Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3)

by Lauren Gilley

  Val spent too long a moment staring at his father’s old chair – Vlad’s, most recently – smelling them on it, and Cicero, too, where he’d leaned against its arm, a dutiful Familiar. Finally, he settled into it, feeling like a fraud, acutely aware that his backside was too narrow to fits its depression.

  Matthias slouched down in the chair opposite the desk, relaxed, and refilled both their cups from a flagon of fresh wine without asking. “I do apologize about your brother, Radu. Unfortunate business.” He made a show of grimacing, shaking his head, gaze properly tinged with sadness. “But I’m sure you understand.” He lifted a searching glance to Val. “Vlad would make a better general than he does a prince. His bravery and bloodthirstiness are commendable, but he’s going to get everyone in the region killed by that Conqueror of yours.”

  “Vlad has always been forceful.”

  “Forceful! Ha! There’s an understatement.” He chuckled as he sipped his wine. “It took fifty of my best men to subdue him. And that was only after we threatened to run through that friend of his.” His mouth puckered with distaste. “Whatever he is.”

  “Cicero,” Val said, and felt a cold numbness begin to steal over him. He’d been faking interest and enthusiasm all night, but now an active hostility cooled his temper further. “His advisor.”

  “Cicero? Named for Marcus Tullius?” Matthias snorted, eyes gleaming. “Tell me, though, truthfully: what sort of creature makes a sound like that? That growling.”

  Val pushed an attempt at a smile across his lips. “I have no idea what you mean. But that was cowardly to threaten a mere steward.”

  Matthias’s brows went up. “It was the only way to clap silver manacles on your brother. A mere steward? No. If I suspected such things, I’d say they were more than likely lovers.”

  Val checked his own growl. But he couldn’t maintain the smile. “Cicero is a most devoted Familiar.”

  Matthias didn’t seem to notice the stress he put on the word. Why should he? But he narrowed his gaze and said, “While we’re on the topic, I do wonder. You and your brother and your people – you must admit you don’t strike outsiders as normal.”

  “I supposed that depends upon your definition of normal.”

  “Oh, come now, Radu.” Matthias set his cup aside and leaned forward, arms folded over the desk. A spark in his gaze, one Val didn’t particularly like. “Don’t take it as an insult – it certainly isn’t meant as one. Truly, normal could be taken as an insult, when unique is as exceptionally beautiful as you.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “You are beautiful. You must know that. There’s a reason you were Mehmet’s favorite.”

  In that moment, Val understood with perfect clarity how Vlad was able to justify impaling people. He swallowed down a surge of bile, and said, “Are you propositioning me?”

  “Don’t play coy.” Matthias reached across the desk, intending to lay his hand over Val’s. “You are–”

  Val pulled his hand back, and Matthias’s froze, hovering in mid-air.

  Val stood. “It grows late, your grace, and you’re clearly too tired to be thinking clearly. I’ll summon a servant to show you to your quarters for the evening.”

  Matthias sat back, cleared his throat, fiddled with his embroidered jacket. “Yes. Um. Very well, thank you.”

  No gift was ever given freely, after all.

  Val sat at his window for a long time, that night; he watched dawn break slowly over Tîrgovişte, bright stripes of color you could only see in mountainous climes. His reflection stared back at him, pale and ghostly in the glass, an impression of a narrow, smooth face, and big glittering eyes, and long, moon-silvered hair.

  His beauty had always been his curse. He’d hoped that, at least, Vlad’s sallow and charmless countenance might spare him the world’s evil. But he languished now in a tower, shut up, just as Val had always been.

  You’re not better than mortals, his mother had always said. No. Maybe, they were in fact worse. And perhaps captivity was their just punishment for it.

  ~*~

  It was night. Vlad sat up in bed, reading by candlelight, pretending he hadn’t read the same line again and again. There was no sense letting his mind languish, though his body was imprisoned, but his hate had become a physical presence inside him, and it drowned out his usual enjoyment in learning.

  Cicero dozed fitfully, stretched out at the foot of the bed in his wolf shape, ear flicking occasional in response to some sound coming in through the open windows.

