Name: Mischa
Story: i never promised you a rose garden
Colors: halloween orange (in mercy’s shadow nothing grows), dove grey (that is death - shifting from is to was), octarine (You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.)
Supplies and Styles: charcoal, seed beads, canvas, fingerpainting
Word Count: 2036
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: abuse (reference to torture and a particularly brutal death), child abuse. also a reference to a teenager's consensual sexual activity at an age expected of the setting. I think that covers everything, but if I missed anything, let me know.
Summary: When he’d been younger, he’d hoped for a peace not forged in war and blood: but now that he was older, he understands the harsh truth. Oradea will never have peace, never have stability, unless it is through force, and he’s already long ago made peace with the harsh necessities of what he must do and the prices he must pay.
Notes: ...this was an interesting POV to write from, but definitely not fun to write. Razvan, voivode of voivodes, is very definitely the major antagonist for this story.


It was almost a shame: a waste of good lives, Razvan of Oradea thought as he stood in the square of Crisane. Crisane had been a prosperous princedom, once, the jewel in the shattered crown of Oradea, but her prince had refused to see reason. Teodor Iliescu and his people had believed in their freedom more than they had believed in what was best for their country. But that had ever been the way of things: petty, feuding princes holding onto their little slices of what they called theirs, with no thought for the larger whole. He’d hoped that Teodor and his eldest son, Mihai, would have seen some reason - or perhaps just Mihai, who had been by every account scholarly and a student of history.

But neither had, still clinging to the remains of the old world - and there is no place for that in the world that Razvan is building. As long as Oradea is fractured, is fragmented, is filled with petty princedoms feuding with each other rather than turning their eyes outward to the enemies without, they could never be better. Order and peace is what Razvan promises, and he will bring Oradea both, and stability - but this only proves what he already knows. He cannot unite Oradea under one banner, cannot stop the feuds, with anything other than war, with anything other than rule beneath a mailed fist, for anything kinder or gentler would ultimately fail.

He doesn’t waste time wishing that things were different: the world is as the world is, and all he can do is work with what he has, do what he must. Razvan will bury his opponents, rebuild Crisane, and go on: but for now, he’ll deal with what is left. Around him, he can sense the frightened eyes of the townspeople on him as he strides forward, and dismisses them: they would have nothing to fear as long as they didn’t resist. There’s no need to terrify them further, no more than what was necessary: his objective now is to deal with their leadership, or what’s left of their former prince’s family.

And those are few enough, now, dwindled down now to two: a tall, broad-shouldered young man with brown curls and sullen grey eyes - Ioan, the younger of Teodor’s legitimate sons- and a slender youth with long white hair that hangs over his face, dark red eyes much too bright. Razvan doesn’t recognize the boy - certain sign that the youth’s one of Teodor’s many bastards, as he’d made pains to know about the legitimate sons - and after a moment, turns his attention to the more useful of the pair.

“Come,” he says, shortly, to Ioan, the order very clear in his tone, and doesn’t miss how the young man’s fist clenches, the resentment in the lines of his body. The resentment that would lead to him doing something extremely stupid sometime in the future, if not very soon. “You and I have much to discuss.”

But first - he gestures to Sofia, his thaumaturge, beckoning her to him. The severe, unbending line of her spine straightens even more, frost-blue eyes meeting his: she is only a hair shorter than his own height, exceptionally tall for a woman and taller than most men. Plain, severe, strict: the only person more disciplined than himself is Sofia, and she has been indispensable from the moment she entered his service, has come a long way from the half-trained widow with absolutely nothing left to lose.

“Your orders, voivode?” she says, crisply.

“Gather the villagers into the sanctuary,” Of the buildings remaining to Crisane, the sanctuary to the Three-in-One was untouched and the most easily defensible, at least until more structures were rebuilt. Their leaders might have been idiots, but there was no need for the people to suffer any more than they already had. “See to their needs.”

