashes in a jar. Bones laid out on burlap.
He knew a sudden, visceral urge to leap over the desk and attack the janissary with hands and fangs, to taste human blood.
He said, coldly, “No, it was not. Anything else?”
Malik hesitated, and for a moment, his face showed doubt. He smoothed it quickly away and said, “Shall I lodge in the barracks with the men?”
“No. There’s a captain’s suite at the end of the hallway. Take it.” Vlad waved toward the door.
Finally, the man bowed and took his leave.
“Does he know what you are?” Eira asked.
“I’m beginning to suspect that he does.” He frowned to himself. “I haven’t told him, but someone back in Edirne might have. God knows what Murat is up to.”
~*~
Though his body was exhausted, Vlad’s mind was too awake to seek his bed. That was what he told himself; in truth, as he yawned into his shoulder, he knew that what he dreaded most was going back to his old room. Lying on the old pillows, staring up at the old ceiling, and knowing that this wasn’t the homecoming he’d dreamed of. Everything was different; almost everyone was dead. He needed to be strong, as unbendable as the steel Murat had claimed him to be, and he didn’t think he could slide beneath his old furs and blankets and manage.
“He’s already opened his vein,” Eira said, nudging one of the blood cups toward him. “Don’t let it go to waste.”
He scowled at her, but her responding look was implacable.
He drained the cup in one swallow, and the blood hit his stomach like the richest wine. He’d forgotten wolf blood, the way it fizzed, the way it tasted like every kind of delicious fruit all at once, and something darker, and richer, too.
Breathless, he said, “Happy?”
“No. And I don’t suspect I will be for a long time.” She turned back to the list in front of her. It was nonsense, all of it was; Vladislav was a raging idiot. “You should get some rest.”
Vlad sighed and pushed the journal in front of him to the side, massaging his tired eyes with fingers that still bore traces of grave dirt caked beneath the nails. “It’s been hours,” he said, “and you haven’t asked about him yet.”
“Asked about who?” But she sat up stiff and straight in her chair, tension stealing through her. Her eyes moved back and forth, too quick; she was no longer reading, but fighting to keep her breaths even, chest hitching unsteadily.
Vlad thought it would be a kindness to allow her this evasion. To say that she was right, and kiss her head, and go off to sleep in his boyhood bed, searching for traces of his brother’s scent in the pillows.
But savage did not mean lenient. If he intended to do the impossible, to hold this palace, this principality, to earn its eventual independence from the Ottomans, then he had to learn to live as a hard man. Compromi
se only begat more compromise; he could not shrink from the unpleasant just to spare tears – no one had spared his tears, nor Val’s.
He did soften his voice, though. “You know who I mean, Mother. Val. I had thought you’d ask about him right away.” A thought dawned. “Or have you been keeping contact with him yourself?”
She took a trembling breath in through her mouth. Shook her head. “No. He – it’s been some time since he came to see me. I had wondered…” She turned to him, unshed tears glittering like jewels in her blue eyes. “You do not smell of him.”
“I hadn’t much contact with him before my departure. Our paths within the palace diverged some months ago.” Two years, to be precise. His brother had been the plaything of that serpent for two years.
She blinked against the tears, gaze narrowing. “What does that mean, Vlad?”
He resisted the urge to fidget. Savage or not, she was still his mother, and her gaze could still stop a cavalry charge when she wanted it to. “Valerian is…better liked at court than me.”
“And yet here you sit, free and at the command of your own troops. What aren’t you telling me? What are–” Her eyes went wide. “Oh, gods. Something he said to me, the last time I saw him, he…” Fresh tears welled. “Vlad, what has…?”
His chest ached. “Murat’s son, Mehmet, the true sultan. He took a liking to Val. He has…a taste for boys.”
Eira sagged forward on a deep exhale, as if the words had driven all the air from her lungs.
“Val had no choice. To refuse him–”
“Would have meant death,” she murmured.
“I know him to be cruel. I can’t imagine that he is kind. But Val is alive. Dripping with jewels.” He smiled, bitter and brittle. “He makes quite the mistress.”
She groaned, bending forward, hands pressed to her middle as if she might be sick. “Oh, my baby. My sweet little baby.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and pattered down onto the parchment below. “He asked me – oh, gods, he asked me if I’d ever been forced. If a man had ever…I tried to ask him what he meant, to ask if he was well. But he turned to smoke.”
Vlad watched her cry, helpless. It didn’t matter how many guards he’d slaughtered, how many gatemen; how many furious messages he’d dictated and sent. None of that rage mattered if his little brother had been raped for two years.
“Mother.” He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned into it, though she didn’t look at him. “Mother, I’ll get him back, I swear to you. And I’ll take Mehmet’s head from his shoulders myself. He will pay for what he’s done. I promise you.”
She reached to cover his hand with her own. “I know, I know.” Sniffed hard. “But there’s no undoing what’s already been done.” She lifted her wet face, eyes red, lashes spiked. “You can kill all you like, but that will never heal your brother’s wounds.” She touched her own chest. “They don’t make a salve for those kinds of hurts.”
“Then what would you have me do?” he whispered.
“Kill anyway. Kill all of them. That’s all you can do.”
26
FIGHT OR FLIGHT
Vlad slept for three days in the big chair at his father’s old desk, knees drawn up at awkward angles, waking with the dawn with a crick in his neck and an aching back. During the day, he traveled into the city, Malik and heavily armed guards flanking him, to talk with shopkeepers and the heads of households. Hearing stories, asking for loyalty.
One thing became apparent: all but only a small handful of boyars had joined Vladislav’s and Hunyadi’s efforts to depose Vlad Dracul.
“They’ll have to be dealt with,” Vlad told Malik, and earned only a nod in response.
