The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  “It's a losing tactic for them regardless of what they choose. We could split our forces and still meet them with even odds at either of those places. Or we could wait here until we know where they're coming from, and meet them in battle outside Lutetia.” Javier sucked his cheeks in, still sullen. “That would be to our tactical advantage.”

  “So you were paying attention. The army rides under Cordula's banner, but they're yours to command. What's your will?”

  Guilt surged through Javier, burning away insult and sourness alike. Rodrigo's expression gave no hint that his words were meant to be loaded, and Javier wished, briefly, that the small skill he'd developed in sensing emotion might burgeon, so he wouldn't have to grasp his uncle's shoulder to see if that innocence was real. Asking him his will, after months of struggling to leave men their own, seemed a purposeful cruelty. Javier made a fist, and his voice, when he spoke, was rough and tight. “I'll hear the mass for the dead before I decide.”

  Hear the mass for the dead, and bend a penitent knee to Tomas so he might hear the priest's advice. He was king, and his will meant to be law, and yet the thought of it stated so directly sent hummingbird wings of fear fluttering in his chest. His will must be that, and nothing more: his, without bending others to it, not even if the Pappas had graced him with God's blessing. It was a test, as every moment of his life had been a test. He had failed a few bitter times, but not again. Tomas would guide him. Tomas would tell him what to do.

  SACHA ASSELIN

  It is not only Rodrigo who notices that, rather than go to his lifelong friends, Javier de Castille turns to the beautiful Cordulan priest after the mass. Sacha Asselin, still bundled against sickness and grateful for the warm blankets, sees it, too. He's been longer separated from his prince, now his king, than the other two, and when Javier hurries after Tomas rather than so much as glance their way, Sacha turns to Marius and Eliza with confusion written across his features.

  Marius is the one who makes a gesture of acceptance. “It's been this way for months, Sacha. Since he arrived in Isidro.”

  “Javier's changed,” Eliza says quietly. “More than the crown on his head, it's…”

  “The witchpower.” Sacha grates the words out. Watching his king these last few days, it seems to him a gift that Javier told him about the witchpower himself, rather than let Eliza and Marius do it. It shouldn't be a gift: it should be something so matter of course as to be utterly unquestionable; there should be no relief or surprise that Javier took the trouble to unfold his secrets to his oldest friend.

  That it feels like a favour knots a black rope around Sacha's heart, and draws it tight.

  Marius sighs, but before he can make an excuse for Javier, Sacha cuts him off. “He's always been reluctant to stand tall. Now he's hiding behind the priest's robes rather than-”

  “Rather than what?” Eliza's bold enough to interrupt; Eliza never has had as much sense of propriety as Marius is burdened with. “He's afraid, Sacha. He can do things no man should be able to.” A hint of pink washes along her cheekbones, though the way she continues speaking gives no hint that she knows, or cares. Sacha, though, notices, and jealousy indistinguishable from anger scores him. Eliza doesn't notice that, either, as she says, “The Pappas has blessed him now, but he's spent his whole life fighting this power of his-”

  “Instead of embracing it and becoming the power in Echon that he could be!”

  Eliza stares. “He's leading the combined might of the Cordulan armies in a fight for the abandoned souls in Reformation Aulun, and he's only just past his third and twentieth birthday. What else would you have him do?”

  “He should have moved for Sandalia's throne years ago, when he reached his majority. Then he'd be a respected and known quantity amongst the crowned heads-” Sacha has always been frustrated with Javier's unwillingness to put himself ahead of his petite mother. Now, knowing that Javier refused not only that, but his own astonishing power, sends flashes of rage through Sacha's vision, even when he speaks with Eliza.

  “Oh, aye,” Eliza says dourly, “because as an untried youth he's had such difficulty in convincing Cordula's crowned kings to support him. If he needs Tomas's faith to shore his up-”

  “It's more than that,” Marius murmurs, surprising the other two into silence. “Tomas can resist the witchpower, at least for a little while. Like Bea-Belinda-could. It draws Javier, moth to flame. He's spent a lifetime not bending others to his will, though we all know well enough that we couldn't say no to him.”

