Page 133 of Dragon Slayer

~*~

It was almost painfully easy to secure the castle. Vladislav had obviously taken his best men – if they even existed – with him, and left only a skeleton crew behind to guard the palace. What had he to fear, after all? Hunyadi was on his side, his rival was dead, and as far as he knew, Vlad was still learning arithmetic in Edirne. Or so he thought. The first of what Vlad hoped would be two fatal mistakes – the second of which would be underestimating Vlad himself.

Vlad left none alive, and his foot soldiers arrived in time to take over at the gate and to search the rest of the grounds for any cowards who might have fled.

Helga crushed him to her ample breast and burst into wet, noisy sobs, clutching at his cloak and kaftan. “Master Vladimir,” she said, over and over, until he’d patted her shoulders and eased her back.

He offered over his lace handkerchief, and after she’d blown her nose and wiped her eyes on it, she composed herself once more. “I didn’t mean to get you all wet and make such a scene, your grace,” she said, patting at the damp silk over his heart. “It’s only that it’s such a shock to see you, such a happy shock! When things here have been so terrible. Ever since…” She bit her lip to stop it from trembling, and shook her head.

“I know about Father, and Mircea.” He cleared his throat, but that didn’t help the roughness of his voice. “But what of my mother?” He knew fear then, cold and sharp in his belly, when he’d been nothing but angry while killing the men downstairs.

Helga sighed. “The princess,” she said, meaning Father’s true wife, and Mircea’s mother. “Didn’t take the news about His Grace Mircea very well. And then Vladislav, he…well, gods bless her, she got away from him, and she leapt out of a window. One in your father’s old study. She’s dead.”

He ground his teeth. “I asked after Mother.” He had no love, nor even affection for the princess. But still it seemed an unfitting end. Father would not have wept – he’d never loved the woman – but he would have been outraged.

Helga nodded. “She is well. She is grief-stricken.” A grief that echoed in Helga’s voice. Her mistress’s mate was dead, and she grieved alongside her. She managed a smile, tremulous, but warm. “She will be glad to see you. To see the man you’ve become.”

“Take me to her.”

When Father was alive – when Vlad was still a boy in the palace – Mother had held her own suite of rooms on the second floor of the palace, overlooking the gardens, with shelves loaded with her favorite books, and tables where she could display cut flowers and herbs by the windows; as airy as could be found in a stone building, full of light, redolent with the scent of fresh, growing things.

But now, Helga led him up to one of the high turret rooms, four floors from the ground below. A room where he and Val had played as boys, kicking up dust as they scuffled, reading books in the light that came through tall, thin windows.Oh, Mama, he thought as they climbed the stairs.

“Did Vladislav send her up here? I’ll–”

“No,” Helga said, holding a candle to light the dim stairwell. Even during the day, the passages up here afforded little light. “You know your mother: lovely as spring roses. With that flaxen hair, and that delicate face. Vladislav rounded up the whole household on that first day; they’d a wolf – I smelled it on them. But they never brought him in here. So no one save us wolves knew what your mother was – nor who she was to the master. It was your mother’s idea: we dressed her up as a maid, and we drew a frightful birthmark on her with charcoal and crushed flower petals. Put padding under her clothes so she’d be lumpy and unlovely. He never looked at her twice.”

She paused a moment, and looked back over her shoulder at Vlad, expression grave. “’Twas undignified, I know, considering what she was to your father.” Mates trumped marriage for immortals. Every time. “But it spared her Vladislav’s lust.”

Vlad nodded and motioned for her to continue. Inwardly, he thanked God. Perhaps he’d become a religious man after all.

They arrived, finally, at the door at the top of the stairs. Heavy wood. He’d wondered at it as a boy, but now he knew: it was to keep something locked inside. In this case, it was a blessing.

Helga knocked. “My lady,” she began.

But it swung inward, and there she was. Eira wore a maid’s costume: simple brown dress, apron, and cap, golden hair tucked away. She looked too thin, hollow-cheeked and wan, with dark circles under her eyes that marked long, sleepless nights.

She’d scented him, of course. “Vlad,” she whispered, hands braced on the door and its frame, white-knuckled.

“Mama.”

She lunged at him, and he caught her.

~*~

With her kerchief unwound, Eira’s hair spilled in riotous golden curls down her back, each strand a different hue, sunlight from the small window glinting off the thick mass of it, brighter than any metal. She stood looking down at the palace grounds below, little lines of tension at the corners of her eyes.I’m beautiful, she’d told him once before, without any pride.That is a good thing, because it means that the people around me always underestimate my mind…and my sword. She studied the movements of his troops now with keen eyes; he could almost hear her thoughts, the calculations and questions forming.

He’d forgotten, at times, as a boy, that she was a shieldmaiden. Seeing her now, with older eyes, he didn’t think he’d ever forget again.

She looked so much like Val in that moment.

“How many do you have?” she asked, turning to look at him. Her eyes shone like polished blue glass in the sunlight, hard and ready.

“Two-hundred-and-fifty foot. One hundred cavalry.”

“That won’t be enough.”

He sighed. “I know. But it’s what I have.”

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