The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  Colour burns Sacha's cheeks, making him look younger than he is. Akilina thinks of him as a boy even without such reminders, though he's less than a decade her junior. “Word from Cordula says Javier returns to Lutetia by sea. Will he stop here?”

  Still ruddy with imagined pride, Sacha shakes his head. “He spent too much time in Isidro already, and spring is all but on us. He'll need to rally an army and move on Alunaer by June, so he's got no more time to lose. He'll go straight to Lutetia.”

  “There to meet his oldest friend.” Akilina lifts her fingers, a welcoming soft gesture toward the young lord, and he catches them with a light gallantry that would stand him well if he'd learn to use it at all times. “Guide him well, Sacha,” and this she says with all seriousness, because an empty Gallic throne is not to Khazar's advantage, not with her new marriage to a Cordulan king. Rodrigo and Javier are tied by blood, and present a unified front that no other contender for Lutetia's crown could offer her. Or Khazar, she reminds herself fastidiously. After all, she does what she does for Khazar, not herself.

  Irina wouldn't believe that, either, and that may well be part of why the imperatrix has permitted this marriage. Akilina sniffs, making a mockery of insult in her thoughts. She aimed for a power behind the throne by choosing a lover in Gregori Kapnist, not the throne itself. Of course, had the handsome count managed to wed Irina, then as his lover Akilina might have seen herself just one step from the imperial crown. A pity Belinda Primrose had thwarted that chain of events by murdering poor Gregori. That he most likely would have met the same end should he have taken the throne and taken Akilina to wife is utterly beside the point.

  Akilina's sniff turns to a smile full of unexpected and genuine good nature. The web is a tangled one, and rarely spins in any predictable manner. Machinations for one throne have gotten her another, and when all is said and done, Akilina intends on being mistress to an empire that will rival Irina's. She turns her thoughts from conquering and her smile to Sacha, and finishes her plea to him: “Guide Javier wisely, and we'll all of us profit from Alunaer's fall.”

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  7 April 1588 † The Western Ocean, off the coast of Gallin

  Javier suspected Eliza's complicity in the matter of the gondola boy. The child had been hauled from belowdecks on the fourth day from Aria Magli looking suspiciously well-fed and not even slightly repentant.

  A tremendous argument followed his discovery, the captain offended that anyone should stow away on his ship and determined to put the boy off on the coast. Eliza refused, and since then tensions had been high. Bad enough that she was a woman on board, but far worse that she dared cross the captain, and insult doubled when Javier indicated she should have her own way. Marius cracked a smile and elbowed Javier in approval of his errant wisdom. The king of Gallin could afford to anger a sea captain or two, but not the woman he intended to wed.

  Tomas had refused, thus far, to perform the ceremony. Not for the first time Javier eyed the captain, and not for the first time, put the thought away. First, the man was irritated with him, and second, a shipboard wedding presided over by a merchant sailor lacked both pomp and circumstance, both of which should attend a royal wedding.

  Third, the disconcerting realisation that Eliza had agreed to bed him, but hadn't as yet said she'd wed him, had crept up through Javier's haze of lusty good cheer. She could refuse him nothing, but somehow had thus far refused him this, or avoided him in it. Twice he'd approached her; twice the gondola boy had deflected him, standing arms akimbo and boisterously proclaiming his own worthiness as the light of Eliza's heart. Twice the child had nearly gone over the boat's edge by Javier's hand, but Eliza's mirth had stayed him both times, and left him ever more impotent. Thwarted ambition bubbled under his skin, silver warm beneath the grey April skies, but words and wits seemed to leave him at night when he might have spoken privately to the dark-eyed beauty he meant to make his queen.

  During the increasingly long days he found ways to convince himself that that was for the better: it meant the impulse to command her with his witchpower was under his control. But with Gallin's coast growing steadily darker by the hour, he wondered-

  “What did you promise the Caesar, my lord?” Tomas's murmur interrupted Javier's thoughts, earning a flinch, then a frown.

  “How do you know I promised anything?”

