“Thank you for pointing that out. But I didn’t think dhampirs qualified.”
The ceiling shook, so hard that some of the plaster cracked and fell down in small chunks. Radu smirked. “It appears you’ve been upgraded.” I moved my chair slightly, to avoid being directly beneath the large, swaying chandelier, and looked up to see him regarding me with that same disquieting look. “Perhaps he’ll finally stop blaming himself over that girl,” he mused.
I knew I’d regret it, but I asked anyway. “What girl?”
“Christine, the perpetually tragic.” Radu threw a new log on the embers, apparently solely for the chance to stab viciously at it with a poker. He saw my expression. “You haven’t heard the tale?”
“Should I have?”
“Not really. It’s long and extremely depressing. Suffice it to say that, centuries ago, Louis-Cesare brought her over in order to save her life. She had been tortured because of him and he felt responsible. But he never stopped to consider that she was an ardent Catholic, and moreover one who believed the old stories about us. She thought the change had damned her, and informed him once she rose that she would have preferred a true death.”
“So he killed her?”
Radu rolled his eyes. “If only!” he said fervently. He saw my expression and grimaced. “Don’t give me that look—you haven’t met her. The woman is impossible, always in some trouble or other. Most recently, she was kidnapped by Alejandro.” Radu said it like I should know the name. “The leader of the Latin American Senate,” he added impatiently when I looked clueless.
“So why is Louis-Cesare here, instead of off rescuing her?”
“Because no one knows where she is, of course!” Radu looked at me suspiciously. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No, I just can’t imagine the family swallowing an insult like that.”
“You simplify everything,” Radu said crossly. “Not every problem can be solved by whacking it with a stick!”
“No, just nine out of ten.”
Radu visibly restrained himself. “An underling of Alejandro’s, a vampire named Tomas, challenged him,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “Alejandro wanted Louis-Cesare to be his champion. But the rumors about that court—it’s disgraceful.”
I didn’t need to ask what he meant this time. It was infamous for sadism, even among vamps. “I take it Louis-Cesare refused?”
Radu nodded. “He told him that part of the purpose of a challenge was to weed out incompetent, cruel or insane masters—and that if he couldn’t fight his own battles, he didn’t deserve his position.”
I winced. Diplomacy didn’t seem to be Louis-Cesare’s strong suit. “So Alejandro kidnapped Christine to make it his battle,” I guessed. “Fairly standard.”
“It is too bad you weren’t there to warn him at the time,” Radu said acerbically. “In any case, Louis-Cesare defeated Tomas, but refused to kill him, as the man had done nothing wrong. So Alejandro refused to release Christine, claiming that he had stipulated to let her go only when the threat was gone, and that as long as Tomas lived, the threat remained.”
“And the Senate couldn’t intervene on his behalf,” I reasoned. Agreements between masters were rarely challenged by the Senates, especially if the two involved were members of different Senatorial bodies. It was too easy to have a personal quarrel escalate into war.
“Which is why this has dragged on for so long.”
“How long?”
Radu flipped a hand. “Oh, a century.” I stared while he went blithely on. “And ever since she was taken, Louis-Cesare hasn’t been the same. He knows she may be suffering, and he feels responsible for it—twice over, in fact. He’s become extremely morose about the whole thing.”
“Radu! The woman was tortured, forced to join the undead and kidnapped, all because of him. Has it occurred to you that maybe he has something to feel guilty about?”
“You sound just like him!” Radu said irritably. “He didn’t torture her; the Black Circle did.”
I blinked. “Come again?”
“They were trying to steal power, as usual. She was an untrained witch, you see, before the change. Very powerful magically, but her faith ensured that she wouldn’t accept it. Any manifestations were ignored, or put down to the devil’s work.” Radu shook his head. “It was only a matter of time before the dark found her.”
“Louis-Cesare said you rescued him from some dark mages once. I assume we’re talking about the same group?”
Radu looked annoyed. “He shouldn’t have mentioned that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I promised Mircea not to have any contact with him.”
“Because of that time thing,” I guessed.
“What time thing?”
“The one I’d know about if I kept up with the family.”
