35
THE EMPEROR
Lightning split the sky overhead, jagged white tongues fracturing along the undersides of the clouds. Val was grateful, for once, that he wasn’t here in his physical form, and that he couldn’t feel the rain.
The people of Constantinople were parading the holy relics. For luck. For a divine blessing. A great statue of the Virgin Mary rode atop a wooden cart, its wheels catching and bogging down in the mud as men tried to push and force it along.
Your grace, a voice whispered, inside his head. Not his voice – it was Arslan, calling to him, from the place where his unconscious body rested.
A gust of wind caught the rain, driving it sideways. Citizens blinked, and shielded their faces with their hands, cowering as thunder crashed overhead.
Then, horror of horrors, the cart tipped. People shouted, and reached, and flailed – but the Virgin Mary tumbled down to the mud. And broke.
“Shit,” Val breathed.
Your grace.
The wailing was immediate, panicked and high-pitched. Lightning struck somewhere above, the high peaked gable of a roof, with a shower of sparks, a burst of flame, and a roar of thunder.
“Do not panic!” George Sphrantzes shouted, but no one paid him any heed, and his own eyes were wild and white-rimmed as he instructed his men to run see to the fire.
Your grace, please, wake up!
Val felt a touch on his shoulder; someone shook his body, back in the tent, where he’d sought physical shelter from the storm. He didn’t have long; Arslan wouldn’t be calling to him this urgently if it wasn’t important.
But he searched for Constantine with his eyes, and found the emperor’s fine clothes streaked with mud, sodden from the rain, expression horrified. Val wanted to go to him. “Constantine!” he called. “Please, I have to talk to you,” he said as he approached, drawing the emperor’s gaze. “I have to tell you about Mehmet. You have to surrender!”
“Val,” the emperor said, shell-shocked and helpless, his curls plastered to his forehead. “What are you saying? I can’t surrender.” He gestured to the tableau before them, the blasphemous disaster. “I have tried to rally my people, to–” He gestured again, and sounded choked. “I can’t abandon them, or our cause. It’s the right one.” His gaze burned.
Val gulped. “But I can…”
Constantine reached, as if to lay a hand on his shoulder, and pulled back with a frown before he sent Val’s limb to smoke. “You can’t,” he said, sparing a moment’s gentleness.
“But…” It was selfishness, he knew – look at these people, their terror and despair – but he didn’t care about saving them right then. Nor the city. Mehmet would win, he now knew; victory for the Romans was, and had always been, a futile hope. But Constantine was his friend; he could save him. Get hands on him, turn him, making him a strong immortal and maybe they could…
“Val!” A voice from the other side, but a shriek this time, high and loud; it hurt his ears, because he’d heard it not just mentally, but physically. He opened his eyes, already panicking.
He lay curled on his side in the center of the bed, just as he’d been earlier, when he first lied down to go for this particular walk. A stolen moment, on this dark and stormy day, Mehmet fervent, and wound-up, and hounding all his generals about what he called “the inevitable victory.” Rain beat down on the canvas of the roof; it had covered the sound of an approaching party – or, maybe not. Arslanhadbeen trying to wake him for a while.
The boy scurried back from the bed now, face pale, eyes huge. He scuttled back to lean against a stack of trunks, shoulders hunched, trying to appear small.
Val pushed upright, shaky and drained-feeling, and ran his gaze over the source of Arslan’s fear: the dripping-wet men standing on the rug before him.
It was Mehmet, and a full coterie of janissary guards. Grand Vizier Halil Pasha, especially bedraggled, his soggy wet turban trying to come unwound. All of them, even the guards, wore dumbstruck expressions.
Val reached with unsteady fingers to tuck his hair back over his shoulder. “Well. You all look terrible.” He aimed for biting, but it only sounded tired.
Mehmet took a breath, and drew himself more upright, gaze hardening, growing suspicious. “What were you doing just now?”
Val eased his way to the edge of the bed, joints and jaw aching in that way that Mehmet always complained of these days, and swung his slipper-clad feet down off the edge, onto the rug. “What are you talking about? And you’re ruining the carpet.”
Mehmet ignored him, and stalked up to him, reached out and caught Val’s chin in his hand, tipped it back. Val tried to twist away, but the sultan’s fingers bit into his jaw; not hard enough to bruise, but close.
Over his shoulder, Val saw Halil’s face twist up with thinly veiled disgust.
“What were you doing?” Mehmet repeated, gaze narrow, and sparking. “You were muttering to yourself when I walked in.”
Val’s heart raced; he tried to force it slower, to take a few deep breaths. If he smelled of fear, no lie could save him here. “It was a nightmare. The storm. Nothing important.”
