Page 117 of Dragon Slayer

23

THE GUILT AND THE GRIEF

December, 1447

Word had come the summer before that Wallachia had signed a new treaty with the Ottomans, and that the brothers had been officially spared. Murat had been the one to inform Vlad, brought before the old sultan while the new one stood off to the side, lip curled in derision, trying and failing to catch Vlad’s gaze. Vlad paid him no mind; he knew what everyone at court knew: that Mehmet was merely a figurehead at this point in time. He could give commands, and storm his way through the palace, shouting at slaves and commandeering women and boys of his choosing, but Murat was the real power behind the empire now, as he’d been before. The only true influence Mehmet practiced was that acted out in his bedchamber, and that he did, according to gossip, frequently and wildly.

Vlad tried – and often failed – not to think of his little brother. He caught glimpses of him, sometimes, though he tried not to. Val was growing tall, and willowy; waif-like at certain angles, with his sheets of rippling golden hair and delicate features. But some glimpses hinted at the steel edges beneath his porcelain veneer. He shared Vlad’s blood, after all. There was a warrior in there, under his pretty façade. One that would no doubt never be allowed to see the light of day, dripping in fine silks and even finer jewels, his blue eyes smudged with kohl at Mehmet’s pleasure.

The guilt and the grief would cripple Vlad if he allowed himself to feel them keenly. And so he tamped it all down, buried it deep. But he let the hatred fester. He trained, and he studied, and he crafted himself into the perfect knight; into an avenging warrior with his sights set on only one prize. And the hatred kept festering, kept growing. He hated everyone; it was a hatred that lived within him day and night, galvanizing him.

And then.

December arrived.

And with it…word from home.

Vlad was in the training yard, breath pluming like smoke in the chill, his opponent flat in the dirt, when a messenger came for him. “The sultan wants an audience.”

He didn’t bother cleaning himself. He went, sweaty and dusty, to Murat’s audience chamber.

The former sultan was alone, save a single witness. A vizier, of some sort. Vlad didn’t care to know the man’s name. He observed only the barest courtesies, half-bowing, and then waiting, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Murat made him wait a long moment, though a speculative light came into his eyes, his head tilting to the side. Then he turned to his underling and murmured something behind his hand. The man bowed and then rushed out of the room. He returned a moment later leading…

Leading a Romanian noble. A boyar, dressed in traditional garb, dusty and filthy from the road, mustache more gray than brown, hairline receding. His gaze fell on Vlad with intent, and after a moment’s staring, Vlad realized he recognized him as one of the nobles most loyal to his father. His former chancellor.

“Cazan,” he said on a gasp.

“Your grace.” The boyar came to stand before Vlad and went to one knee. He carried a bundle under his arm: a long, narrow shape that was obviously a sword, wrapped in layers of cloth. With bent head, the man said, “I come – I come with – with terrible news.” His voice was shattered. When he lifted his head again, Vlad saw the lines of strain and exhaustion on it, the dirt caked into the creases. He hadn’t even bothered to wash himself before requesting an audience.

Vlad had lived in a state of numb fury for so long – and now, suddenly, his heart lurched and his palms began to sweat. “What news?”

“Your father. And your brother,” Cazan said haltingly. His eyes shone with checked tears. “They are dead.”

Vlad let the words fall over him. Took them in, processed them. Dead. Father and Mircea. And Father a vampire. Father, who was Remus…purported dead before. Perhaps he…

“How?” he asked, and he could hear the calmness in his voice, could watch Cazan startle in response to it.

Cazan gathered himself a moment, through a series of deep breaths.

“I need to know all of it,” Vlad prompted. “Everything that happened.” So he could make sense of it.

“Perhaps,” Murat suggested, “your friend would like to refresh himself first.”

“No,” Cazan said, “no. I am fine.”

But a slave did bring a folding chair, and he settled into his gratefully. Vlad had to catch his arm and guide him to his seat when his legs wobbled and gave out.

“Your grace,” he said when he could, panting. “It began with John Hunyadi.”

The resentment, and the scheming, had begun, Cazan presumed, during the war council at Dobriya the summer before. The White Knight of Hungary was detained; Mircea had blamed him, personally, for the devastating battlefield losses of the Christian causes. He’d argued for Hunyadi’s arrest, trial, and execution. The rest of the council had disagreed, and let him go, but Hunyadi left that council nursing a massive grudge against House Dracul.

A grudge that sharpened his ambitions of leadership to something barbed and weaponized. He wanted the Hungarian throne for himself, and to get it, he needed an ally in Wallachia – one he wouldn’t find in Dracul, and his son and heir, Mircea. And so he backed Vladislav II of the Dânesti clan, at the time living in Brasov. And he launched a blistering propaganda campaign against Vlad Dracul.

“They met together last month,” Cazan said, face flushed with high emotion. “Hunyadi crossed the Carpathians. He was headed for Tîrgoviste!”

“Did my father close the gates to him?”

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