“Oh, yes, exactly. But then, when no one could find him… well, what was I supposed to do? Leave him to be tortured to death every night? Anyway, don’t mention this to your father. Mircea doesn’t need to know everything.”
Amen to that. “Did you really bring down the roof?”
Radu ignored the question with aristocratic disdain. “As I was saying, Christine has had several hundred years to recognize that we aren’t monsters. I explained to her myself that vampirism is a disease. She doesn’t blame weres for transforming into slavering beasts on a regular basis, but she continues to view us as just above Satan himself. It’s insulting.”
“Maybe weres haven’t screwed up her life,” I commented, flinching at the sound of glass breaking somewhere above us.
“The point is, he doesn’t allow himself to get close to anyone anymore. It isn’t healthy!” Radu pronounced, as if he were the poster child for mental health himself.
He started pacing, the hem of his elaborate teal dressing gown swirling around his agitated feet. He looked like a man at the end of his rope and I made a brilliant deduction. “There’s more than Louis-Cesare’s issues troubling you.”
Radu shot me a less-than-fond look. “My brother is trying to kill me—again—and in order to prevent that, I’ll likely have to kill him instead. My well-ordered house has been disrupted by some extremely strange, not to mention violent, creatures, and my chef is absolutely livid about—”
“The Pear Incident. Yes, I know.” I looked at him narrowly. Something about that list worried me. “You said you had no problem with killing Drac. You agreed with me that it was the smartest course. You aren’t getting soft on me, are you, ’Du?”
It worried me that he didn’t immediately respond. He had come to rest by the mantel, but wasn’t staring at the fire. The portrait above it seemed to have riveted his attention instead. The new log popped and sparked in the silence, while the old one slowly crumbled to a soft redness beneath.
“I was eight,” he finally said, “when we first became hostages. Vlad was thirteen.”
“Radu! Don’t tell me you’re getting sentimental.” I couldn’t believe he was doing this. “He tried to kill you. Repeatedly!”
“It isn’t sentiment,” Radu insisted, gazing at the still-vibrant colors of the portrait. “Nor some rusty conscience stirring to life. I never really had much of one, you know. Even before the change.”
“What, then?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “Why do you think I have this painting, Dory?”
“Well, he was your lover. I suppose—”
He laughed, but it was harsh. “We were never lovers. At least, there was no love involved in anything we did.” He fiddled with some of the ornaments along the mantel, as if his hands needed something to do. “As a prince, Mehmed had a map, showing not only the Turkish lands but all of Europe, too. He told me that there was destined to be only one empire in the word, one faith and one king. It was the belief that I could forward his ambitions that attracted him to me. There were dozens of handsome
oghlanlari
at court—royal pages—who were better-looking than I. They chose them as much for appearance as ability, whatever they said. And none of them ever took a sword to him.”
“You attacked the sultan and lived?” I grinned.
“Sultan’s son, as he was at the time, and yes. He propositioned me and I took a swing at him. Not that I wounded him much—I was never a swordsman. And then I showed my true mettle by running off and hiding up a tree. I only came down when he swore a solemn oath not to kill me.” He smiled bitterly. “I got off lightly because he knew I might be useful. They needed a puppet prince, and Vlad wasn’t cooperating.”
“It surprises me that you’d keep a picture of him. Personally, I’d burn it.” The servant returned and placed a tray in front of me. It was chicken, and thankfully it wasn’t clucking.
Radu dismissed the vamp and joined me on the couch. “I don’t keep it out of fondness, Dory, but as a reminder of how easily I was once molded by another. I became exactly what my captors wanted—I dressed like them, thought like them—I even converted. I swear, for a while, I was more Turkish than they were. I keep the painting to remind me of what I was.”
I snorted. “Give yourself a break. You were a kid. They brainwashed you.”
Radu shook his head. “As much as I would like to claim that, it’s only partially true. I was eleven when he seduced me—a child by today’s standards, but in the world we inhabited, that was not so young. Mehmed had begun ruling a province of the empire at the same age. I was brainwashed because I allowed myself to be. The only alternative was unthinkable, so I took the path of least resistance. It took me a long time to understand: ultimately, we are all responsible for our own actions.”