  “Because we saw the Parnan navy gathering when we sailed back around the peninsula, and because the Caesar will only bend so far for the Pappas.” Tomas put his hands on the rail, a light balancing touch that made him look as though he belonged on a ship. “I grew up in Cordula, Javier. I grew up watching the interplay between the Pappas and the Caesar. The Caesar is a devout man, but unlike your uncle he's always in a power struggle, back and forth with the Pappas and the Primes. He'll rise to the church's call because his faithful heart demands it, but he'll not commit full resources without a certainty of stability from outside Parna. He needs his army and his navy to hold his own country So if the navy is gathering, you've made a promise he believes you'll keep. What was it?”

  “Marriage. In a year if the war goes badly, in two if it goes well, but no longer than that or he'll withdraw his support.”

  “And yet you've romanced that woman.”

  A near-silent bark burst in the roof of Javier's mouth. “Ah. This is what you really wanted to talk about.”

  “Am I wrong, your majesty? You have an alliance built on a promise you seem to have no intention of keeping, and you would throw it away for a guttersnipe?”

  “Watch yourself, priest,” Javier said mildly. “That guttersnipe is as well-educated as you are, and dear to a king.”

  “I understand that,” Tomas grated, “but I also understand that we are near to Lutetia and that the king must not be allowed to make a foolish public statement that could shatter his alliances before his war has begun.”

  Javier pushed away from the rail, eyebrows lifted. “The priest has grown teeth.”

  “The priest was asked to join you as a moral compass, majesty, and finds himself-” Tomas broke off, gold eyes flashing irritation, and began again. “I find myself unable to hold my tongue on political matters, either, Javier, because your imperative is greater by far than pleasing your libido.”

  “I need Eliza. She's of the Gallic people. They'll love me for loving her.”

  “You're their king. They'll love you anyway. You need Parna, and Khazar if you can get it.”

  Javier sucked his cheeks in, gaze gone to the shore again. “So you would have me make her nothing more than a symbol to be set aside. I have no way out, Tomas. Marius will have nowhere left in his heart for me if I use her so.”

  “Marius has always been too gentle.” Eliza's voice came from behind them, rising and falling on the ocean wind. Javier turned to find her gaze hard as agates, and cursed that he'd not noticed her scent on the air. “They'll love you for loving me, Javier? Surely even a guttersnipe might aim higher than being a tool to funnel emotion through. All you had to do was ask. The game of love was unnecessary. Go away, priest. The king and I have things to discuss.”

  Tomas's eyes flickered to Javier's. Javier waved him away and the priest's nostrils flared before he bowed, sharply, and strode across the ship's deck to disappear below. Eliza watched him go, and Javier watched her: long body, rich curves, clothes dampened by seawater pressed against her skin, and he said, “It's not only a matter of politics, Liz.”

  “Isn't it?” She came to his side, a finger-length of hair tucked behind her ear where the wind couldn't snatch it away. “Then your timing is convenient, my lord.”

  Javier's voice dropped. “Please don't call me that.”

  “What other weapons do I have against you? My king, my brother, my love, my life. I would have played the part you need me to, Javier. You must know that.”

  “Yes.” The word came slowly, torn away by rising winds. Unless their direction changed, they'd not be putting in at Lutetia tonight; t
he coast would be too dangerous to navigate, open seas less likely to shatter a fragile hull. “And yet when Marius said you deserved better than that, I thought him right.”

  “You thought him right, but do you love me?”

  Heaviness pulled Javier's heartbeats into slow measures. “Belinda answered something in me that I thought couldn't be answered. She has witchpower, and showed me I wasn't alone. I would have thrown my crown away for her.” His eyebrows pinched, words coming hard. “That was passion. It was desperation. Perhaps it was love. But none of it was as terrifying as standing on your doorstep, with that idiot child spinning sonnets to charm you, while I struggled for the boldness to keep my crown for you. Belinda was right. I'd grown inured to true beauty, because you were always at my side. I think perhaps I've always loved you, and have never been wise enough to see it.”

  “You've always loved Sacha and Marius, too.”

