“Apa, what have you brought me?” The little blonde girl tugged on her father’s doublet. “You always bring a present!”

The man laughed. “Erzsi, do you think I had time to shop?”

“Yes! You were away six days!” The little blonde girl looked up at the man fiercely. “You always have a present if you have been gone a week!”

“Little bug, six days does not make a week. But I do have a present for you, my little bug; you can have this.” The man reached inside the hidden pocket in his vest, pulling out a small locket of enameled silver. “Here.”

The little girl took the locket in her hands. “It is pretty.” She tossed it from one hand to the other.

“You can open it, you know.” The man reached down, showing the little girl how to undo the clasp.

“Who is that?” The little girl squinted at the picture inside the locket, turning it around to view it right-side up. “It is an ugly little boy.”

“Erzsi, are you calling my painting ugly? I used my magic brush!” The man drew back, an exaggerated expression of offense on his face. “I assure you, the little boy is healthy enough. But the locket is not the real present—I have gotten you a promise of marriage, and that little boy is the object.”

The little girl frowned. “He has bug eyes. They stare so intensely. And his hair is dark!”

“Little bug, who are you to complain about a boy being a bug?” The man tousled the blonde girl’s hair. “Silly little bug—you will marry him when you are old enough, and that will make you princess of a whole duchy.”

The little blonde girl’s eyes widened. “The boy is a duke?”

“His father is a voivode, which to the Vlachs means something like a duke or prince, and his lands are great enough to be a duchy. I think someday that little boy will inherit his father’s title.” The man smiled down at the little blonde girl. “I promised to help the Dragon against the ravening Osman horde—and the Dragon promised to marry his son to my daughter. Now, are you happy, my little bug? What greater present could I bring back for you than the promise of a princely husband?”

The little blond girl frowned, staring at the locket. “He also has a long nose.”

“Yes, and that is a very good thing. It is called aquiline—it is a very Roman nose, like an eagle.” The man smiled down at her. “Has your tutor been teaching you about the Romans?”

“Yes,” the little blonde girl said. She closed the locket, sticking it in a pocket. Then she closed her eyes, switching to Latin and speaking in a singsong. “Julius Caesar gave his wife Brutus twenty-three knives.”

The man laughed long and hard. “Little bug, your Latin needs work,” he said. He scooped up the little blonde girl in a hug.

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The hard-faced man glared at the adolescent blonde, no longer just a girl yet still not quite a woman. “Your father will be disappointed in your lack of progress with the rapier, Elisabeta,” he said, speaking in the mountain dialect that properly belonged to his wife and children, and which escaped his mouth only with a heavy tracery of a Gothic accent.

“But I want to learn the longsword,” the girl argued, spindly arms crossed over her flat chest as she looked at the hard-faced man. Her fluency with the mountain dialect was, by now, better than her book Latin or her French. “The rapier is a weapon for fighting street toughs, not Murad’s mercenaries.”

“Point control will serve you well with any weapon.” The hard-faced man held out the practice foil, the wooden button on its tip painted bright orange. “Even if you have reached your mother’s height, you are too much the waif to train for the longsword yet—there is no muscle behind your blows.”

“How am I to get the muscle, then? If I do not practice it, I will not gain it.” The girl frowned, pulling the padded helmet back down over her face as the hard-faced man stared back at her silently, commanding her obedience.

“Ahem.” A third voice interrupted the pregnant silence, a discreet throat-clearing intended to draw attention. The interrupting servant bowed deeply and apologetically before looking at his lord’s armsmaster and his lord’s daughter.

“What is it?” The girl was glad for the interruption.

“Erzsebet, there is a Vlach messenger who arrived with news—your mother has requested your attendance upon her.” The servant clasped his hands behind his back, shifting from foot to foot.

The girl frowned. “What? Is my father on his way home?”

The servant looked down at his feet, his expression flat.

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The girl stared at the servant. “What news is it?”

The servant hesitated before turning away. The girl’s heart hammered in her chest as she followed the servant to the great hall, where her mother, the lady of the castle, sat at the head of a long table, long gray hair loose and nearly brushing the table. A stranger sat three places down, chewing hungrily on a piece of bread—the Vlach messenger.

“Tell my daughter what you told me,” said the gray-haired lady of the castle, looking down at the table instead of at the Vlach messenger.

The man sprang to his feet, a nervous look on his face. “Miss Elisabeta, I am honored to meet you.” He swallowed, his accent thickening as he continued. “Your father died bravely. He helped to win the battle—the first battle and the second. But Sultan Murad sent three armies at once, with he himself directly commanding the third, and the third battle was lost. The Dragon has surrendered.”