“As you command.” Sofia bows the same way she does everything else: her spine bends the precise degree to give the proper respect, before she straightens, her bone stylus-wand in her hand. “It shall be done.”

~~~
At least someone was getting things done, Razvan thinks sourly, an hour later, and offers up a half-hearted prayer to the Lady Preserver to preserve his temper. The problem of the villagers, at least for the moment, was much easier to take care of than the other problem: Ioan Iliescu was utterly useless, as far as he could tell. No useful information, no willingness to cooperate, and he’ll be trouble later.

The youth, Mircea cel Frumos, he’d expected to not have any information: too young, not an adult yet, bastard besides and not all there. Razvan still isn’t certain whether the boy is mad or simply a half-wit: Ioan doesn’t seem to know or care whether his half-brother’s witless or simply insane, or if he does, he’s being remarkably silent on the matter. At least the boy earns his byname, Mircea the Fair, and if nothing else, he can marry him off to someone or another once he’s of age who won’t mind a mad or simple (or both) consort.

“Do you have anything useful you can give me?” Razvan finally asks, staring dead at Ioan. He’s certain that the man will do something stupid and give him reason to kill him, sooner or later, but he’d prefer it to be sooner, before he manages to stir up a rebellion among the smallfolk who refused to understand or accept the world he’s making to protect them. “You try my patience.”

The young man says nothing for a moment, clearly trying to gather his thoughts (or come up with a convincing lie), before he finally speaks.

“My brother.” Ioan says - speaking the word sounds like he’s holding a rotting fish in his mouth, shows that he doesn’t regard Mircea as his brother, as truly family - and in that moment, he seals his fate.

Razvan had expected he’d do something stupid, but not that stupid: even inciting rebellion would have been less stupid. But Oradea’s most sacred traditions have always been the right of hospitality, even to the worst of enemies, and loyalty to family: those two things together had held together the tattered fragments of Oradea’s society since the death of Grand Prince Mirela centuries ago. And he has no patience for anyone who would break either of those taboos.

“I have no need for a pretty youth to warm my bed,” he fixes Ioan with a flat, contemptuous glare. “If that is all you have to offer-” he lets the threat hang, trying to coax any information out of the soon-to-be-dead man.

“He’s a seer,” Ioan says, more than a little desperately - and that gives Razvan pause. Not enough to reconsider his decision, because Ioan is most likely lying in a vain attempt to save his skin, but the mere possibility of a seer who wasn’t in a cloister was more than intriguing. The cloisters are withholding their visions from him, even when he comes as a supplicant on bended knee.

The chance that the boy is actually a seer - else why would he not be in the cloister, a vowed, untouchable virgin like the rest of them, away from the world- is slim at best. A charlatan, most likely, with a false gift, but if there is any grain of truth to it...

“Truly? I doubt he has any such gift. Would he not have foretold my coming?” Razvan challenges Ioan’s claim - and Mircea’s eyes fix on him, dreaming bright.

“He did.” Ioan says, sourly, with the air of a defeated man. “Father didn’t believe him. No one believed him. For a year. But everything he said...” rage barely simmers beneath the surface of his words, resentment. “Everything he said came true.”

Razvan turns his attention briefly to Mircea - a year? The boy’s about fifteen: fourteen would still be young enough, if barely, to awaken seer powers, on the older end of possibility, the right age where visions could go unnoticed for being most likely too old. And fourteen was the right age to do foolish things like tumble village girls or serving maids, or whatever else struck a boy’s fancy. If he’d done something like that even once...no wonder he wouldn’t have ended up in the cloister. No cloister would have taken him.

The possibilities...if he is a seer, with an uncontrolled but entirely independent gift...

Useful, indeed. Much more useful than marrying him off or giving him away.

“That’s all I need to know.” Razvan cuts Ioan off, before he can say another word.

“Is that enough?” Ioan asks. “Then take him.”

Mircea’s eyes settle on his brother: there is no surprise on his face, as if he’s expecting that his brother would try to sell him to save his own life. Expecting that his brother would break one of the two most sacred customs of their entire society, and Razvan grinds his teeth. The whole reason he’s building this new world is to better Oradea, and this kind of selfishness had no place.

“I don’t need to have your permission,” Razvan says, curtly, and grabs a slender wrist too tightly (ignoring the gasp of pain, but at least the youth was that much aware), yanking Mircea away from his brother. “And we made no bargain - not that I would have made one with a betrayer of kin.”

Ioan opens his mouth to protest, but Razvan cuts him off again: he’s had entirely enough of him. “Enough.” he growls, and in a moment, his guards have the younger man tightly pinioned in an iron grip: perhaps he should have run, but there was nowhere for him to have gone. “Your attitude has no place in Oradea, and I have no use for oathbreakers.”

“...Voivode?” one of his guards questions, sounding hesitant. “What do you want done with him?”

“Kill him.” Razvan orders, and turns away, as his men drag the struggling, swearing Ioan away, until his curses are lost in the wind. He will not honor a betrayer of kin by watching him die. “Slowly. Let not a single drop of his blood touch the earth. And after...hang him and leave him for the ravens, and let it be known what happens to those who trespass against the sacred traditions.”

Lessons would have to be taught, one way or another, he’s certain: it might as well begin now.

Mircea sobs, muffled, his eyes clear with awareness for the first time (and the bones of his wrist are so very fragile in his grip), anchored to the correct time and place. Razvan isn’t even certain what the boy is weeping for - why he mourns for a brother who sold him so very easily, who didn’t think he was family, just for some slim chance that he could live through this.

“Why do you mourn for him? He wouldn’t have mourned for you,” Razvan shakes his head, but has no more time to waste on this matter.

There’s so much to do, and so little time to do it in, and he drags the youth with him impatiently: he’ll have to turn over Mircea to Sofia’s care, at least for now, because he doesn’t know what to do with a possible seer. No one does outside the cloisters, Razvan’s certain, but he’ll leave it to the thaumaturge, and he’s already anticipating the very precise, correct, and disapproving lecture that Sofia will give him. In-between everything else.

Razvan doesn’t have time to regret, and the time for regrets was long past, burned away years ago when he’d set himself on this path. When he’d been younger, he’d hoped for a peace not forged in war and blood: but now that he was older, he understands the harsh truth. Oradea will never have peace, never have stability, unless it is through force, and he’s already long ago made peace with the harsh necessities of what he must do and the prices he must pay.

What must be, must be, in the creation of a better world: his path is set, and woe betide those who stand in his way.