  “Hello, brother.”

  Vlad lifted his head and found Val standing beyond the foot of the bed, hands folded before him, as unassuming as he’d ever looked. It took Vlad a moment to realize that he wore no jewels, and that, instead of his usual Ottoman garments, was clad now in the dark red finery of a proper Hungarian noble.

  “It’s true, then,” Vlad said, setting his book aside. “They put you on my throne.”

  Val dipped his head, gaze somber. “I promise you, I didn’t want it. I simply went where I was told.”

  “Like a good little slave.”

  “Vlad,” he sighed, and moved around the bed so he stood beside him. “I don’t want to fight anymore.”

  “How can I fight with someone who isn’t here?”

  He frowned, pain flaring, briefly, in his gaze. He shook his head. “I…” He sighed, and started again. “You know why they’re holding you. I’m sure they’ve told you. They’ve told me that they’re letting you cool your heels until they’ve repaired relations with Mehmet. That this is only temporary.

  “But I’ve been dream-walking,” he said, urgency stealing into his voice. “Vlad, they’re going to assassinate you.”

  Cicero’s head lifted, and swiveled toward Val; he whimpered in question.

  “What do you mean?” Vlad said. “Who is?” He wanted to discount such a statement, mainly because it was coming from Val – an Ottoman puppet. But he’d been leery of such a thing these long months he’d been imprisoned. It made a horrible sort of sense.

  Val shook his head again, growing visibly more frantic. “Matthias won’t do it himself – that would reflect poorly on him. But everyone’s decided you’re too great a liability. There’s a group of displaced boyars amassing support – those who fled before you impaled all their friends. They’ve been living in Transylvania and Moldavia, hating you all this time. Matthias has agreed to secretly fund and arm them, and to allow them passage here, up to this very tower; he’s going to turn a blind eye while they butcher you.” The last he said with a tremor in his voice, wringing his hands. “Vlad, they know how to kill you; I’ve heard Matthias talk of cutting out your heart. You–”

  Vlad cut him off with a wave. “If that happens, I can handle myself.”

  “No you can’t!” Val burst out, shouting. His eyes widened, like he’d surprised himself, but he pressed on. “Vlad, you let yourself be taken in the first place. If fifty men with swords and spears and armor pour in here, and threaten Cicero again–”

  The wolf shifted, a man again, kneeling on the counterpane and glancing back and forth between them. “Vlad won’t surrender to save me again,” he told Val. And to Vlad: “You won’t.”

  Vlad sighed. “Even if you’re telling the truth, Radu–”

  “I am!”

  “Even if you were, I won’t fall so easily to a pack of angry bumpkins. They’re more likely to stab each other than actually land a blow on me.”

  “God.” Val tipped his head back, and blinked, and when he faced forward again, tears sparkled in his eyes. “Are you really going to be this stubborn? You’d risk dying rather than listen to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I don’t trust you.”

  A ragged, anguished sound tore out of Val’s throat, and then he vanished.

  Cicero turned to him. “Vlad.” An accusation.

  “Do you think those tears were real? He’s spent most of his life in Mehmet’s bed. Why
should I believe anything he says?”

  “Because he’s your brother. And he loves you.”

  “No. I don’t believe that.”

  Cicero whimpered, but didn’t argue further.

  ~*~

  Of Val’s regrets, only one felt like something he could, and should have been able to prevent. Constantine’s death. He replayed it in his head: the horse falling, Constantine spilling from the saddle. And the head, face twisted, neck dripping gore, haunted his dreams. A lifelong friend reduced to a bloody trophy. He could argue with himself about all of Mehmet’s attentions, about having to fight against Romans in a siege. He hadn’t had a choice; he’d been forced. But he should have saved his friend, and he knew it.

  He wouldn’t see the same thing happen to Vlad.

  He left at nightfall, alone, cloaked in dark rags. It was a week of travel, keeping off the roads, avoiding patrols, dream-walking ahead to scout the best paths. All in black, he slipped onto the grounds of Corvinus Castle like a wraith. There were guards stationed at Vlad’s prison tower. Val left them unconscious, and took their keys, and let himself into his brother’s prison with his very last shreds of hope clutched round him like armor.

