Page 146 of Dragon Slayer

Malik nodded and withdrew.

Vlad listened to his footsteps retreat down the hall, and then said, “If Hunyadi is dead–”

“He’s not,” Eira said. “He’s too clever for that.”

“We only know that he’s stubborn and wicked,” Vlad said. “And a coward who manages to slip out of large-scale battles unharmed. His cleverness has not been tested.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” his mother warned, and he shot her a look.Don’t undermine me, Mother.

She was, as expected, unimpressed.

“If he is in fact missing,” Cicero said, passing the letter back, “we couldn’t know for how long. None of us were a part of Vladislav’s retinue.”

“Yes, and thank God for that.”

The wolf gave him a brief half-smile.

Malik returned, a foot soldier in tow, one that pushed the messenger boy forward into the room ahead of him.

Vlad had been surprised, at first, to find that the figure who’d galloped up to the gates bearing the vice-governor’s seal had been only about fourteen. But then he’d seen the logic behind it: Vlad had promised death…for quite a few men. Nicolae Ocna doubtless hoped he’d be less likely to kill a child.

But it offered a boon for Vlad as well: a man might have lied or resisted questioning. This boy was already white-faced with terror, and Vlad hadn’t even spoke to him yet.

“You may wait outside,” he informed the soldier, adopting an indolent posture in his chair, the sort of thing, he realized with disgust, that Mehmet would do. An elbow braced, his weight shifted.I don’t care about you, that pose said to others. Cruel princes slouched, did they not? “Malik, bring the boy forward.”

The janissary clamped a hand on his shoulder and propelled him right up to the desk. The boy, Vlad noted, flicked glances to either side, looking at Cicero, at Fenrir, even at Eira, and the surface of the desk, but not straight at Vlad. He’d been told, then, of Vlad’s promised killings. Probably that he was insane, as well; princes didn’t just go around promising murder. Politics was a delicate art, one built upon lies and civility.

“Boy,” Vlad said, and the boy in question jumped beneath Malik’s hand. “Who is your master?”

His mouth opened, but no sound left it.

“To whom do you report? Are you the governor’s, or the vice-governor’s?”

“I–I–I–” His gaze had fixed to Cicero, to the patch over his eye.

Plainly, this would not work. The boy was frightened – but not properly. Not in ahelpfulway.

Vlad thought of his little brother, dripping jewels on the garden path, little chin raised up as he clung to his last scraps of pride, pleading angrily.If you’d only behave. Val had not broken; Val had ten times this boy’s courage.

The indolent prince could only inspire stuttering. Hadn’t he wanted to be savage anyway?

Vlad drew himself upright in his chair, hands braced on the carved ends of its arms, spine straight, and looked down the long line of his nose, though, sitting, he was no taller than the boy. In his coldest, most commanding voice, he said, “Stop stuttering, you fool, and look at me.”

The stuttering stopped.

“Look at meif you wish to keep your eyes in your head.”

Vlad heard Fenrir make the softest sound of protest in the back of his throat, but no one else said a word.

The boy’s mouth shut with a click of his teeth, and his eyes came straight to Vlad’s face, and didn’t stray again. So pale, even his lips looked white; not just scared anymore, but terrified past the point of shaking. So scared that he’d decided obedience was the only way to come out alive.

Just as Val had decided in Mehmet’s bed.

No more posturing. Vlad said, simply, “If you wish to live, and retain all of your limbs, you will answer the questions I’m about to ask you quickly and honestly. Do not stutter, anddo notlie to me.”

He swallowed with obvious difficulty. “Yes, your grace.”

“Who is your master?”

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