Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  Mehmet sighed, his expression disappointed. “We’ve been over this. A good showing here cements your strengths as a future prince of–”

  “I don’t care.”

  A withering look, and then the sultan stood. “You’re in a terrible mood. Pardon me if I seek company elsewhere tonight.”

  Val glared him out of the tent, and then closed his eyes again. When he did, he replayed the last weeks over in his mind, grisly images of hacked limbs, and ruptured bellies; of men dying on his sword. Roman men. People who should have been his.

  Alone save for the slaves, he put his head down on the table and dream-walked.

  To his credit, Constantine was not cowering in his palace; he stood on the ramparts, along the top of the inner wall, cloak flapping in the breeze, surveying his barely-holding defenses, and the ruin of the siege towers they’d managed to destroy.

  Also to his credit: he didn’t startle when Val appeared beside him. Not at first, anyway. But when he turned his head, his ready, exhausted smile fell from his face, and he gasped. “Val. What’s happened?”

  Val looked down at himself, at the projection he’d created, and swore. Tired and still disoriented, he hadn’t bothered to conjure any sort of glamour, and had appeared in his current condition: barefoot, clad only in loose white şalvar, his torso wound with bandages, the skin that showed mottled with healing purple bruises. When he lifted his head again, he saw Constantine make an aborted reach for him with one gloved hand.

  “Was this–” His brows drew together. “Was this Mehmet?” he asked in a low hiss. “Has he beaten you? Did he–”

  “No, no. I’m fine. And I’m healing. Vampire, after all,” Val said with an attempt at a smile.

  “But you’re injured! How?”

  Val attempted to smile, but knew he only gritted his teeth. “Don’t make me tell you. Please.”

  Constantine’s gaze shifted over him, and then the panic melted into pain. “You’ve been fighting.”

  Val let his grimace fall away, blank-faced with exhaustion. “As any good puppet should.”

  Constantine studied him a long moment, eyes touching every scrape and hurt, before he turned away, mouth pursed, shaking his head. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve slayed your men,” Val said. “I’m sorry. I…” His stomach was a yawning chasm, guilt and hunger and self-loathing. “I shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t bother you–”

  “No,” Constantine said, forceful, facing him again. Gentler: “Do not apologize to me. Not for anything. There are men who don’t want to fight on both sides of this war, trust me.” He blew out a breath that left his shoulders slumping. “I only regret that I can’t help you. Don’t ever apologize for coming here, or for seeking my company.” Small, self-deprecating smile. “Such little comfort that it is.”

  Val reached for him, his hand turning to smoke, throat clogged with tears.

  “I know,” Constantine murmured, and moved his own hand, so that, had Val been here in the flesh, he would have been patting the back of it. “I know, son.”

  35

  THE EMPEROR

  Lightning split the sky overhead, jagged white tongues fracturing along the undersides of the clouds. Val was grateful, for once, that he wasn’t here in his physical form, and that he couldn’t feel the rain.

  The people of Constantinople were parading the holy relics. For luck. For a divine blessing. A great statue of the Virgin Mary rode atop a wooden cart, its wheels catching and bogging down in the mud as men tried to push and force it along.

  Your grace, a voice whispered, inside his head. Not his voice – it was Arslan, calling to him, from the place where his unconscious body rested.

  A gust of wind caught the rain, driving it sideways. Citizens blinked, and shielded their faces with their hands, cowering as thunder crashed overhead.

  Then, horror of horrors, the cart tipped. People shouted, and reached, and flailed – but the Virgin Mary tumbled down to the mud. And broke.

  “Shit,” Val breathed.

  Your grace.

  The wailing was immediate, panicked and high-pitched. Lightning struck somewhere above, the high peaked gable of a roof, with a shower of sparks, a burst of flame, and a roar of thunder.

  “Do not panic!” George Sphrantzes shouted, but no one paid him any heed, and his own eyes were wild and white-rimmed as he instructed his men to run see to the fire.

  Your grace, please, wake up!

  Val felt a touch on his shoulder; someone shook his body, back in the tent, where he’d sought physical shelter from the storm. He didn’t have long; Arslan wouldn’t be calling to him this urgently if it wasn’t important.