“My father cannot be dead!” the girl shouted. She turned away, running out of the great hall and up the stairs. After she had run out of stairs to ascend and walked out into the open air, she stood still, staring down at the town below, her lungs heaving. Her father was a great fighter and had a great rapport with his elemental spirits—they anticipated his commands. At their worst, elemental spirits could be reluctant, slow to obey or perverting incautiously worded orders; but for her father, the ones bound into their house’s mechs were not only cooperative but eagerly friendly.

“Apa, you promised,” the girl sobbed, her words heard only by the whispering wind as it blew past the ramparts. “You promised you would teach me how to befriend the spirits. You promised you would teach me the arts of sword and sorcery. And you promised you would give me a handsome prince for a husband.”

The wind howled and the girl scowled. She grabbed her locket, pulling it out to look at the bug-eyed boy with his dark hair and his intense eyes. “Little bug prince, did you die with my father? Or did you surrender with yours?”

She stared at the miniature for a long minute before she closed the locket, tucking it back under her shirt, her questions unanswered. Then she made her way slowly down the stairs, each step heavier and slower than the last, and made her way back to the great hall. The Vlach messenger was still there, gnawing more slowly now, his hunger nearly satisfied.

“What of the Dragon’s son?” the girl asked, her voice seeming childish in her own ears as she spoke insistently. “What of him? Is he dead, too?”

At her question, the Vlach messenger startled, almost choking on his mouthful of food. By her third question, he had cleared his throat and spoke. “Little girl, you surprised me. But the Dragon has many sons; which did you mean?”

“Vladimir,” the girl said, grasping her locket.

The Vlach messenger laughed, shaking his head. “That narrows it down some. Well. One of the Vladimirs is off in a monastery—he took vows last year. The other has gone to Murad’s court as a hostage.”

The girl froze. Monks did not marry, and the Turks were beyond the pale—beasts beyond civilization ravening at the borders of Europe. If her Vladimir had taken orders, he was gone forever—and if he was hostage to the Turks, he would surely be dead soon. “Thank you,” she said woodenly, her manners too well trained to be omitted even when her mouth felt like it was filled with bitter ashes.

“Was there anything else you wanted to know?” The Vlach messenger gave her a sympathetic look.

“Is…” The girl hesitated, her voice trailing off into silence for a long moment. She felt too embarrassed to ask which one was her Vlad, the one in the locket—whether it was the monk or the hostage. Both were gone, after all. But there was one other question still in her heart, for she still could not quite believe what the messenger had said. “Is my father really dead?”

“Yes,” the Vlach messenger said. “I am sorry.”

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The blonde woman slowed her horse. She could feel someone else coming the other way—and with the trail as narrow as it was, going around the bend blind into another rider at a gallop was a recipe for a bad fall. Whoever it was had a weak talent—barely a mage at all—but still, she loosened her longsword in its sheath as she guided her horse to the side of the trail, checked her new three-barreled French pistol, and limbered her fingers, feeling magic tingle through her veins. Though it was unlikely the approaching stranger meant her ill, she had three ways to kill him if he did.

Then she saw his face, and her hands dropped down to her sides. It was the same Vlach messenger she had seen before—the one that had brought news of her father’s death. “Hail, Vlach herald,” she said, greeting him in the Vlach dialect with good fluency. “What tidings do you bring?”

“Well met, Miss Elisabeta. I come with tidings of Wallachia,” the messenger replied in the same tongue, pleased to be able to speak without tripping over the oddities of woman’s difficult native language. “And to beg a favor of your uncle.”

“He will not fight for your prince against the vile sultan,” the woman said. “Not as my father did. He cannot—King Janos needs his right arm, and his heir is too young for him to abandon his post. There are no more men of my house to be spared for crusades against the Osman menace.”

The messenger shook his head. “No, my favor is personal. My news is that the Dragon is dead, slain by his cousin Vladislav, who has also made his own tributary arrangements with the sultan. My service was to the Dragon, and my loyalty is to his house, not the House of Dan. The Dragon’s house is all but dissolved, his heirs in the hands of the sultan, and its most loyal servants are not trusted by the new prince. Until one of the Dragon’s sons is ready to rightfully claim the throne from the usurper, there is no place for me in Wallachia. I wish to take service with your uncle.”

The woman frowned, disliking the idea of letting a living reminder of the news of her father’s death haunt the castle that was now owned by her uncle. Then the man’s words penetrated her mind fully, and her hand rose to the locket hidden under her blouse. “His sons still live?”

“Most of them,” the herald said. “The sultan keeps care of his hostages—and I have not heard of the monk dying, though the Dragonslayer may yet have him killed. Monastic vows have been before proven soluble by the divine right of royalty.”

“I was riding nowhere in particular,” the woman said, her tone already carrying the weight of an order as she drew her hand away from the hidden locket. “I will now escort you to see my uncle. While we ride together, you will tell me everything you know of the sons of the Dragon.”