Page 251 of Dragon Slayer

Val sat at his window for a long time, that night; he watched dawn break slowly over Tîrgoviste, 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: “Youwon’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.”

“Butwhy?”

“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.

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