  Cicero leaped up with a growl, and Vlad, reading by the fire, surged to his feet, reaching for a sword that wasn’t there.

  “Shh,” Val said, shutting the door behind him and pulling back his hood. He could sense the air change when they both caught his scent. “It’s me.”

  “Radu,” Vlad said flatly. That name would never stop pricking like a barb.

  “Dress warmly,” Val said. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

  They stared at him.

  “You’re here in person,” Vlad said, without inflection. “You came in through the door.”

  “Yes, because I’m actually here. Like I said: to rescue you.”

  “I’m not a maiden in a tower to be rescued.”

  “Well,” Val said, patience wearing thin. He crossed the floor to peer out the window, searching for signs of having been spotted. He saw a few lanterns bobbing along in the dark, heading this way. “You are in a tower, I might point out, and seeing as you’re unwed, you may well be a maiden. So.” He went to the heavy chest at the foot of the bed.

  But when he tried to lift the lid, Cicero’s hands came down on top of it, stopping him, and when he lifted his head, he met the wolf’s one-eyed stare.

  “Valerian, what’s happening?”

  He sighed, and tried not to let his mounting panic get the best of him. “It’s as I told the great lout a month ago: Matthias has funded a group of angry boyar assassins. They’re on their way here now, to kill you both. I’m here to get you away.”

  Cicero’s look drew inward, considering; he at least was taking Val seriously. “How did you get past the guards?”

  “I might be a whore, but I’m properly trained. I knocked them out, gagged, and bound them. But we don’t have much time. Help me.” He was allowed to lift the lid of the trunk this time…

  Only to have it slammed nearly on his fingers. Vlad strode over, and forced it down again.

  Val whirled on him. “Are you really this petty? Or just stupid?” he bit out. “I’m here to help you. They will kill you, Vlad. Just as they did Father and Mircea. You might be strong, but you can’t survive having your heart cut out and burned.”

  Vlad stared back at him, implacable. “Why should I believe you?”

  “This again? Really?”

  “You might be my brother,” Vlad said, in that iron tone that Val knew was immovable. “But blood relation doesn’t mean anything. Romulus orchestrated this entire mess, and he’s our uncle. Forgive me, brother, but I don’t trust you, and I never will.”

  It shouldn’t have hurt. He’d heard it before, had known it would be hurled at him again. But hearing it now, close enough to feel Vlad’s breath on his face for the first time in years, close enough to touch, to grab his brother, and seek shelter in a loving embrace – it cracked something inside him. Val felt a splintering behind his ribs, like a crust of ice shattering on the surface of a lake.

  Whatever broke, it fractured the panic, too. Calm flooded through him. Certainty.

  “What happened to Mother?” he asked, and his tone, the levelness of it, surprised them, because they lifted their brows.

  “I left her at Tîrgovişte when I came here.”

  “She was gone when I arrived. She left this.” He fished the bell out of his shirt, and let it dangle outside of his clothing.

  “Your bell,” Vlad said, expression smoothing again.

  “I think she left it for me. I hope, wherever she is, that she’s somewhere safe.”

  Vlad growled. “You’re lying.”

  “No.” He was tired. So tired. “I’m not. I never do, really, except to stay alive, sometimes, when Mehmet’s fucking me into the mattress and trying to choke me to death. I lie then, so he doesn’t kill me.”

  Cicero turned his face away. An opening.

  “You know,” Val continued, “the worst part is that I still love you. You will always be my big brother, and I’ll always want to please you.” He offered a smile. “But you won’t let me help you, will you?”

  Vlad stared at him a long moment. Val thought he almost – but, no. There was no love there. He supposed there never had been. “No,” Vlad said, finally. “I won’t accept help from a sultan’s whore.”

  “As I thought.”

  Val sighed.

  And flicked a dagger free from his belt, and drove it between Vlad’s ribs.

  He made a gasping, punched-out sound, and went to his knees.

  Cicero turned alarmed, already snarling, scenting blood, eye glowing.

