The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  Dmitri knelt, which Belinda did not expect. Knelt, and made himself subservient to her, gave her the position of power. Men had done that with startling frequency this past year, from rough lustful Viktor to the prince of Gallin, and now this dark-haired, hazel-eyed witchlord whose powers and ambitions reached far beyond Belinda's own. The impulse to open her legs and command pleasure boiled up. She squelched it, crushed her thighs together instead, and swallowed a sound of sweet anguish at the spike of half-answered need it drove through her.

  “Tell me more, Dmitri.” Belinda turned her hands palm up, encouraging. Dmitri gathered them in his own and lowered his face to their touch, almost reverent. Soft witchpower, ebbing and flowing within Belinda, gave her tastes of his emotions: not words, not the way she could steal clear thoughts from others, but an abiding sense of the peaks and valleys of what he felt.

  The show of reverence was built on truth. It was not, perhaps, so profound as he pretended, but respect underlay the gesture with no cynicism, no ploys. Familiarity jolted Belinda; she had felt that same respect inherent in her father, bound up in an inexplicable combination of Lorraine Walter and a monstrous creature of silver scales and sinuous shape. The one made sense, though its depth had shocked her: men, in Belinda's experience, paid lip service to high regard and remained smug with confidence of their own superiority. To find her father's heart as true as his words had lain outside of imagination.

  As did the other bewildering images she'd stolen from him, so far outside imagination Belinda had chosen not to dwell on them. Had chosen not to try to understand what Robert had told her she would not, and had instead grasped what she could: that Robert was incapable of surviving without that fathomless streak of esteem, and that she now felt a similar channel in Dmitri. It ran less deeply in Dmitri than in Robert, tempered with a different ambition, but it still lay within him, as much a part of him as his breath or bone.

  “My father says I have a purpose.” Belinda bent over Dmitri's bowed head, her lips almost against his thick black hair. Witchpower sluiced through her, contained within something like the stillness. Shaped by Belinda's will, rather than shaping it. Left to itself it would rage, but bound, it rolled slow and deliberately tantalising. Her heart pushed golden light with every beat, until she thought her fingertips would shine and illuminate Dmitri's hair. Force was unnecessary, when her ends could be achieved through subtlety. It felt right, and that rightness brought a flashing smile to her face. Lorraine, too, avoided force, instead teasing compromise and change out of delicate negotiations. It seemed a fresh and fragile link between mother and daughter, and Belinda took delight in it.

  “Robert says someday I'll understand my purpose, but that for now it's enough to know I have one. I think your plans for me are different from his, dark prince. He has kept me all unknowing, stunting my power and then leaving me to learn its extent myself when it could no longer be held behind the wall in my mind. Will you do the same, or will you do me more honour? You call me a queen, Dmitri. You and I both know that it is your soul's duty to serve your queen in all ways, and as best as you can. You've already begun to teach me, begun nurturing my witchpower where Robert let me founder. Will you tell me his purpose, and yours, and where mine meets in the centre?”

  Ambition and guilt wove together as she spoke, one part of her eager for Dmitri's lessons, the other still bound to the life she'd known. But then, Robert trusted Dmitri, and if the Khazarian witchlord had plans of his own, learning them was only part and parcel of what she had always been. The argument seemed a slender thread, yet enough to hang herself with. Hang herself, or balance upon, depending on how the wind blew.

  Turmoil bubbled within Dmitri's mind, heavy in presence but unclear in detail. Belinda caught her breath and held it a long moment, waiting on Dmitri, waiting on her own curiosity, waiting to see how far he might go unprompted, and when he did not speak, gambled what little she had with all the gentle confidence at her disposal. “You come to conquer in your queen's name,” she whispered. “You come to make this land yours, and not for Irina of Khazar. I know your secrets, Dmitri; I know the things I should not, so you need not bite your tongue and wonder at what you dare say.”

  Astonishment flooded all other expression from his eyes as he lifted them to meet hers. “How can you know?”

