He tried to refuse, after that, but there was always some threat, some elegantly-dropped hint about his brother. And so Val went, and he hated it, and one night Mehmet was recognized, and the sultan stabbed the man to death right there in the street, so that word would not get out.
“Have you learned anything?” Val asked, tone cutting, as he pushed back his hood and went to wash his face at the basin by the window. They were back in the palace now, in the royal apartments, and he wanted the scent of the street off of himself. “Is this little experiment finally over?”
Mehmet didn’t seem to hear the disdain in his voice. He sank down on the edge of the bed, gaze fixed on the middle distance. “They are…not in agreement.”
“About you?” Val snorted and wiped his face with a length of toweling. “Did you expect them to be? A ruled people are never in agreement about their ruler.” Except for the fact that most of them hated that ruler; they just disagreed on the reasons why.
“They want me to take Rum. Some of them do. It will be a victory for not just me, but our entire people. But…” He shook his head. “They think me a heretic.” He blinked and his gaze focused, lifted to Val. “They know that we are lovers, Radu.”
Val bit back his kneejerk response – it would only get him slapped. He said, “It’s not as if you’re subtle about it, dear.” He gestured to the room around them. “We’re together nearly every night. I’m by your side always. And,” he dared to say, “you keep collecting young boys and stashing them with your harem. What did you want people to think?”
“It’s none of their business.”
“You’re their sultan. Everything you do is their business.”
Mehmet growled quietly, and glanced away.
Val dampened a cloth and went to stand in front of him. Took his chin in-hand and began to wipe the dirt from his face. “Did you think they’d call you Alexander?” he asked. “You’re only a hero in your own mind, Mehmet.”
The sultan reached up, a sudden burst of speed, and caught Val’s wrist. He turned a glowing, furious look up at him. “That’s a bold thing for you to say.”
“Hmm, yes. Shall you impale me? As you did Captain Rizzo?”
Mehmet struck out, a vicious slap aimed for Val’s face.
But now it was Val’s turn to catch his wrist, to hold him off. His heart beat wildly in his chest, frightened by his own daring, but he kept his face smooth, his voice serene. “If you want your people to think of you differently, perhaps you should behave differently.”
They held a moment, tense; Val’s pulse beat in his ears as if someone was knocking on the bedchamber door.
And then Mehmet released him, and a smile broke across his face, and Val’s knees went weak with relief.
“You’re always honest with me, aren’t you, Radu?”
“I make every effort to be, yes.” Val resumed cleaning the sultan’s face, and he allowed it this time.
Mehmet sighed. “No one else is.”
“Then it’s a good thing you have me, then.”
“Yes. A very good thing.”
~*~
Val rose before dawn the next morning, left the sultan snoring, dressed simply, and went out for a walk in the gardens.
A sharply cold, but still morning, all the garden’s delights rimed with hoary white frost. Steam issue from the rooftop vents in the bath houses, and from the seraglio; bright crystal stalactites dripped off the spouts and edges of frozen fountains, water chiming lightly as it began to thaw and trickle, gleaming as the first pale light washed across the palace grounds.
Val could enjoy none of its beauty. Though pulsing with energy, healthy and strong from last night’s feast of live blood, sickness and shame weighed heavy in his belly. He’d killed a man last night; an innocent commoner. Did he have a family? Children? His blood gave Val strength, an indulgence taken by a spoiled, rich prince. That’s what he was, wasn’t he? Even if he wore a choking silver collar of ownership, even if his fate was not his own, he was still a pampered royal pet.
Lost in the troubling reflection of his own culpability in Mehmet’s overused power, he nearly tripped over the neat little figure sitting on a curved iron bench along the path.
He pulled up short, embarrassed by his own startlement, and glanced down to find a plump, gray-bearded man smoking a hookah pipe, expression serene.
The man wore a costly, richly-embroidered kaftan of purple silk with ivory buttons, peacocks stitched along the hem. White şalvar, and gold slippers, and a snowy turban set with a jeweled peacock brooch above his round, sun-lined, pleasant face.