  Javier gave her a sharp look that twisted into humour. “Aye, but never enough to bed them. The balance between the four of us was fragile, wasn't it? It would have been easy to tip into something that would have changed us all, and I never wanted to risk it. Easier to see you as a sister, until Belinda came and upset it all. Now I find myself here with you, and… Liz, do you not want to be queen?”

  “I want to be a mother, Javier, and neither dream is within my grasp. Turn your magic to my womb and give me my blood back, and aye, I'll want to be your queen, but I will not watch you father a bastard on some serving girl of no higher birth but greater fertility. You have what you need in all of us, Jav The poor and guttersnipes in me, the merchants in Marius, and the young lordlings eager for war in Sacha. You're our king,” she said softly. “Use us as you must. Perhaps we all deserve better, but this is the price of befriending a prince.

  “Come, now,” she added into his pained silence. “Belowdecks, to tell your priest he'll have his way, and then you've a speech to practise for, king of Gallin. Lutetia awaits.”

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  TOMAS DEL'ABBATE

  10 April 1588 † Lutetia, capital of Gallin

  Tomas is beginning to think God has a cruel sense of humour.

  A storm came over the sea yesterday, but this morning dawned clear and bright over a sailing ship washed clean of all visible signs of sin. The captain might have painted it white to make it gleam more, but he could have done nothing else. God might have commanded the sun to rise in the west so the light would be behind the new king of Gallin, but not even He could have done much else to trumpet Javier's return so beautifully.

  It is on calm waters with a westerly wind that the ship sails into Lutetia, and Tomas the priest has no idea how the city knows to turn out for this particular ship at this particular time, but they do, and they have.

  They're gathered by their thousands, lining the docks, lining the riverbanks, their voices raised in a cheer so solid that it seems a wonder that the wind is enough to push the ship forward against it. Javier's hair, which has grown long, is fire in the morning light, red and gold, and he stands at the ship's prow a pale aesthete thing of power. He is not clad in royal finery, but wears the simple rough shirt of a sailor, breeches buckled with a broad belt, and long boots that make a fine line of his slender legs. A naked sword hangs at his hip and catches sunlight, making silver streaks bounce in the crew's eyes and sending bolts of light into the shore-bound crowd.

  He is, in these clothes, of the people, and is, by the wearing of a sword unsheathed, an open declaration of war. He's a thing of beauty, and this without even a hint of the magic Tomas knows he can command. Tomas has learned to feel that power, a weight in the air and a thickness in his own chest, and it is not yet present in the young king. This is pure humanity graced by divine right, and if Javier can command orgasmic screams with nothing more than his arrival, then if God has granted him the witchpower as well, it must be out of a perverse, inhuman sense of satisfaction at Tomas's discomfort.

  It's a sign of how far he's fallen that Tomas doesn't even chide himself for the arrogance of that thought. Instead, like everyone else, his full attention is for Javier, and then for the two whom he gestures to join him.

  Tomas has become accustomed to seeing Eliza Beaulieu in men's clothes, though his eyes twist away from the shadows of her body within that inappropriate garb. But this morning she is playing a different part, and even Tomas, who neither likes nor approves of the cheapside woman, finds it hard to look away from her.

  She has taken the fine black wig of her own hair from safekeeping, and shining locks are bound up with a handful of curls to cascade free. It doesn't lend her the height that so many hairstyles offer women, but Eliza is tall, and perhaps the added extravagance of a dramatic hairstyle would detract from Javier. Her gown already does, to some degree: it is one of the loose floating things of her own creation, shelving her breasts high against a low scooped neck, and the layers upon layers of fabric are so light as to be easily caught in the wind; it billows and presses against her body, as provocative in its way as the men's clothes she likes to wear.

  Eliza is beautiful in repose, almost icy, unapproachable. But when she smiles something happens to nearly perfect features, and she becomes, if not ordinary, at least mortal. She is smiling now, and with that smile and her soft hair and softer dress, she's captivating. The city knows this woman, and from Tomas's understanding, many of them despise her, but not now. Now she is the king's left hand, a creature of unearthly beauty and delicacy, and that she comes from the streets and has risen so high is, in this moment, a triumph. Javier is right, in his way: marrying her would be a coup. But Tomas is also right, and it's a step the young king can't afford to take.

