Page 228 of Dragon Slayer

Mehmet’s jaw clenched, muscle leaping in his cheek.

Timothée’s bland smile tightened a fraction. “That would be Vlad Dracula, yes? The Prince of Wallachia?”

“That’s him, yes.” Val couldn’t keep a hint of proud smugness from his voice.

He realized his mistake when he saw bright malice flare to life in the mage’s eyes. “His kingdom is small,” Timothée said, “and he is a violent, ill-tempered ruler. Purported to have a taste for the blood of his subjects.”

Val let his feet fall to the floor, and sat up straight in his chair. “Vlad doesn’t feed from humans.”

The mage cocked his head. “Then why does he kill so many of them?”

It would take hours to properly explain Vlad, and his regimented sense of justice and revenge, his intense, long-burning anger, hot and relentless as dragon fire. And to explain that it was a patient, calculated, controlled rage. He didn’t kill in fits of temper, like Mehmet was prone to do. He weighed the morality of everything, and once set on a course, could not be swayed from it.

“Because they’re not loyal to him,” he said, simply.

Timothéetsked and turned away. “A trivial concern,” he told Mehmet. “We’ll route him, and be about our business.”

But Mehmet had crossed swords with Vlad as a boy, had seen that incandescently cold rage up close, face-to-face, and he didn’t look so ready to dismiss him. “I will have his head,” he said at last, going to back to stroking his beard, “but it will be a true fight.”

He stepped back from the table, suddenly, with a sigh. “Enough of this. My eyes are swimming.” He rubbed them briskly a moment, with a pained sound.

“Very well, Your Majesty,” Timothée said. “There are other things we might do.” He lifted his brows, and Val realized he’d missed something, when Mehmet said, “Ah, you’re right. Has he been talkative?”

“Not so far, but I haven’t inquired yet today.”

“Hmm.”

“What?” Val said, skin prickling with unease.

“Come along, Radu,” Mehmet said, as he and the mage headed for the door. “This will be educational for you.”

“Christ,” Val muttered under his breath, but got to his feet and followed.

In the hallway, the usual janissary guards fell into step, and their party skirted the gardens from the inside, going away from the throne room, and the feast hall, and all the public areas where members of the court gathered, and instead to a darker, less beautiful, less royal part of the palace.

Since his conquest of the city, Mehmet had been expanding, improving, even, upon the old Palace of Blachernae, but here was an area he had not touched, and one it looked like even Constantine hadn’t inhabited. Old, weathered stones, gone soft as cloth to the touch, and floors untidy from a lack of use; dust, and leaves, and rugs that needed beating.

A guard opened a door for them, revealing a staircase, and the scent of blood struck Val: oldandfresh. And then he knew where they were going.

The dungeon.

He’d never seen it before, but there could be no other name for whatever lay at the bottom of this staircase, scented with mold, and damp, iron long rusted from the salt air of Constantinople.

Istanbul, now.

Someone came up to meet them with a lantern, and led them on, until they finally arrived in a long, narrow chamber that struck Val as mirroring a stable: an arched stone ceiling, with thin, high windows at the top, no bigger than a handspan, to prevent escape. A central aisle, and to either side, tables, and racks, and places where old manacles dangled from the walls. It was too deep to see all of it, shadows looming at the end. But shafts of light fell in through the windows, slanted bars of it, and there were torches, and candles, and more lanterns.

Enough to see the man chained on his back to a table.

And the scent of blood, viscera, and excrement was so strong that Val cupped a hand over his nose and mouth. He retched quietly, once, and then managed to swallow his gorge before he brought up his lunch.

“Who is that?” he asked, voice muffled by his hand.

It was Timothée who answered him, sounding delighted. “One of your brother’s allies.Mihály Szilágy.”

Val did not know him, but as he walked slowly closer, seemingly pulled against his will, he noted the man’s Slavic features, now twisted up with pain. A young man, built as a warrior. Val noticed, too, the bloody stumps that had once been fingers and toes; the long red stripes where the flesh had been cut from his torso.

One of the torturers gave a report to Mehmet in Turkish: “He’s said nothing still, Your Majesty. Only curses us, and calls down God’s wrath upon us.”

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