Page 98 of Dragon Slayer

“I’m afraid you’re right, old friend.” He turned to Val again, and Val had calmed himself enough to register the regret in the man’s eyes. “Is there anything else you can tell us?” He regretted having to ask, Val knew. Needing information from him, given the circumstances.

He shook his head. “No. There was gossip about Iskander Bey, but–”

“Who?”

“Skanderbeg,” Sphrantzes said. “That’s what his men call him. The Albanian prince sent home with a Turkish cavalry unit.” A bare smile touched his mouth. “He betrayed them immediately and swore an oath to spend the rest of his life fighting the Ottomans.”

“He was a hostage with us for a while,” Val said. “He’s been gone a year.”

“Doubtless Hunyadi’s tried to recruit him, too,” Sphrantzes said.

The two men fell into a conversation that didn’t exclude Val, per se, but which didn’t need him. He was only a boy, after all, and they had serious matters of state to discuss.

He knew he needed to go back, to wake up, go find Vlad and tell him what he’d learned here. Vlad probably wouldn’t respond; he might grunt, if Val was lucky, nod his head once. But they were brothers, and their inevitable demise was something he deserved to know.

But he lingered, here in his astral shape. Got up off the table and willed himself through the wall – his body tugged at him, trying to draw him back, but he pushed on, rematerializing out on the balcony.

The sunset had progressed, now kissing the mountains with lavender and indigo, colorless directly overhead. He lifted his arms and watched his sleeves rustle in the breeze…but still, he couldn’t feel it. He didn’t understand how projection worked in that sense. Maybe he never would. There were no Familiars at the Ottoman court, and no way to learn without admitting aloud what he was.

The scrape of shoes over stone heralded Constantine’s arrival a moment before the despot pulled up alongside Val. He leaned forward and rested his forearms along the railing. The wind toyed with the thick dark curls of his hair, swept them back from his face. He looked pensive, melancholy in that way that Val had learned was characteristic.

It was silent a moment between them. Down below in the valley, sheep baaed as they hurried toward their shepherds and the evening meal, bells tolling faintly around their necks. Doves called. A beautiful, tranquil Greek evening.

Constantine gathered a breath and said, “It’s an old tradition: hostage-taking. It’s not dishonorable. Even Alexander’s beloved Hephaestion was a political hostage to begin with.” He turned to face Val. “But tradition doesn’t make something more bearable, does it?”

Val turned away, swallowing reflexively. “They’re…fair to me. I am clothed, and fed, and I’ve had an education.”

“An Ottoman education.”

“Yes.”

Constantine’s sigh was so deep and heartfelt that, for a moment, Val forgot that he was incorporeal and expected the weight of a comforting hand to land on his shoulder. The words had a similar effect, nonetheless: “You are not Hephaestion, I don’t think. And no matter how much he studies him, I don’t think Mehmet is the Alexander he thinks himself to be.” Softer: “It’s perfectly alright to wish for home. For family, and for the education and upbringing of your own people. No matter how kindly treated, a hostage is still a hostage, and that is a bitter medicine to swallow, I’m afraid.”

Val’s chin trembled, and he clenched his jaw tight to stop it.

“If you would take some advice from a man who’s next in line to be emperor,” Constantine continued, “then I would urge you and your brother to courteously and carefully comport yourselves when you’re brought before the sultan. Cruel as it is to say, George is right: you are too valuable to kill. A little sweetness might dissuade them from maiming you, though.”

Val looked back to him, to the earnest sadness in his dark eyes. “Do you believe so?”

“I do.”

He nodded. “Alright. I can be sweet.”

When he slipped back into his body, he opened his eyes to an evening gone nearly full-dark. He sat up and blinked back the grogginess, rubbed a hand down his face. The last bit of color was fading in purple hues beyond the window, and there were only two places where Vlad might be at this time.

He hadn’t lied to Constantine: he could be sweet, and almost always was. It was why there were no guards posted at his door, and why none of the ones he encountered on his way out to the garden gave him more than a passing glance. He and Vlad were a part of the household at this point, but it was common to see a janissary lingering just out of reach whenever Vlad was present. To see the guards following him with their eyes; to see the thinly veiled contempt in the gazes of viziers and the higher-ups at court.

Vlad had a presence about him. He’d grown lanky and severe, his gaze arresting. His was not a magnetism generated by beauty, or conviviality. No; it was his stern, constant, prowling threat that sucked all the air out of every room he entered. Only a handful knew that he was a vampire, but everyone could tell that he was a predator.

The gardens lay in shadow, the last pale twilight catching on the metal chasing along arbors and benches, little topiary spires. It seemed another world, heavy with the scent of autumn’s first and last flowers. It was still warm, but the air held the promise of an oncoming chill.

Val found his brother in the chapel. The candles had been lit along the makeshift altar. Vlad knelt on the flagstones before it, hands pressed together in his lap, head bowed.

Val hesitated in the doorway.

After a moment, Vlad said, “You know I can tell that you’re there, don’t you?” Toneless.

Val swallowed and walked in on silent feet. He approached his brother slowly, as he would a wild animal. “I didn’t want to disturb your prayers.”

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