Page 97 of Dragon Slayer

20

BLOODSTAINS

Autumn, 1444

An evening breeze came in through the open windows of the Despot of Mistra’s study. It ruffled the curtains, and the pages of books left open, but Val couldn’t feel it against his skin. He sat cross-legged on a span of empty tabletop, watching the sunset ripen over the pine-studded hills and plateaus. The last fingers of light touched the pale stone buildings with the colors of tangerines and early lemons. The mountains lay quietly in the distance, the gentle spines of some sleeping dragon. He wondered if the air smelled like olive trees; like sap; like the water he could hear tumbling in a courtyard fountain.

George Sphrantzes no longer looked on Val as if he were a ghost or an abomination; he didn’t speak to him directly very often, but he’d come to accept his presence in his master’s study. Tonight, he had news.

“The message is old at this point,” he said, waving the bit of unrolled parchment in his hand. “The pope absolved the Hungarian king, Ladislas, of his treaty with the Ottomans. Murat stepped down, and now Mehmet is sultan. Ladislas,” he said, dread heavy in his voice, “has declared a new crusade. He and John Hunyadi are marching south to cross the Danube with Vlad Dracul’s blessing. They seek Wallachia’s aid in their campaign.”

Val sat up straight. His breath caught in his throat. “My father? He–” He choked on air, and both men turned to him.

Constantine studied him with open sympathy. Carefully, he said, “Just because they asked for your father’s help doesn’t mean he gave it.”

“He couldn’t.” Val’s lips – his whole face – felt numb. “If he breaks the treaty, they’ll…they’ll kill us.” The last he whispered, hands shaking where they’d knotted together in his lap.

Sphrantzes looked between them, gaze heavy with regret. His eyes dropped to the page. He read, “Prince Vlad Dracul of Wallachia sends his eldest son and heir, Mircea, along with a contingent of cavalry–”

Val couldn’t hear the rest over the pounding of his own heart. He dropped his head into his hands and gripped tight; his body must have been doing it too, back in his bed in Edirne, because he felt the rough scrape of the calluses on his fingertips at his temples; the throb of the veins there.

“…Val.” Someone had been saying his name. For a while. “Val.” Constantine, voice steady, but gentle. “Val, look at me.”

He did, but the familiar, kindly face was of no comfort now. “They’ll kill us. Theywill.” Maybe he should have been fearing for Mircea’s chances in battle, or for father should Ladislas and Hunyadi decide his inability to commit more troops was capitally offensive. But he was ten, and selfish, and right now, all he could think about was his body, and Vlad’s, impaled on pikes along the sheer white palace walls.

“You’re far too valuable to kill,” Sphrantzes said, reasonably.

Constantine sighed. “They won’t kill you,” he said, softer. “George states it bluntly, but he’s correct. You and Vlad are valuable.”

“Right.” His teeth began to chatter. “They’ll just burn out our eyes instead.” He closed his own then, swallowing the urge to retch as he thought of Stepan and Gregor, the linen covering the ruined, scarred sockets where their eyes had once been. That was worse than death, he thought.

“Maybe not,” Constantine said, sounding less certain now. “But Val, you must be prepared for them to threaten such things. They’ll let you think they mean to hurt you, even if they don’t. You have to be strong.”

Strong like Vlad, who’d bow up his back and take the verdict steely-eyed. Who’d spit in the viziers’ faces and call them cowards and monsters.

But Val wasn’t brave like that.

“What of their chances?” Sphrantzes asked his friend and master. “The sultan is young, and he’s had trouble at home.” He gestured to Val.

That was true. Amidst his panic, Val tried to grab onto the news he’d brought with him on this evening’s dream-walk, that Mehmet had been plagued with all the troubles anyone could expect for a boy sultan. Religious fanatics stirring up unrest in the city; doubting, back-stabbing viziers; push-back from some of the outer territories. And over it all hung the disquiet of a people who didn’t understand why Murat had abdicated. Val had seen the former sultan walking in the garden, offering bits of seed to the birds, sitting quietly on benches with his young, Serbian wife, Mara. He’d abdicated because he was tired, Val thought, and because he didn’t have the heart or the stomach for the kind of expansion that some members of his court salivated over.

Mehmet was different, though. Mehmet was ambitious, and full of fire.

Mehmet was avampire; bloodlust was a part of him, body and soul.

“My brother means to give him more trouble,” Constantine said.

Sphrantzes lifted his brows in question.

“Orhan, the pretender – John is going to release him.”

Orhan. Val knew that name. For years, the Greeks of Byzantium had allowed the Ottoman pretender asylum within the city’s impenetrable walls. It was a part of the tenuous peace they shared with the Turks: Orhan got to live, and lavishly at that, but he wasn’t allowed to leave on his own recognizance, for fear he’d try to start a revolt.

“God,” Sphrantzes said, eyes wide. “How could he? The treaty…”

“It appears it’s a time for breaking treaties,” Constantine said, tone grim. “I’m afraid my brother still holds out some hope that Rome will send aid to the east.”

“There’s not much chance of that.”

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