  But he searched for Constantine with his eyes, and found the emperor’s fine clothes streaked with mud, sodden from the rain, expression horrified. Val wanted to go to him. “Constantine!” he called. “Please, I have to talk to you,” he said as he approached, drawing the emperor’s gaze. “I have to tell you about Mehmet. You have to surrender!”

  “Val,” the emperor said, shell-shocked and helpless, his curls plastered to his forehead. “What are you saying? I can’t surrender.” He gestured to the tableau before them, the blasphemous disaster. “I have tried to rally my people, to–” He gestured again, and sounded choked. “I can’t abandon them, or our cause. It’s the right one.” His gaze burned.

  Val gulped. “But I can…”

  Constantine reached, as if to lay a hand on his shoulder, and pulled back with a frown before he sent Val’s limb to smoke. “You can’t,” he said, sparing a moment’s gentleness.

  “But…” It was selfishness, he knew – look at these people, their terror and despair – but he didn’t care about saving them right then. Nor the city. Mehmet would win, he now knew; victory for the Romans was, and had always been, a futile hope. But Constantine was his friend; he could save him. Get hands on him, turn him, making him a strong immortal and maybe they could…

  “Val!” A voice from the other side, but a shriek this time, high and loud; it hurt his ears, because he’d heard it not just mentally, but physically. He opened his eyes, already panicking.

  He lay curled on his side in the center of the bed, just as he’d been earlier, when he first lied down to go for this particular walk. A stolen moment, on this dark and stormy day, Mehmet fervent, and wound-up, and hounding all his generals about what he called “the inevitable victory.” Rain beat down on the canvas of the roof; it had covered the sound of an approaching party – or, maybe not. Arslan had been trying to wake him for a while.

  The boy scurried back from the bed now, face pale, eyes huge. He scuttled back to lean against a stack of trunks, shoulders hunched, trying to appear small.

  Val pushed upright, shaky and drained-feeling, and ran his gaze over the source of Arslan’s fear: the dripping-wet men standing on the rug before him.

  It was Mehmet, and a full coterie of janissary guards. Grand Vizier Halil Pasha, especially bedraggled, his soggy wet turban trying to come unwound. All of them, even the guards, wore dumbstruck expressions.

  Val reached with unsteady fingers to tuck his hair back over his shoulder. “Well. You all look terrible.” He aimed for biting, but it only sounded tired.

  Mehmet took a breath, and drew himself more upright, gaze hardening, growing suspicious. “What were you doing just now?”

  Val eased his way to the edge of the bed, joints and jaw aching in that way that Mehmet always complained of these days, and swung his slipper-clad feet down off the edge, onto the rug. “What are you talking about? And you’re ruining the carpet.”

  Mehmet ignored him, and stalked up to him, reached out and caught Val’s chin in his hand, tipped it back. Val tried to twist away, but the sultan’s fingers bit into his jaw; not hard enough to bruise, but close.

  Over his shoulder, Val saw Halil’s face twist up with thinly veiled disgust.

  “What were you doing?” Mehmet repeated, gaze narrow, and sparking. “You were muttering to yourself when I walked
in.”

  Val’s heart raced; he tried to force it slower, to take a few deep breaths. If he smelled of fear, no lie could save him here. “It was a nightmare. The storm. Nothing important.”

  Mehmet’s thumb pressed into the soft place just beneath the point of his chin. “No. It sounded like you were having a conversation. You said ‘Constantine.’”

  Oh no. Val took a few shallow breaths through his mouth, terribly conscious of the stares fixed on him, and the thumb digging into tender skin. “We’re at war with him, no? It would make sense that I had nightmares about the man.” He attempted a laugh.

  Mehmet shifted his hand to Val’s throat and that forceful thumb landed on his Adam’s apple, and applied pressure. His laugh choked off.

  “You were talking with him,” Mehmet said, voice hardening a fraction. “Pleading with him. ‘Please, I have to talk to you,’ you said. ‘I have to tell you about Mehmet.’” He leaned in close, hot, wine-sour breath wafting across Val’s face.