  “From Robert, of course.” Surprise lightened her voice, perfect artifice; there was no need to tell him she'd stolen near-incomprehensible images of invasion and conquest from her father's mind. Better to let him think Robert had confided in her, and to draw him out through illicit confidences.

  Witchpower danced through her, unusually subtle, and with it came a daring thought: what she'd taken from Robert's unwilling mind might be improved upon by a glimpse of Dmitri's startled thoughts. She had failed to take words from him, but even pictures were a thing to work with, and so she let witchpower flow, searching for any unguarded idea in the witchlord's mind.

  Nightmares came to her, fire pouring through the sky and a world so scarred by mining and ugly buildings it could hardly be her home. More half-caught ideas flooded with it, but she drew her fingers back from Dmitri's hair, trying not to flinch as her heart made a sick place in her chest. Too much truth went into the words “I don't pretend to understand,” and she meant it, not only for what she'd gleaned from Robert, but for the too-dark and deadly pictures now swimming through her thoughts.

  “I don't pretend to understand,” she whispered again, and thought that at least there was purpose telling this truth: a lie twinned with honesty was a stronger one. “I understand very little beyond the idea you are harbingers of invasion, and that Robert refused to tell me of my part in this war.”

  “There will be no war, not with my queen, not with my people. Belinda-” Dmitri got to his feet suddenly, leaving her open to the fire and flushing with its heat. “You're familiar with brutish conquest, with all manner of violence. Imagine instead that you could take Gallin by slipping across the straits and offering work to its people. Imagine you could offer them salt and butter for prices far below what they might otherwise pay, and that what you asked in return was to be thanked in Aulunian rather than Gallic.” He paced as he spoke, Belinda turning to follow him with her gaze, hungry to take her mind off the pictures she'd stolen. “Imagine you had a better way to harvest wheat, and that you would teach it to the Gallic people, school them in the improvements, but your schoolings were done in Aulunian. And then after that perhaps you have a better way to weave cloth for clothing, or you have better insulation to offer them for their homes, and you would teach them each of these things and in doing so make them a little more Aulunian with each new measure.”

  “Sandalia-well, Javier-would never allow it,” Belinda said pragmatically. “He would see his country being stolen from him in bits and pieces, and retaliate with war.”

  “Yes.” Dmitri turned, smiling. “But perhaps not if you had slow decades or centuries in which you might encroach upon Gallin and make these changes. Perhaps not if you only send one or two into a vast area, little more than missionaries, tolerable because they're so outnumbered.”

  “No one has that kind of time. Robert is aging well, as are you, but it would take generations to-” Belinda came to her feet with understanding. “You've fathered new generations.”

  “To guide and become the heads of state,” Dmitri confirmed. “To shape our progression. Aulun is the heart of the Reformation church; Gallin and Essandia and Cordula all bond together to make the Ecumenic stronghold in Echon. Think, Belinda, if you had no reason to make war over religion, if you turned all those resources toward new ideas and technological development. Think of how the world might change.”

  “But Sandalia is dead. War will come.” Belinda sank back into her seat, fingertips pressed to her temples.

  “War will come.” Dmitri crossed back to her, knelt again, this time with less subservience and more passion in his changea
ble gaze. “And from it we must make peace at any cost.”

  “Robert sent me to Gallin to sniff out a plot for Aulun's throne, to find an excuse to depose Sandalia. Why would he do that if he wanted the Echonian states to work together, to make peace and prosperity?”

  “Because war is a time of innovation. It begins a creative process, and for Echon to move forward, it must make certain leaps that peace will not bring. It's only with those changes that gentler subversion can begin to take place.”

  “And what is the end?” Belinda dropped her hands, frowning. “You serve a…” The alien images stolen from witchlord minds rose up again, bewildering, and she set her mouth, choosing words with cautious precision. “A queen from a foreign land.”

  Humour glinted in Dmitri's eyes, telling Belinda her careful choice of words betrayed how little she understood. But he nodded, and she took a steadying breath before continuing. “The purpose of ruling a land is to gather taxes and tribute, to mine its salt and gold and iron, and to call on its men for armies when the need arises. Is this your queen's purpose?”