“Good morning,” he said.
Val glanced at the man’s hookah, and noted, absurdly, that someone must have carried it out here for him, because it looked too heavy for its owner. “Good morning,” he echoed, and started to move on.
But the man said, “You look tired, child.”
He couldn’t have; he didn’t feel tired – not in a physical sense. But he could feel the tightness in his own jaw, and wondered how haunted his eyes looked.
“You wouldn’t be interested in sitting for a spell and keeping an old man company, would you?” The man smiled, revealing small, tobacco-stained teeth, surprisingly intact for a mortal of his advanced years.
“I…” Val started to refuse, but couldn’t. In all his years at court, no one had ever invited him to do anything. No one save Mehmet, and that was never really an offer. Everyone knew who he was, and what he was to their sultan, and they shunned him on principle. “Why not,” he said, voice flat to his own ears, and sat down on the bench.
The man smiled around the stem of his pipe, and hummed a pleased note as he puffed. “Isn’t the frost lovely? And once it melts, I think we’ll have a fine, clear day ahead of us.”
Val made a quiet, agreeing sound. He didn’t know what this was, or what this man might want.
“Spring will be here soon,” he said, “and then I suppose the sultan will march for Constantinople.”
“I suppose,” Val said.
“You will accompany him, I should think?”
Val’s skin prickled beneath his clothes. “I accompany the sultan always.”
“The two of you share an admirable closeness.”
Val turned to look at him, frowning. “Envious?” he asked, levering venom into the word.
The man chuckled, unperturbed, staring at the frozen fountain in front of them. “Oh, no. I have friends aplenty.”
Val snorted.
“But I admit that this isn’t my first morning sitting out here in the cold. I’ve been trying to catch an audience with you, Prince Radu.” His gaze slid over, then, sharp as steel, intensely clever, but not unfriendly.
Val’s stomach rolled, though. Here was the proposition. He couldn’t think of anything bolder than a man making a pass at something that belonged to the sultan. “Why?” he asked through his teeth.
“Why do you think I might wish to speak with you?”
Val lifted his lip, a silent snarl, the pressure of a true growl building in his throat.
“Not that, dear boy. Lower your hackles.”
Val felt his face go blank with shock.
The man turned away, and puffed on his pipe. In perfect Romanian, he said, “My servant is waiting on the other side of the hedge behind us. He’ll guard us, but still, I’m sure we don’t have much time. I’ll speak plainly. They don’t dare say it, but there are a number of those at court who dislike the sultan’s plan to lay siege to Constantinople.”
Another shock: just the boldness that had led this man to say such a thing out loud. “Halil Pasha, I should say,” Val said, voice faint with a mounting anxiety.
The man nodded. “Oh, yes, the Grand Vizier hates this plan. But there are others, too. The Grand Vizier’s friends. Me, for instance.”
Val let out a short, sharp breath, steam pluming. “Who are you?”
“That’s not important,” the man said with a wave. “What’s important is that you know there a
re those of us who – if we were able – would argue against this war. And” – his gaze returned, full of unexpected sympathy – “who regret the things that have happened to you, Radu.”
Val sat perfectly still a moment, unable to breathe.
“I fear,” the man said, glancing away, mercifully, when Val began to shake, “that the problem with monarchs is that they can’t be checked. Whatever his breeding, whichever god he prays to – a king is a king, his word is law, and we all serve at his pleasure. Even when those pleasures are cruel…and unrequited.”
Val finally managed to suck in a ragged breath. The words, the simple truth of them, spoken to him by a man who was obviously of some import among the Ottoman court, landed like physical blows. His chest ached. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked the ground between his boots, vision swimming.
“Oh. Well. I’m a doddering old fool who likes to hear myself talk.” He chuckled. “Usually I inflict my little speeches upon my sons and grandsons, but they are otherwise occupied this morning. Just a doddering old fool…who is an Ottoman Turk first. And a subject of Sultan Mehmet second.”