  Val was ready. Cicero shifted as he leaped, springing over his fallen master, and Val caught him with both hands, by the ruff and by jaw. He forced his mouth shut, and threw him, hard as he could, toward the fireplace. His head cracked against the mantle, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Vlad had been shut up here for too long, without exercise, without practice, and though he’d been doubtless feeding from Cicero, he’d gone soft in his captivity. Just soft enough.

  Val drew his sword, the blade he’d named Mercy, for that’s what this was. “I’m sorry, Vlad. I love you.” And he buried his blade in his brother’s shoulder, slicing down to his ribs, just shy of his heart.

  ~*~

  The blood loss was immediate and devastating. No less than a mortal wound could have done it. Vlad slipped into a coma, the deep, restorative vampire sleep that would heal him – but keep him under until a wolf used blood and old Latin words to wake him.

  Val worked quickly. He bundled his sleeping brother in cloaks, and, with some effort, hefted him up over his shoulder. Fled the way that he’d come.

  In the months that followed, his flight would be a blur in his memory. Heart beating wildly, hands slippery with Vlad’s blood, the stink of it deep in his nose. Somehow, he got off the grounds, and got back to his horse.

  He heard a long, horrible, mournful howl go up, when he was miles away. Cicero.

  He rode through the night, and as the warmth of morning drew perspiration from his skin, he tamped the last shovelful in place. An island grave, in the shadow of a church.

  He swam back across the lake, and lay, dripping and exhausted, on the bank, until the sun had dried his clothes. When he could manage, he dragged himself back into the saddle, and set off through the swaying shadows of the trees.

  He was done, now. With ruling, and with serving, and with being a creature alive on this earth.

  He had only one thing left to do, and then he would crawl deep into a dark cave, and stop eating, and give himself over to the endless peace of an unending sleep.

  One thing. And then he could die.

  45

  VALERIAN

  A heavyset sultan, plump, jowly, richly-dressed, a jeweled ring on each sausage-thick finger, made his ponderous way belowdecks on his royal galley. It was to be a short
voyage, but his joints ached so, and he could bear neither standing nor sobriety. He groaned with every step, leaning heavily upon the cane he’d taken to carrying, its head shaped like a horse, gilded, ruby-encrusted. A flock of attendants, slaves as fluttery as birds, hovered above and below, ineffectual small hands reaching out to catch him should he fall. He would crush them, if he did.

  Finally, he reached his private cabin, draped in silk, richly-appointed, scented with incense. He waved the boys away, impatiently, all but his favorite: a eunuch boy from Serbia, blue-eyed and golden-haired, mouse-quiet, with a tendency to blush and cry when Mehmet pulled him into his lap. He’d been well-trained, at this point, and went to fetch a cup of wine as Mehmet eased down to sit on the edge of the wide berth with a groan.

  Alone, just the two of them, that was when the wardrobe door creaked open, and a figure dressed in black stepped out into the cabin.

  Compared to the last few years of his life, sneaking onboard this galley had been child’s play. Hooded, wrapped all in black clothing, no one had noticed him in the pre-dawn gloom. Even if not for his nose, he would have known Mehmet’s cabin by the finery. Then it had only been a matter of waiting.

  The eunuch boy made a small sound of distress, and dropped the cup. Wine splashed across the boards, catching the candlelight in jewel-bright arcs.

  “Leave us,” Val told the boy, and nodded toward the door. “Tell no one,” he added, catching him by the arm as he fled.

  “It’s fine,” Mehmet said with a wave. “Go on. Radu’s an old friend. This is merely one of his games.”

  The boy mumbled an agreement and was gone.

  Mehmet sat calmly, or appeared to. Val could sense the leaping of his heart, and the sudden quickness of his breath; something in his lungs rattled, low and wet.

  “Radu,” he said, and only a faint tremor of alarm betrayed his tone.

  Val moved to the door, and barred it.

  “You look well.”

  Val whipped off his cloak, and hung it from the peg beside the door, leaving himself clad in black breeches, knee boots, and black velvet tunic, belted with gold and rubies. “You don’t,” he said, moving to stand opposite the sultan. “You’ve gotten fat, and old. You grunt like a hog when you move.”