  Dmitri made a moue, a small throw away gesture. “It's what I would offer you. My queen will never come here, no more than Lorraine might go to the Columbias to look on the red savages.”

  Each of Belinda's heartbeats became a knife's blade, cutting fascination and fear into separate things. Witchpower pooled in the silence separating beats, warming her blood, urging her to seize what was offered. Duty lay in the contractions and releases: duty to Lorraine, duty to Robert, and a never-imagined question of what her duties to herself were danced between them. “Then you would make me a queen and a vassal both, paying tithe to a monarch I would never see.”

  The words descended around her like snowflakes, each light and thoughtful, barely there and yet building to a white cloud that could break wagons and roofs with its weight. She looked within, searching out how ambitious witchpower reacted to the idea: how it responded to putting herself on high, but not quite at the pinnacle of power.

  To her surprise, it lay satisfied, whispering this will serve; you will serve, in contentment. Belinda absorbed that, looked for meaning in it, and found what she sought.

  It was not enough.

  Oh, it was more than enough, had she been one raised to expect a throne, had she been born to the privilege that Javier de Castille knew. She might have accepted becoming queen and vassal both, had she been born to that kind of duty. But she had not been, and there was sudden secret delight in expecting more of herself, of Dmitri, of the world itself. There was a game afoot, and she had yet to see how the board was laid out. With careful clarity, Belinda murmured, “No.”

  Shock rose off Dmitri in a wave, so quick and hard Belinda was glad she'd returned to her seat. Within her, matching Dmitri's shock with its own, witchpower surged and turned the world yellow. Belinda denied every outward example of what it took to rein that power back in: she did not allow herself to clench her jaw or tighten her fingers on her chair's arms; didn't permit her spine to straighten or her stomach to clench. She remained in repose, relaxed and calm in the face of twin witchpower storms.

  Unlike Javier, though, Dmitri didn't batter her magic with his, didn't pound on it until she failed. It danced and sparked around him, black magic where hers was gold, where Javier's was silver; the colours, she thought, meant nothing, no more than an individual fondness for wearing a particular shade. One hue was not more powerful than another, or more dangerous, except in the skill its wielder had.

  And now, for now, she was certain Dmitri still had the greater skill. It was only that streak of respect that kept him from dominating her the way Javier had, and it was that streak which made him more difficult and more fascinating to play.

  “No,” Belinda said again, and this time she let a tremble come into her voice. This would be easier with Javier, with Marius, with Viktor; with any man who was not Dmitri, her father's friend, sub-ordinant, and partner. It would be easier with a man who believed women inferior, as Dmitri and Robert seemed not to do. A man such as that, one like those she knew, would assume her fear and uncertainty to be natural, and his place as her guide and teacher to be obvious. Dmitri did, she thought, believe his position as her teacher to be obvious, but only because she was untutored, not because she was incapable.

  And it would be easier with a man she'd lain with, because despite what the witchlord thought, sex was power. It deepened the link between Belinda and her lover, made stealing thoughts and guiding behaviours easier to accomplish. Perhaps she could unlearn that, but in the now, it was the weapon she had at her disposal. “I cannot, my lord. I am not bold or skilled enough, and I am far too alone. What you suggest, should it fail, rips away what little structure I've known. I have Robert, now. I have my duty to the queen. Perhaps it seems like nothing to you, but they are all I have. I will not risk it.”

  Furious witchpower boiled through her body, searching for a crack in her armour: searching for a way to burst free and assure Dmitri that every word she said was a lie, that she would be driven, will she or not, toward the ends he suggested. But she was diamond, or better yet granite, too hard to be broken, too solid to be seen through. She lowered her eyes, not because she was afraid her gaze might give her away, but because youth and fear and penance and apology could all be read into that minute piece of body language. She lowered her eyes, so she only heard, did not see, Dmitri's approach, and when he touched her it was gentle, as though she had become fragile. His fingers stirred her hair, nothing more, before he murmured, “You are not alone, Belinda.”