  At Javier's right hand is Marius, who looks terribly earth-born beside the other two. Tomas has not known the merchant man without Javier, not in any meaningful way; Marius arrived to tell Rodrigo of Sandalia's death literally within a few hours of Javier's impetuous Isidrian entrance. Marius had been sombre, as might be expected, and then their lives had all been shattered with the advent of Javier's witchpower. Of all of them, Marius had accepted that power the most easily, his heart still given unquestioningly to Javier. Now, in his darker clothes and with his feet spread wide as he stands at Javier's side, the look of him is trustworthy and solid. He looks like a man to be depended upon for practical matters, and as such helps to ground the fiery-haired king and the astonishing woman at his side.

  All of this in their presentation of themselves, and not a word yet spoken. Thronged viewers along the shores call out and applaud. With their will to embrace Javier already so strong, Tomas cannot imagine that they will refuse him his war, or that they could grow more fervoured in their enthusiasm for him.

  A drawbridge pulls up in front of them, shuddering ropes straining with water and weight as men kick oxen to a higher speed. A young man dangles himself from the bridge as it rises, waving like a fool, and Javier's unexpected laugh breaks over the sounds of the crowd. Eliza shouts with delight and runs forward, but Javier waves her back, then lifts his hand higher and calls out a halt to the astonished bridge-keepers, who haul their beasts of burden to a standstill.

  Marius turns on a heel, snapping, “Drop anchor, drop anchor!” to the captain as Javier, lithe and light as a boy, swings himself over the ship's prow and runs the length of the figurehead. He should fall: the maiden who breaks the seas is soaking and slippery with seaweed, but watching him, Tomas never doubts he will succeed.

  Frantic, the captain bellows orders to drop anchor, and chains rattle and scream, water splashing as iron weight slams into it. The bridge is drawn barely far enough to allow the ship's body to scrape through; the sails catch and twist, eliciting a gasp of horrified expectation from the watching crowds, and a heartfelt curse from the captain.

  Javier, with the confidence of a young goat, flings himself from the figurehead and toward the youth dangling on the bridge.

  There is an instant where this is not going to work. There
is too much distance, too much movement from the ship, too much give in the bridge. Tomas's bowels clench in sympathy for a king about to be half-drowned and entirely humiliated.

  But the man on the bridge finds an extra inch or two of reach, and seizes Javier's wrist with surety, as though they've practised this a hundred times. Javier bellows with delight and swings upward, the man's arms bulging with muscle and his neck straining with effort. Then Javier is on the bridge and the two of them are howling like fools, pounding each other on the back and shouting nonsense that is lost to the greater screams from the viewers. Eliza and Marius do a madcap dance on the deck, swinging each other around and shrieking with laughter, and Tomas can hear none of it over the uproarious joy roaring from the throats of the Gallic people.

  The man on the bridge with Javier is sandy-haired, stocky, dressed more beautifully than his king, and must, therefore, be Sacha Asselin, the last in Javier's family of friends. Javier looks slight beside the other man, though he's taller; with both Sacha and Marius at his side, he will be flanked by muscle that most would think twice before rushing. It could not have been deliberate; all the world knows that these four have been friends since childhood, and there is no way Javier could have selected two strong men and one beautiful woman deliberately.

  Javier could not have; God, perhaps, might have. Uncertainty blooms in Tomas's chest, making his breath come shallow. His faith is shaken; this, he knows. The Pappas didn't experience what Tomas has, didn't suffer the loss of will, and it does not disturb that great man to use a king and discard him.

  Tomas realises he is glad he will never be the Pappas himself, and this is a revelation: he had supposed it might be a dream of his. Now he knows he isn't made for such pragmatic and hard decisions as the Pappas faces. And the Pappas, perhaps, cannot risk a crisis of faith, which Tomas struggles with even now. He believes a man who stole his will must be a man guided by the devil's hand, but looking at the formidable gathering of friends capering with joy, he wonders if God has put them together for a reason, and if his own arrogance and fear is blinding him to a truth that the Pappas can see.