No word came from Hunyadi or Vladislav, nor did Vlad’s scouts see any sign of them.
Under the cloudless autumn sky, Vlad felt the pressure of a thunderstorm, a gathering darkness along the horizon, not seen, but weighing on his bones all the same.
On the fourth night, his eyelids heavy, as he finally pushed aside his half-drunk cup of cow’s blood and prepared to settle down for a fitful nap, a shadowy figure pushed open the door and lingered in the threshold, limned in torchlight from the hallway beyond.
Vlad knew him by scent.
“Come, Cicero,” he called with a gesture, voice heavy with fatigue and dissatisfaction. “You know that you are always welcome counsel.”
The wolf entered, but did not sit. He remained standing opposite Vlad, hands at his sides, face set in lines of resolution. He had shaved since last Vlad had seen him, so the clean, angular lines of his jaw were visible, his hair washed and tied back in the front, left to fall across his shoulders behind. Someone, Helga no doubt, had fashioned a patch of black cloth for his ruined eye. In fresh clothes, with color back in his cheeks, he looked the Dacian warrior that he was again, and no longer a sad prisoner.
It was silent between them at first, candle flames and edges of pages dancing in the breeze from the open window.
“Your father named me after a Roman,” Cicero said, finally.
Vlad managed a faint smile. He’d always liked this story. “Marcus Tullius Cicero. The greatest orator in history.”
“He said it was because I argued my case so prettily.” Alone, half-starved, Remus had been spending his days in a mountain cave, subsisting off rats, berries, and rainwater, in the high hills of what had once been the Dacian territory, but which had been occupied by Roman commanders. A pack of wolves had found him, their initial aggression turning to uncertainty once they’d sniffed out what he was. Three of that pack had been werewolves, and had shifted with seeming difficulty. At the time, only Cicero had been able to speak, a half-garbled language supplemented with gestures and whines. He hadn’t shifted in nearly a decade. An exchange had been made: learning and civilization in exchange for blood to keep strong. It had been years before true trust had grown between them, and by then it had been love, and Cicero had agreed readily to a binding.
“He said that Rome would never have existed as it is remembered today if not for the kindness of a wolf,” Cicero said, eyes downcast, pain writ clear across his face.
“Father always loved wolves. He impressed upon us the importance of that bond. The naturalness of a Familiar’s relationship with his vampire.”
“He was my first and only master. I didn’t expect…” His hands curled to fists. “I didn’t know how badly it would hurt. When the binding was severed.” He reached to touch the side of his head. “It felt like something burst. Here.” Touched his heart. “And here.”
“Grief is a good thing,” Vlad said, and knew he sounded flat. “It means that it was a binding of respect and love, and not one of slavery.”
He took a deep breath. “Your grace…”
Vlad closed his eyes a moment. He knew what was coming. If Cicero offers, don’t dismiss him lightly. He will offer out of love and loyalty, and I believe you’ll need all the allies you can get, his mother had said.
He opened his eyes.
“Your grace,” Cicero said again, sinking down slowly into the chair now, so they were face-to-face across the desk. “If you should want to – if you would allow me to – it would be the highest honor to bind myself to you now.”
The thought terrified him. To have a Familiar was not merely to have a bodyguard. His parents had taught him that. A Familiar was a vampire’s sworn protector, his packmate, his primary source of blood, and his unfailing confidante and best friend. In return, the vampire provided support, comfort, camaraderie, and protection. It was a symbiotic relationship that benefitted both parties. It was like a marriage, one bound by blood and a psychic pull neither side could resist, once established.
A binding could only be broken by the death of one party, as Vlad understood it.
“This is not a light thing you’re asking for,” Vlad said, leaning forward, bracing his elbows on the desk.
Cicero’s shoulders slumped as he exhaled. “I know that I am” – his fingers twitched on the edge of the desk –
“disfigured. I–”
“Cicero.”
The wolf lifted his head, eye glimmering.
Vlad said, “You are the most honorable and fearsome man I have ever met. The honor would be mine. But you served my father for centuries. I wouldn’t make a servant of you so soon, not until you’re sure it’s what you want.”
Cicero cocked his head, earnest, younger somehow. “Your – Vlad. My pack is dead. I want now only to be useful. To avenge your father, and to serve you. And…” His breath hitched. “I’ve grown used to being loved,” he whispered. “I am weak.”
No, I am, Vlad thought. He was seventeen, and in too deep, and completely overwhelmed, without a father or a mentor on which to lean for advice, working in service of a family he hated, a family that had made a whore of his brother. How easy, how tempting to accept.
He wanted to be savage, to be a prince, to kill and avenge, and rescue Val. But he was, to his shame, overwhelmed. Did that make him horrible? To lean on someone who deserved freedom?
“What will make you happy?” Vlad asked.
Relief touched Cicero’s face. “To serve you, your grace.”
Vlad stood. “Come with me, then, old friend.”
~*~
Now, finally, he stood in the center of his old bedchamber. It had been made ready for him days ago; fresh candles, clean linens, a thorough dusting and airing out. He crossed to the washstand and found a fresh bit of toweling laid over the edge of the bowl; the ewer held clean water, still faintly warm when he tested it with his fingertips. The maids prepared this place for him every night, though he hadn’t used it yet.
By all accounts, they should be in his father’s old suite. He knew that Helga had seen to it personally that every trace of Vladislav had been scrubbed from that room, that lemon juice and cinnamon, and mint had been used to wipe away his scent. And he was the reigning prince now; the finest set of rooms should have been his own.
Perhaps he would graduate there, eventually. But now, this, tonight…this was his binding. It needed to happen in a place that was purely his. He needed Cicero to understand that he wasn’t binding himself to the Prince of Wallachia – but to Vlad. To a very angry boy bent on killing a good many people.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 35