  “It’s funny,” he said, corner of his mouth hitching up in a smile that didn’t begin to touch his eyes. “We’ve had so many hopeful soldiers make their way to our camp here, wanting to lend me their assistance, to work themselves into my good graces. Craftsmen, and artisans, and warriors. Scribes, and monks, and mullahs, and prophets. And one man, who’s just come this past week, who is a mage.”

  Every muscle in Val’s body seized. He tried to sit upright, a surge of adrenaline burning through his exhaustion, but Mehemet’s hand tightened, and held him fast, right above the tight silver collar that marked him as property.

  A mage. Val had never met one; they were the rarest of Familiars, and Father had always spoken ill of them – manipulative and twisty, he’d called them, untrustworthy – but he knew that they had a smell. “Like a forest on fire,” Mother had said, lips pressed. He hadn’t scented fire – well, but maybe he wouldn’t, between the campfires, and cookfires, and the greasy, rancid funeral pyres they’d been forced to use, because the stinking corpses kept piling up, drawing flies, rats, and foxes. Perhaps he’d scented one, and hadn’t known; perhaps one had walked right past him, knowing exactly what he was, and that he’d been subjugated by a master, smirking at his circumstances.

  “This mage,” Mehmet continued, “has proved an excellent source of information on those like us. Like you and me.” He shifted his hand side to side, a gentle shake that left Val grinding his teeth. “For instance: did you know that some of us have mental abilities? Psychic, really, beyond human comprehension.” He dropped his voice at the last, a whisper, just for the two of them.

  Dread opened up like a chasm in Val’s belly.

  “Did you know that some vampires are capable of projecting their consciousness and an image of themselves across vast distances? That they can converse with others, have entire conversations, across oceans, and over city walls?” Something dangerous flared in his eyes. “They call it dream-walking.”

  No. No, no, no.

  “Your Majesty–” Val began.

  Mehmet’s hand tightened. Hard, hard, cutting off his air, and then eased back. “Are you a dream-walker, Radu?”

  He didn’t dare swallow. Blink. Flinch. Croaking through a dry throat, he said, “No.” And then waited, forcibly blank-faced, for the slap to come.

  Instead, Mehmet released him, and turned to face his entourage. “Leave us.”

  They did so, with quick bows, even Halil Pasha, who bit his lip as it to keep from saying something. When they were gone, and the tent flap had fallen in place, the rain a steady hiss like a great serpent above and around them, Mehmet turned to Arslan.

  “Come here.”

  Val had known fear moments before, but the sight of Mehmet’s gaze trained on Arslan – that was terror.

  “Wait!” He scrambled up onto his knees, and reached out.

  Mehmet turned back to him, his gaze a warning, but one Val ignored.

  “You promised never to touch him. You promised,” Val said, and growled.

  Mehmet’s brows flew up to the edge of his soaked turban, and his mouth opened, agape for one long moment. And then he composed himself. “I did, didn’t I? And what would you do if I went back on that promise?” he drawled.

  Val’s hands curled into fists. He let the growl bleed in heavier, a low, angry purr that pulsed through the tent. “I would stop you.” He could do it, too; he was faster, leaner, stronger these days. He was purebred, and fueled by hate, and he could overpower this pitiful, glutted, turned creature before him.

  And Mehmet knew it. Val caught a faint whiff of unease before he chuckled and said, “How much damage do you think you could do before my guards came rushing in here? Is it worth the risk?”

  “Do not lay a finger on Arslan.”

  Mehmet kept his gaze trained on Val. “Come here, boy,” he called, beckoning.

  Arslan came, quiet and shaken as a mouse. When he got close enough, Mehmet rested a hand on his shoulder.

  Val started to rise from the bed, one foot planted on the rug, fists hovering at his sides, growling, teeth bared.

  “Arslan,” Mehmet said, voice warm, in the way that it so often could be, “don’t be worried.” He never looked away from Val. “Tell me, child. What is it your master does when he lies down and sleeps for long stretches? It’s funny: I always seem to find him half-awake, groggy, and sluggish. He rests so very much. What is he doing?”

  “I…I, he…”

  “You can tell me. Nothing will happen to you – so long as you’re honest.”

  Arslan sniffled.