  “He's royalty,” Eliza says with a sniff. “He doesn't need magic to be irresistible.” There's the briefest pause, one in which the corner of her mouth turns up as if she has a secret, and she adds, “At least, I never thought so.”

  Marius glances between Eliza and Sacha, then drops his gaze again before Sacha can read the merchant man's thoughts in his eyes. “That's true. So resistance of any kind is appealing. He finds in Tomas something he's never found in any of us.”

  “And so we're to be replaced?” Acid spills through Sacha's question, and Marius shakes his head.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We might have feared the same from Beatrice's arrival, but in the end she wasn't…”

  “She wasn't what she said she was,” Eliza says flatly. “She wasn't what he needed. She wasn't us.”

  “Neither is Tomas.” Marius sounds calm, utterly certain of himself. “Tomas is a thing Javier needs, but he can't replace us. Not even Javier's witchpower can fit Tomas into his life the way we're a part of it. Let him take the time he needs to build confidence in himself, Sacha. The witchpower is…” He crooks a smile. “Alarming, and he's spent his whole life fearing it was the devil's gift. He'll come back to us, as much as he can. He's a king now. Things change.”

  Anger blooms in Sacha's breast. “We shouldn't change this much. He needed us on the Cordoglio as it came into Lutetia. He needs us still. He should be able to see that, and come to us.”

  “My love for him won't change,” Marius says steadily, quietly. “He knows that. If we can go through all that we have gone through, if we can find forgiveness over bitter matters-”

  “Belinda,” Sacha spits, and Marius exhales, then nods.

  “Belinda, and…” A thought seems to come to him, and he pushes it away, changing his mind about speaking aloud. Sacha draws breath to pursue it, but Marius shakes his head and murmurs, “It doesn't matter. Belinda can be named the sum total of the deepest cuts between Javier and myself. The rest are details, and I will not be bled dry by them. He's certain of us, Sacha. That's what he needs, to never have to doubt that we stand beside him, loyal and loving. Let the priest guide him through difficult times, and perhaps we ourselves can learn something of standing against our king from Tomas. It seems he wants that as much as he needs faith.”

  Silence takes them after that, and it's a long while before, by unspoken agreement, three old friends rise and go in search of a drink. To avail themselves, without asking, of the king's finest wine, and to wonder if Marius is right, or if their fourth is already lost to them.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  4 June 1588 † The Aulunian Straits

  With the storm's passing, Belinda drew what vestiges of magic she had left around herself and let the witchpower hide her from sight. She didn't move beyond that, other than to sit on the soggy ground and draw her knees to her chest as she stared across the straits. Her heartbeat, a constant low thud in her ears, told her she was alive, but everything beyond that passed her by. She could see that wind stirred grass and dirt, that seagulls rose and fell on it along the cliffs' edges. The birds opened their beaks to cry, but no piercing sound reached her ears. Exhaustion numbed her until she couldn't say if her fingers and toes were cold, or whether her skin itched where drying hair lay plastered to it.

  She believed that she could, if she must, draw shreds of composure around herself and become the primrose assassin she'd always been. Her will would stretch that far: she had made a life of insisting that it did.<
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  That, though, was if she must, and only Lorraine's direct order might command a must. Witchpower didn't so much as hunger for sex, as it had done the only other time she'd emptied her reserves so far. That stirred faint astonishment: the power had been bound to sex, had fed from it and been replenished by it, since the moment Belinda had broken through the barrier in her mind. To find it unlinked now, to have no hunger in her body demanding renewal through passion, opened a lock within her, and her next breath came more easily. Dmitri had said sex and power were not one and the same: to have them uncoupled could only become a strength.

  One to explore later, though. It was enough to sit and not feel the cold, not feel the damp, and to watch as the navy, unexpectedly triumphant, returned to port. The first ships brought a smile to her face, cracking the mask of weariness that had settled over it.