“As Drac is.”
Radu was quiet for a moment. “I sometimes wonder which of us they molded more, myself or Vlad. My delusion was shed long ago, but he is still trapped in his. They made him a monster, Dory, in those dungeons.”
I bit back a comment out of respect for what Radu had been through, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stay quiet if he elaborated. It wasn’t like I hadn’t heard the story before. It went something like this: Drac was a heroic teenager who refused to be cowed by Turkish threats. Whenever he was taunted by his guards, he taunted them right back. Every insult of theirs was met with one of his, usually even more inventive because he’d had enough education to provide inspiration. He cursed them, their ancestors and their Prophet. He was brutally beaten, then thrown back into a solitary cell from which he could see the even-worse punishments visited on others. The execution methods varied depending on the extent of the prisoner’s offense: some were given a plain old hanging, while others were shot full of arrows, beheaded or, worst of all, impaled.
Impalement was reserved for those guilty of the most heinous crimes, but in a time of war, it ended up being used fairly frequently. The teenage Vlad got a ringside seat for one on a weekly basis, and apparently took notes. He watched the crows pick at the carcasses that were left under the hot Turkish sun until they were only blistered meat. Maybe he managed to endure his punishment by dreaming of impaling his torturers one day—I don’t know. But when he finally took the throne of Wallachia, it became his favorite way of scaring away invaders and enforcing his decrees.
Almost any crime, from lying and stealing to killing, could be punished by impalement in Drac’s reign. Mircea once told me that his brother placed a golden cup on display in the central square of the city to be used by thirsty travelers. It was worth more than a lifetime’s wages for a worker, but it was never stolen. I would be willing to bet that nobody even thought about it.
Even more famously, two Turkish ambassadors to Drac’s court failed to remove their turbans in his presence. Drac ordered that the hats be nailed to their heads so they would never have to remove them again. Likewise, he once held a picnic in the middle of a field of impaled bodies just for the hell of it. And, when one of his nobles held his nose to keep from gagging at the smell, Drac had him impaled on a stake higher than all the rest, so that he might be above the odor.
He justified his actions by pointing out the lawlessness of the land before he took over. The problem with that excuse was that Drac’s “law and order” had ended up killing far more of his people than even serious disorder would have done. I looked up some statistics once, out of curiosity, and discovered a chilling fact: in his short, six-year reign, he’d had at least forty thousand victims. No, the expediency excuse had never worked for me.
“But, in the end, it was Vlad who chose to use the tactics they taught him, both against the Turks and his own people.”
I blinked at Radu, surprised to hear my own thoughts echoed back to me. “It’s getting a little hard to follow your logic, ‘Du,” I told him honestly. “Are you saying that you
are
in favor of killing him?”
Radu shot me an irritated look. “I am saying that, while it may be a necessity, I will take no pleasure in it. Not because I have any affection for Vlad—in truth, I don’t believe I ever had any—but because it might have been me. If he had been born with the face to tempt a prince, and I had been left in the dungeons, would our positions be reversed today?”
So that was what was eating him. “I doubt it, ’Du. You said it yourself—you were always very different people.”
“True. I doubt I would have survived the dungeons. I have never been brave.”
“You would have survived.” Louis-Cesare’s harsh tones made me jump. I whipped my neck around, and there he was, less than three feet away, and I hadn’t heard a thing. If I didn’t get some sleep soon, I was going to be completely useless. Caedmon was nowhere in sight, but since Louis-Cesare wasn’t covered in blood, I assumed he was still alive. “There are many forms of courage,” Louis-Cesare said. “You would have done what was necessary. But no more.”
I nodded in agreement and gave Radu a slightly greasy kiss. “The Turks didn’t make Drac a monster, ’Du. They just brought out the one that was already there.”
Louis-Cesare and I exchanged a look. The expression in his eyes said that Drac was suddenly a lot closer to a permanent resting place. I didn’t know what had caused the change of heart, but I wasn’t about to complain. For once, we were in perfect agreement.
Radu escorted me back to my room as soon as I finished eating. I waited until I heard his almost silent footfalls fade, then sneaked off to find Caedmon. Or what was left of him.