  Val looked to him then, and let his growl fall away. Tears glimmered on the boy’s lashes, and Val’s chest ached.

  Val took a deep breath, and looked back to Mehmet, kicking his chin up. He braced his feet, one on the edge of the bed, the other on the ground; gathered his uneven, post-walking strength. “Alright, yes, fine: I’m a dream-walker. I have been since I was four-years-old.”

  Mehmet patted Arslan’s shoulder. “That’ll be all, boy. Go on now.” He folded his arms, and a triumphant glow flared to life in his eyes. “I knew it.”

  “You didn’t even know such a thing existed until someone told you. Since when, tonight?”

  “I have always known there was something suspicious about you,” Mehmet snapped. “Always tired, always sleeping. I’ve never entered a campaign tent that you weren’t dragging yourself up from bed, haggard as a crone. That collar is not the only reason.” He stepped forward, reaching for Val’s throat again.

  And Val slapped his hand away.

  The slap of skin-against-skin cracked like the meeting of blades.

  Neither moved, after. Val didn’t breathe.

  And then he leapt off the bed and paced a wide circle around the edge of the rug, putting distance between them, growling a warning.

  Mehmet spun, facing him. “You’ve been visiting the emperor, haven’t you? Constantine Dragases. You’ve been speaking with him, plotting with him. Telling him of me? That’s what you said. That’s what you were muttering in your sleep.” The last he spit, words coming faster and faster, as fury took hold of him. His eyes blazed. “You’ve been conspiring this whole time, haven’t you, you little whore? Telling him of our plans, helping him. Helping my enemy!”

  He lunged, swiping out with one hand like an enraged bear.

  Val danced back out of reach.

  “I met him when I was four,” Val growled in return. “He’s been my friend for most of my life. Long before your father wrapped me in chains and gave me over to you as a plaything.”

  Mehmet lunged again, a contained roar tumbling from his open mouth, his fangs descending. “You witch! You fucking traitor!”

  “Traitor?” Val backed up until his shoulder collided with the bed post. Trapped. “Traitor?” he repeated, and barked a laugh. “Do you think I was ever on your side? Ever? After everything?” His heart beat so fast he thought he’d faint, but he couldn’t, not now, and he lifted his hands, felt his own fangs prick hi
s lower lip. Furious. Ready. “Yes, I helped Constantine when I could, when he would let me. “I’m a Roman, you stupid fucker. The only true Roman in this tent. And I would give my life to see the Emperor of Rome drive his sword through your tainted heart.”

  He’d never said anything like that before. Never spoken the truth that lived in his soul, as dark as any of Vlad’s mutterings, tended like a campfire deep in his heart. After, there was a moment of utter, stunned silence.

  And then Mehmet struck.

  Val ducked beneath his arms, lunged forward, and caught the sultan by the throat. He dug in with his fingertips, and smelled blood, as his momentum toppled them backward onto the rug.

  Val landed on top, a knee in Mehmet’s ribs, and all the air rushed out of Mehmet’s lungs on a gusty exhale as his back landed against the floor. The look of him, eyes white-rimmed in momentary panic, thin lines of blood on his neck where Val’s nails had scored him, ignited something predatory in Val. Words abandoned him. He snarled. He lifted a hand, intent on clawing open the sultan’s face with it. He wanted to ruin him, to kill him, to bend his head and feast on the blood that poured out of him.

  And then something caught Val in the temple, and white stars bloomed across his field of vision. He crumpled, boneless, and through a terrible ringing in his head he realized that someone had struck him, and that he’d toppled off to the side, where he now lay, stunned.

  He blinked past the pain and whirling starbursts, and saw that the janissaries had returned; two helped Mehmet to his feet, and the rest aimed their spearpoints at Val.

  Mehmet pressed a shaking hand to the marks on his neck, expression dazed. “Fetch – fetch chains,” he said. “The heavy silver ones. The blacksmith has them.” He heaved a deep breath. “Prince Radu has taken leave of his senses.”

  This was planned, then. Confront Val, work him to violence – and then take command from him, chain him.

  One of the janissaries went running to do as bid.

  Another stepped forward, reversed his spear, and brought the butt down toward Val’s face.