  Thumps of satisfied relief broke her facade further as the whole of the fleet came into sight, their joy at victory a palpable thing, even over the distance. Belinda watched until their nearness was eaten by the cliffs' height, and then, smiling, put her head against her knees to gather warmth and savour her triumph.

  That was how Robert Drake found her, a full two days later.

  His hand was shockingly warm on her shoulder. Belinda hadn't known she was cold until his touch told her otherwise; she hadn't, indeed, known anything until that moment. She lifted her head to see an afternoon like the one she'd closed her eyes against, only with greater heat in the air, and no lingering weight of a storm on the horizon. Other things were different, too: a stiffness in her body like that of sleeping on hard ground, though she had no recollection of doing so. Witchpower was replenished in her mind, golden, strong, and calm, demanding nothing. The fleet anchored offshore was whole and bright and proud: when last she'd seen it, sails had needed mending and the men on deck had needed rest. Now ships had full sails and were littered with soldiers in their bright red coats, awaiting the tide so they might make war on Gallin.

  “The queen is waiting for you, Primrose.” Robert sounded oddly gentle, a voice she hadn't heard from him since she was a child. Not since before she began the game of stillness; since before Lorraine had visited Robert's country estates and Belinda had been denied seeing her. That he should use such a voice now seemed both strange and worrying, though worry itself lay too far outside of where she still was to take much root. It took a while for her to put words together: speech had become remote and unimportant as she'd sat on the cliffs.

  Finding it again told her she needed water: her throat was parched and sticky, and her voice was that of a querulous old woman's. “The queen has given me orders to ride with the army.”

  “Things have changed, Primrose. Things are different now. Here.” Robert crouched beside her and offered a wineskin.

  Belinda took it and sucked the liquid down greedily. It was watered to the point of having almost no flavour, but it moistened the membranes of her throat and tasted as sweet as anything she'd ever known. Remoteness faded as the wine washed down, bringing her back to the world and rooting her in it again. “Different how?”

  “Come back to the city,” Robert said. “You'll see.”

  There were horses a little way from the cliff-top, both with saddles meant for riding astride; only as she mounted did Belinda notice her clothes were shredded and torn. Robert tossed a cloak her way and she pulled it on, glad that it was lightweight under the summer sun.

  They came on the gathered army outside the city walls. Robert rode through them with easy confidence, but Belinda reined in, following more slowly as she took in the men around her, and their icons of faith.

  The Madonna was everywhere, bathed in blue, her face not unlike Lorraine's, though her hair was dark. Her sign graced their armbands and their banners, and Belinda rode by artists making sketches as quickly as they could. Soldiers walked away a ha'penny the poorer and stuffing the queen of Heaven's likeness into their shirts and coats. More finished pieces of art littered shields and tent-sides, the haloed Madonna standing at a cliff's edge, hands raised to the heavens and holy power streaming from her. Some of these did dare to make Her as titian as the Aulunian queen, nearly a blasphemy in the Reformation church. Indeed, for a faith intended to strip away the Ecumenic pomposity and worship of idols, to see so many men clinging to the Madonna bordered on heresy.

  It would be worse still should someone somehow recognise the young woman who had proven the inspiration for those drawings. Belinda, half horrified and all astonished, tightened her cloak and drew up its hood despite the warmth of the day. She kicked her horse to speed and caught up with Robert, who said nothing, and said it loudly. Chastened, she fell back a length and rode into the city with him in silence. Everywhere it was the same: an uprising of faith in Aulun's rightness, in the Madonna, in Lorraine, the virgin queen so clearly beloved by God. Belinda wondered what they would say to learning of her existence, and how she gave lie to the pure and untouched image Lorraine had worked so hard to create.

  Robert brought her to the palace, but through the servants' entrance, and held his tongue until they reached chambers that Belinda knew were his own, a gift from a doting queen. They were sumptuous, more so than Belinda would expect from her father, but then, it would have been Lorraine's decree that had decorated them. Not even Robert would dare to refinish the room against Lorraine's tastes. Belinda's gaze went to heavy tapestries and old paintings that could easily cover spy-holes, and, half mocking, murmured, “We are unobserved?”