Val lifted his head so fast it left him dizzy, and he gripped the edge of the bench to keep from falling.
But the man’s face gave nothing away. “We are, by nature, a temperate and godly people. We love our families; we pray faithfully. But we obey our sultan.”
A human stepped around the hedge, and Val tensed – but it was only the man’s servant, who bent to pick up the hookah.
The richly dressed man stood with a groan and obvious effort, his knees and spine cracking in the cold morning. He turned to Val, and smiled, eyes glittering with things unsaid, gaze wily as a fox’s. “May God keep the sultan safe on his travels to Constantinople. May he guide his sword, and raise him up victorious.” He gave a short bow, and said, in an entirely different tone, “I will pray for you, Prince Radu.” A whisper: “Good luck.” And he winked, and turned away.
Val sat for a very long time, shaking, as the sun warmed the garden, and thawed the fountain, contemplating the vastness that lay between tyrants and the peoples they ruled.
~*~
Mehmet spent his winter dreaming of a siege, but not everyone in his court thought this was a good idea.
“What do you think of Halil Pasha?” Mehmet asked one night, apropos of nothing.
Val marked his place in his book with a finger, and lifted his head. It was a bitter night, wind and stinging rain lashing at the walls beyond the antechamber, and Val sat curled up beneath a heap of furs, reading by candlelight. Mehmet was at his sketches again, murmuring almost constantly under his breath. Val had been waiting for a question, but not this one.
“Halil was a loyal Grand Vizier to your father,” he said. “And now to you.”
Mehmet sent him an unimpressed look. “You think he undermines me.”
“I think he does so because he genuinely cares about you, your family, and the empire at large. Not because he’s a rat bastard – though no one would love to call him that more than me.”
Mehmet shook his head, but a smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. “Go and fetch the guards,” he told the slave currently refilling the brazier. “Tell them they’re to bring Halil Pasha to me here, now.”
“Really?” Val asked when the boy had scampered off to follow orders. “Right now?”
“Why not now? Everyone always knows just which sweet lies to tell during the middle of the day. It’s after bedtime that you find out what someone really thinks.”
The guards took longer than Val expected. Mehmet had gotten to his feet and was pacing the length of the room when they finally arrived, a trembling Grand Vizier between them.
Halil carried a large golden salver, heaped with coins that gleamed in the candlelight, the tray rattling as he shook. He set it on the table, careful not to impede on any of the maps and scrolls there, and then got down on his knees and prostrated before Mehmet.
“Good evening, Your Majesty,” he said, and his voice shook, too.
Mehmet looked at the guards, at Val, at the man splayed out before him on the floor tiles, lip curling. “What is this?”
“For-forgive me, Your Majesty,” Halil said to the floor, “but it is customary when a noble is summoned before his master at an unusual hour that he not arrive empty-handed. I have brought you–”
“Sit up,” Mehmet ordered, and the Vizier did so, his lip trembling, his face bloodless with fear. “Do you think I don’t have gold aplenty?”
“I – I – I–”
Mehmet tucked his hands together behind his back and continued pacing. “Tell me, Grand Vizier. What do you think of my plan to take Constantinople?”
Halil gaped at him. Then he turned to Val.
“Mind your sultan,” Val snapped.
Mehmet turned around, grinning. “Yes, Halil, mind your sultan. Well? What do you think?”
“Your Majesty–”
“Answer the question!”
“I think it’s reckless,” the man said in a rush, gulping air. “Ambitious, yes, because no one save crusaders have ever accomplished such a thing. But it is dangerous, and yes, it is reckless.” He swallowed, and tears stood in his eyes. “Would you throw all of your army at it, even if they died and failed?”
“Yes,” Mehmet said, without hesitation. “This isn’t about an army, Halil. It’s about our future. As Ottomans. As leaders of the world.”
Halil bowed his head.