  “You are different, my lord.” Belinda put a crack into her voice, kept her eyes lowered, waited on the weight of his hand changing; waited on his inevitable question: “Different?”

  “You were rough with me in Khazar. Impatient, almost angry. Here, you have been… different.” Now she glanced up, one brief look. He stood at her shoulder, almost behind her, so his glimpse of her was all eyes and appeal; she could, when she wished, be appealing, even innocent. Then she spoke to the floor again, gaze locked downward and words soft with a deliberation she didn't intend him to hear. “Because of my witchpower waking, I think. Because of what I asked of you at the abbey.”

  “Asked,” Dmitri said, amused.

  Belinda ducked her head. “Demanded,” she admitted in a whisper. “But you didn't give me all I asked for, so I know you acted of your own will, not mine. Perhaps that's a man's talent,” she added with a bitterness she didn't feel. Javier, Marius, Viktor, had all done as she'd forced or connived them into doing, from speaking lies to toppling a maid to freeing Belinda from a prison she would never have left alive on her own. She had no fears for her own talents; her purpose was to offer Dmitri the upper hand, the guiding touch.

  “It could be your talent,” Dmitri said. She could feel caution shifting in him, examining her stance; examining, she hoped, his own. He had treated her with deference in teaching her, even when exasperation was clear in his voice and words. Belinda wished she could taste his thoughts, to see if they followed the path she hoped they might. “I was eager to awaken your power, in Khazar,” he said carefully. “Now, with it aroused, I had imagined…”

  He had imagined, Belinda expected, that she would become as she had become, testy and angered by men showing dominance over her, over the innate assumptions that she was weak and incapable, and that she should naturally subsume her desires to fit what was expected of her. She couldn't allow herself the luxury of holding her breath. It would give too much away, hint too strongly that she waited on a progression of thoughts and dared not move again until they'd been worked out.

  She felt his conclusion in the way his hand rested in her hair. The touch had been light, asking permission; it changed, taking possession. Listening to stolen thoughts became unnecessary with that subtle change: it said that he had followed through to realisations that would be anathema if he had not watched how men and women acted together for so many years. Belinda allowed her head to tilt back a
little under that new weight, acquiescing to it. Making herself the creature men expected her to be, as she'd always done: making herself, in the here and now, seem weaker and more biddable than Dmitri presumed she would be. Making her fear larger than her ambition, and her need for guidance greater than it was.

  Anyone could reach, greedily, for power, snatching and grasping at it like the edges of a dream. But Belinda had been raised as a secret, a weapon hidden behind thrones and courtrooms and lies, and to retain that, to build on it, to hold in her grasp not only her magic but the ambitions of the witchlord men around her…

  That was power.

  She had time enough to learn under Dmitri's tutelage. He was of a nature to accept her word as law, but the weight of his hand in her hair said he was ready enough to be the master. The better she knew his talent, knew his mind, knew his ways, the better she could judge whether his goals were ones she might support. Her own witch-power wanted more of him, wanted more of her, but she was its master, whether it spiked or throbbed with interest when appealing favours were laid at her feet. She had learned more of Robert's purposes in the last few minutes than she had in an entire lifetime previously, and that gave her a better sense of the game that her father had never intended her to be a player in, but only a pawn.

  He ought, she thought with razor-edged surety, to have thought better of her than that. For all his passion for his queen, both mortal and… not, for all his reverence of Lorraine and females, it seemed he thought of Belinda as a tool, something to be manipulated and used. There would be more satisfaction by far in coming into her own than there could be in anything given to her by Dmitri or by Robert, be it the crown Dmitri made noises of or Robert's more ambiguous goals. They could all be manipulated and taken into hand. She had only to show patience, and patience was something she was very good at.

  It was only the shell of a plan, but shells could be filled. If nothing else, Sandalia's death proved that, but indeed, all of Belinda's life had proven it. Du Roz's startled gaze in the moment before he fell to his death flashed through her mind; Gregori Kapnist's burgeoning illness, so much more rapid than arsenic could account for, and the death that had come on so suddenly it had earned Belinda an accusation of witchery.