“No, it–”
Footsteps in the hall. Their mother’s scent reached them before the door swung open. They both froze; Vlad’s dark eyes went comically wide. Candlelight stretched across the floor and Mother entered with a soft, musical chuckle.
“Boys,” she chided, coming to sit on the side of the bed. The candle’s glow fell over them, gentle as the hand she smoothed across each of their foreheads in turn. “I seem to remember putting two handsome princes to bed two hours ago.” When Mother scolded, it was always with a smile, and it always made Val want to promise that he’d never step so much as a single toe out of line ever again.
“Val went dream-walking,” Vlad said, shifting onto his back so they were both looking up at Mother’s quietly radiant face.
Her hair fell in thick gold waves to her waist, the ends trailing across the blankets. “Oh? Where did you go, darling?” She pushed Val’s hair out of his eyes, smile impossibly warm.
“He doesn’t know,” Vlad said.
“I don’t know,” Val echoed. “I was by the sea. I could smell the salt. And there was a man – very tall, and handsome, and he had curly dark hair. I think he was important.”
“Hmm, he sounds important,” Mother agreed, smoothing his hair again. “What else do you remember?”
He felt his face scrunch up as he fought to recall. Every time he dream-walked, it became easier to recall the details. The first few times had left him foggy, his thoughts distorted. But the more he walked, the more pieces he was able to bring back with him. Now, tonight, he remembered a velvet night sky studded with stars, the distant shush and slap of gentle waves. He remembered buildings packed cheek-by-jowl, smooth pale stone that gleamed in the moonlight, architectural angles that reminded him of…
He gasped. “Greek. They were speaking Greek.” The man he thought might be a prince, bent over a wooden table with another man, a silver plate dotted with burning, melting candles. They’d spoken in Greek.
“Ah.” Mother’s smile became proud. The same smile she bestowed on Vlad when he slid down from his horse’s bare back, a brace of hares clutched in one small hand. “My son the triumphant hunter,” she would always say. She looked at Val like that now. “Did you go to Byzantium, love?”
“I…” He wracked his brain, searching, searching. He’d made a noise, a quiet clearing of his throat, and the two men had turned around in their chairs to look at him, looking startled. Humans were always startled by what he could do.
But before that, before they’d noticed him, one man had called the handsome, curly-haired stranger by his name.
“Constantine,” he said. “That was his name.”
Motherbeamed. “My clever boy. You went all the way to the seat of the emperor.”
Val felt himself smiling in return.
“Wow,” Vlad breathed beside him, breath warm where it tickled Val’s neck.
Byzantium. Constantinople. The eastern seat of the Roman Empire. A fitting destination, he supposed, for a son of Rome.
~*~
An Empire Away
Nightfall in the palace gardens of Edirne smelled of a strange blend of orange blossom and healing wolfsbane. The climate here was that of Eastern Europe, of Wallachia, and Transylvania, and Hungary. But the Turks had brought plants from farther east with them, and architecture and customs as well. Overhead, the sky wheeled dark and star-studded. A breeze stirred the flames of the torches; they scudded and smoked, and lit the way with bright flickers. Mehmet admired the patterns on his bare toes as he walked down the pebbled path, wending his way beneath the shadows of climbing roses.
He still missed his mother, living with her and the other women in the harem. But it was time for him to start acting like a man, as Father had said. And men didn’t hang off their mother’s skirts.
Did men eavesdrop, though? He hoped they did, because that’s what he was doing now, moving toward the low murmur of voices just ahead beneath a wisteria bower. One belonged to his father, but the other was a stranger.
Silent from long months of practice, Mehmet skirted one of the bower’s stone support columns and ducked down into the shadows of a decorative hedge. When he peered through the leaves, he saw two figures standing in the flickering torchlight: his father’s familiar stocky build, and a tall, lean stranger, a hood hiding most of his face. Mehmet caught the wet gleam of dark eyes, and the end of a prominent nose.
They spoke in Turkish. “I’m afraid,” Father was saying, “that I fail to understand your reasoning for this, my lord. Generous gifts are not given without the expectation of reciprocity.”
The stranger chuckled. “You really think me so mercenary, Your Majesty?”
Father didn’t join in his laughter. “I know who you are, and what you’ve done.”
“Ah. You disapprove, then.”
“I did not say that.”
The stranger rolled his weight back onto his heels, obviously surprised.