“My father,” Mehmet continued, “was a great man. But a weak one, ultimately. He got tired – of war, of having to choose what was most important. I know no such fatigue. The most important thing in the world is to take Rum. That’s what a leader must do: choose what is most important. Would you argue against me?”
“I…no, Your Majesty.”
“Will you refuse to serve as Grand Vizier if I continue to plan the siege on Byzantium?”
“No, Your Majesty. I am loyal to you always, in all things.”
Mehmet’s smile was tight, and toothless. He turned to Val. “Do you hear that, Radu? In all things Halil is loyal to me.”
When Halil glanced toward Val, quickly, touched with revulsion, Mehmet stepped in close to him and snapped his fingers, drawing his attention.
“Loyal to me,” he repeated, voice low, and silky. Val knew that tone well, and it sent goosebumps rippling down his arms. “And I am the sultan; you obey me, and Radu is none of your concern. Yes?”
Halil swallowed. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Mehmet turned and walked back to the table. Reached with deliberate slowness out to the salver, and picked up a handful of gleaming coins. Then he spun and threw them at his Grand Vizier.
Halil scrambled to shield his head with his arms, crying out in alarm. But most of the coins clattered harmlessly across the floor. A few tipped up on their sides, and rolled until they hit the wall.
“I don’t want your gifts,” Mehmet said. “I want the city. Will you help me take it? Or will you keep gossiping about me?”
Halil lowered his arms slowly, wobbling where he knelt, tongue flicking over dry lips. He swallowed, and made a visible effort to gather himself. “I will help you take it, Your Majesty.”
Mehmet nodded, and motioned to the guards, who stepped forward. “Take him away, I’m tired of him.”
Halil moved as if to prostrate again, then thought better of it, and let the guards escort him out.
When they were alone, Mehmet turned to Val, hand resting on the tabletop. “He’s been wanting to broker a peace treaty with the Romans, you know.”
“I’ve been in your presence when he’s urged it,” Val said. He didn’t say that Halil Pasha had come to him on more than one occasion now, begging Val to help him sway the sultan. “He’s not a young man anymore. And war is expensive, and stressful, and gets people killed.”
“War is progress,” Mehmet countered. “You have to conquer people before you can shape them into what you want.”
Val
held his gaze, and his hands tightened into fists in his lap. He thought of the taste of salt tears, and the roughness of tree bark under small fingers. Thought of a young sultan’s face tipped back, bathed in early light, eyes shining like a panther’s.
“Yes,” he said mildly, and his face felt stiff. “I suppose conquering really is the only way.”
Whatever Val’s expression was doing, Mehmet turned away from it with a smile, humming softly under his breath, pleased.
The problem with his plan, Val thought, but didn’t say, was that sometimes people didn’t stay conquered.
~*~
Val could see the effects of the wind that tunneled down the aisle, blown in through the open doors of St. Sophia as the cardinals led their overwrought procession toward the altar. The Romans around him pulled their cloaks in tighter around hunched shoulders; breathed warm air into their cupped hands. A child wiped his running nose on his sleeve, and an old woman’s teeth chattered. Val couldn’t feel the cold, though, nor smell the incense, nor the beeswax candles, nor the press of bodies, all those overlapping human scents.
Beside him, Constantine managed to whisper without moving his lips too noticeably. “I imagine it must be bittersweet to sit through a service like this.”
“More like unfamiliar,” Val whispered back. He’d shielded himself from the view of anyone besides the emperor, but he enjoyed the little thrill of feeling like a little boy sharing secrets in church. “I was brought up Orthodox. I’ve never sat through a Catholic service before.”
“Really? But your father…the Order of the Dragon…that’s a Catholic institution, is it not? They’re crusaders.”
“I have no idea what sort of institution it is. All very hush-hush. Father never talked about it with us. I always liked to imagine there were brown robes, and iron masks, and lots of chanting in old crypts.”
Constantine disguised a low chuckle with a clearing of his throat. “That is quite the picture.”
“Isn’t it?”
They lapsed into silence once again.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 49