  Thickness filled the air, turning it to a kind of hiss: the same off-kilter feeling and sound she might have gotten from stuffing bits of cloth into her ears. Robert, drily, said, “We are now,” and Belinda was surprised to hear him. He said, “Sit, Primrose,” and gestured her to a chair before a low-banked fire. Belinda threw off her cloak and did so, looking for wine; Robert poured a glass and brought it to her before sitting as well.

  “Do you know that Belinda Primrose is dead?” he asked after a sip. “Beheaded by Sandalia, while Robert Drake was ransomed?”

  “I had heard.” Belinda stilled her fingers, not allowing them to touch her throat. She had imagined more than once that her life might end on a headman's block, and for a few brief hours in a Lutetian prison, had thought it would be sooner rather than later. But some other unfortunate girl with similar colouring had met Belinda's fate that day, and she could find no guilt within her for surviving. “I envy your escape.”

  “As well you might, but the whole of it may give us an opportunity.” Robert tapped a finger against his wineglass, then set the glass aside and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands folded together. “Heed me well, Primrose, for this is how it shall go.”

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  4 June 1588 † Alunaer; the queen's court

  She had come to court twice as a child: once to murder du Roz, and a second time some seventeen months later to observe the way courtiers danced around one another, manipulating and pressing advantages, falling back and regrouping. It wasn't until she was older that she saw the parallels to battle in their interactions, but at thirteen she hadn't needed to. She had come to learn, so she might be able to participate in those dances herself, should the day come when it proved necessary.

  Lorraine had been on holiday during the six weeks Belinda was at court, and not many, if any, would remember the ordinary girl in the unremarkable gowns. She dressed better than a servant, as she required access to the upper classes, but for a girl who was the adopted daughter of the queen's favourite, she drew surprisingly little attention. Only now did Belinda wonder if Robert's witch-power had had a hand in that. She wouldn't ask: to her mind, doing so would give her father a subtle edge in their own game, and she was already too many steps behind.

  This, then, was the third time she'd come to the Aulunian court, and only the second with Lorraine in attendance. The first time she'd been dressed fashionably but modestly, wearing brown velvet that looked well with her hair and skin tones, but which didn't draw
the eye as a more sumptuous outfit might.

  This afternoon she blended in in a different way, wearing a dress so much like those half the court women wore that she wasn't certain she'd have picked herself out of a group, much less expected anyone else to. It reminded her vividly of the last gown she'd worn to court, the magnificent, binding green dress Sandalia's best tailor had sewn her into only a little while before all her plots and planning in the Gallic court had come to a disastrous end. There were no similarities at all between the one gown and the other; this one had the broad boxy skirts and puffed sleeves that Lorraine favoured, rather than the impossibly thin lines of the Gallic dress, and was a variety of bejeweled and embroidered colours, making the fabric stiff and heavy. No, there were no similarities save they were both prisons in which she was caught, making escape from inexorable fate virtually impossible.

  She had been positioned barely ten feet from Lorraine's throne, manoeuvred there by Cortes, the thin middling man who played the part of the queen's spymaster. Lorraine was, of course, not yet present, and beneath the brocaded gown Belinda's skin itched with awareness of curious eyes on her. Courtiers tended toward their own subtle ranking system, with those who fancied themselves the most important-or who could convince others they were-nearest the throne. A scant handful of the most ambitious put themselves at the other end of the long hall, that they might catch the queen's eye in the first moment she entered, but aside from them, the gathered court went from most powerful to least down the length of the room.

  Belinda, unknown, not astonishingly beautiful, not extraordinarily dressed, broke all protocol in standing where she did. She could feel animosity gathering and preparing to break over her, and for a moment considered welcoming it: lifting her gaze and meeting accusing eyes with the untouchable centre of witchpower. She would win any such battle of will.