Page 198 of Dragon Slayer

Val finally managed to suck in a ragged breath. The words, the simple truth of them, spoken to him by a man who was obviously of some import among the Ottoman court, landed like physical blows. His chest ached. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked the ground between his boots, vision swimming.

“Oh. Well. I’m a doddering old fool who likes to hear myself talk.” He chuckled. “Usually I inflict my little speeches upon my sons and grandsons, but they are otherwise occupied this morning. Just a doddering old fool…who is an Ottoman Turk first. And a subject of Sultan Mehmet second.”

Val lifted his head so fast it left him dizzy, and he gripped the edge of the bench to keep from falling.

But the man’s face gave nothing away. “We are, by nature, a temperate and godly people. We love our families; we pray faithfully. But we obey our sultan.”

A human stepped around the hedge, and Val tensed – but it was only the man’s servant, who bent to pick up the hookah.

The richly dressed man stood with a groan and obvious effort, his knees and spine cracking in the cold morning. He turned to Val, and smiled, eyes glittering with things unsaid, gaze wily as a fox’s. “May God keep the sultan safe on his travels to Constantinople. May he guide his sword, and raise him up victorious.” He gave a short bow, and said, in an entirely different tone, “I will pray for you, Prince Radu.” A whisper: “Good luck.” And he winked, and turned away.

Val sat for a very long time, shaking, as the sun warmed the garden, and thawed the fountain, contemplating the vastness that lay between tyrants and the peoples they ruled.

~*~

Mehmet spent his winter dreaming of a siege, but not everyone in his court thought this was a good idea.

“What do you think of Halil Pasha?” Mehmet asked one night, apropos of nothing.

Val marked his place in his book with a finger, and lifted his head. It was a bitter night, wind and stinging rain lashing at the walls beyond the antechamber, and Val sat curled up beneath a heap of furs, reading by candlelight. Mehmet was at his sketches again, murmuring almost constantly under his breath. Val had been waiting for a question, but not this one.

“Halil was a loyal Grand Vizier to your father,” he said. “And now to you.”

Mehmet sent him an unimpressed look. “You think he undermines me.”

“I think he does so because he genuinely cares about you, your family, and the empire at large. Not because he’s a rat bastard – though no one would love to call him that more than me.”

Mehmet shook his head, but a smile tipped up the corners of his mouth. “Go and fetch the guards,” he told the slave currently refilling the brazier. “Tell them they’re to bring Halil Pasha to me here, now.”

“Really?” Val asked when the boy had scampered off to follow orders. “Right now?”

“Why not now? Everyone always knows just which sweet lies to tell during the middle of the day. It’s after bedtime that you find out what someone really thinks.”

The guards took longer than Val expected. Mehmet had gotten to his feet and was pacing the length of the room when they finally arrived, a trembling Grand Vizier between them.

Halil carried a large golden salver, heaped with coins that gleamed in the candlelight, the tray rattling as he shook. He set it on the table, careful not to impede on any of the maps and scrolls there, and then got down on his knees and prostrated before Mehmet.

“Good evening, Your Majesty,” he said, and his voice shook, too.

Mehmet looked at the guards, at Val, at the man splayed out before him on the floor tiles, lip curling. “What is this?”

“For-forgive me, Your Majesty,” Halil said to the floor, “but it is customary when a noble is summoned before his master at an unusual hour that he not arrive empty-handed. I have brought you–”

“Sit up,” Mehmet ordered, and the Vizier did so, his lip trembling, his face bloodless with fear. “Do you think I don’t have gold aplenty?”

“I – I – I–”

Mehmet tucked his hands together behind his back and continued pacing. “Tell me, Grand Vizier. What do you think of my plan to take Constantinople?”

Halil gaped at him. Then he turned to Val.

“Mind your sultan,” Val snapped.

Mehmet turned around, grinning. “Yes, Halil, mind your sultan. Well? What do you think?”

“Your Majesty–”

“Answer the question!”

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