He dreams it in the back of the Land Rover, somewhere on the motorway between Prague and Vienna, with his head against the window and two hearts beating slow.
He does not know, yet, that it is not a dream.
The boy is twelve years old, and he has learned to count.
Not numbers.
He has known numbers since he was four, when his father’s chaplain taught him with dried beans on the table of the great hall in Târgoviște.
He counts other things now.
The steps between his cell and the courtyard: one hundred and nine.
The bricks in the window arch: forty-four.
The guards on the wall at dawn and at dusk: six, then eight.
The days since his father rode away and left him here, at the Sultan’s court in Edirne, with his little brother Radu, as surety that the Prince of Wallachia would keep his oaths.
Four hundred and eleven.
He counts because counting is a thing that belongs to him.
They have taken his clothes and given him others, silk and strange.
They have taken his language and given him theirs.
They have taken his name, almost; the tutors call him the Wallachian, and the guards call him the boy, and only Radu, at night, in the dark, still calls him Vlad.
But they cannot take the counting.
It happens inside, where no one can reach.
The tutors beat him, when he will not learn.
He learns anyway, in the end, because a beaten boy who does not learn is beaten again.
He learns their poetry and their law and their prayers.
He learns their horses, and their bows, and the long curved swords that sing when they are drawn.
He learns that the master of this court can end a man’s life with a lifted finger, and that the man will thank him for it on his way to the block.
And he learns patience.
That is the lesson nobody teaches.
He learns it by himself, in the cell, in the dark, counting.
He learns it by watching the guards.
The fat one who drinks at midnight.
The young one who sleeps against the gate at the hour before dawn.
The old one who is kind to Radu, and cruel to everyone else.
He learns which tutor will forgive a mistake and which will report it.
He learns which of the Sultan’s sons smiles at him and means it, and which smiles at him and means the opposite.
He learns that the strong are rarely the dangerous ones.
The dangerous ones are the ones who wait.
On the four hundred and twelfth day, Radu cries in the night, and Vlad holds him, and says: Hush.
Hush.
We are going home.
When?
Radu says.
When they have stopped watching.
Vlad looks up at the window, at the forty-four bricks in the arch, at the six guards on the wall.
Everyone stops watching, in the end.
You only have to be more patient than they are.
Radu falls asleep, in the end.
Vlad does not.
He lies awake in the dark and counts, and somewhere in the counting, without quite knowing it, he makes a promise to himself.
That he will never be anyone’s hostage again.
That he will never kneel again unless he chooses it.
That one day he will sit on a throne of his own, and men will count his guards, and fear his patience, and learn what it costs to keep a prince in a cage.
He does not know yet what the promise will make of him.
He does not know about the forests of stakes, or the burning towns, or the long dark centuries after, or the iron crown and the thirty empty chairs.
He is twelve.
He only knows that he is very tired, and very angry, and very far from home.
In the back of the Land Rover, Magnus opens his eyes.
The motorway lights are sliding past the window, orange, one after another, like beads on a string.
Silas is asleep against his shoulder.
Irina is asleep against Silas.
In the front, Lyra is driving, and Adrian is singing along very badly to something on the radio, and Noah is telling him to stop.
Magnus lies still and listens to his two hearts.
Thud.
Tap.
Thud.
Tap.
He has never been to Edirne.
He has never been twelve years old in a stone cell, holding a little brother in the dark.
He has never had a brother at all.
But he knows how many bricks there were in that window arch.
He could draw them.
And he knows, now, with a certainty that runs deeper than memory, the thing the boy in the dream learned there: that the strong are rarely the dangerous ones.
The dangerous ones are the ones who wait.
Four hundred and twelve, he thinks, without meaning to.
And somewhere very deep in the dark of his blood, something old and patient stirs, and turns over, and seems, for the first time, almost to smile.