The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  Marius's jaw drops and he gapes at Sacha, waiting for the laugh; waiting for anything that says his old friend is less than serious. Finally, when Sacha makes no excuses, Marius speaks again, his voice strained. “Because he's the king, Sacha. We need no other reason.”

  Sacha, it seems, doesn't hear him at all, anger distorting his answer. “You're a man, Marius, not a lamb to the slaughter. You can make a choice. Do you not deserve better than this? Do not we all?”

  “Better than what?” Marius isn't made for debates or for politics. He can be clever with words when he has to be; has been so even under the duress of Javier's witchpower, when his king didn't ask precisely the right questions. He had sex with Beatrice Irvine, shared intimacies with her, but Javier skirted the direct words with euphemisms, and those allowed Marius a few lies of omission. So he can be clever when he must be, but now, gawping under Sacha's anger, he's got no cleverness at all, only bewildered astonishment. “Better than to have Javier steal Beatrice away? Better than to watch him confide in a priest when I might have hoped my friendship would do? Better than to be fighting a war when I might have been newly wed and safe at home in Lutetia? Of course. Yes, of course, we all do, but at the end of the day none of that matters, Sacha. He's our king and he needs our friendships.” He's about to make a platitude, an excuse: about to say, I'm not like you, not a warrior, and the fight is too much. The best I can do is be there when he needs me, but Sacha mutters something that sends a chill of alarm down Marius's spine. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.” The answer's another mutter, sullen as a child, and Sacha spits at his low-burning fire. “Eat the rabbit. You and it deserve each other.” He surges to his feet and stalks into the failing evening light, leaving Marius, the rabbit, and a handful of treacherous words behind.

  Serve him if you will, he'd said. My loyalty deserves more.

  RODRIGO, PRINCE OF ESSANDIA

  16 June 1588 † Gallin's coast, well north of Lutetia

  Rodrigo de Costa is married to a viper.

  This is not in and of itself news-he knew the devil's bargain he made when he said his wedding vows-but he had not quite imagined to find himself in a battlefield hospital tent with a long shallow cut across his ribs, politely refusing the drink his wife has brought him out of a not-irrational concern that it might be poisoned. There are easier ways to rid oneself of a husband than by infection setting into a wound, but in war, there are few ways more inevitable or acceptable for a man to die. Rodrigo doesn't trust Akilina to not press the advantage of his injury and parlay it into his sudden, tragic death.

  Furthermore, he can see amusement in her black eyes: she's followed his train of thought, and takes a healthy swallow of the wine she's brought before offering him a sip again.

  Well, either she's taken an antidote or it's clean. Annoyed with himself for showing so much mistrust, Rodrigo accepts the wine and admits, privately, that it's an excellent vintage, far better than might be expected on a battlefield. But then, this is Gallin, and they pride themselves highly on their wines.

  “I've had word from Chekov,” she says when he's drunk his wine. Interested, Rodrigo pushes up on an elbow and a passing physician smacks him on the shoulder with absolutely no regard for his rank. He glowers; the doctor glowers back, and, somehow chastened, it's the prince of Essandia who retreats. Privately-very privately-he might admit that relaxing feels good: the wine's not yet done its work, and a cut across the ribs tells a man how much he uses those muscles without ever realising it. He can fight if he must, but it would be better not to, and he's put in his show as a virile leader, still able to take on the enemy. There are men who will tell tales the rest of their lives, about how they were at Rodrigo's side when he took an injury fighting the Aulunian army in Gallin.

  He gestures for Akilina to continue, and sourly wonders why those who'll tell such stories weren't there to help block the massive sword that had cleaved through armour and left a score on his ribs. But that's unfair: in the midst of battle most men do well to not fall to their knees and sob for their mothers; it takes seasoned soldiers used to fighting together to protect one another's backs, and Rodrigo hasn't fought alongside an active battalion for decades. He had hoped to live the rest of his days without seeing another war, but, ah, God laughs when men make plans. “Chekov,” he says aloud, as much to remind himself as prompt Akilina. “Your commanding general. They're close, then?”

  “South of Lutetia, and awaiting orders on where to ride.”

  “To Brittany,” Rodrigo says without hesitation. “The bulk of the Aulunian army is there; they've only sent enough here to keep us fighting, keep us distra-”

  Satisfaction is glinting in Akilina's eyes, and anger cuts through the discomfort of Rodrigo's ribs. The change from Essandian to Khazarian is instinctive, a way of protecting what he says from curious ears around them. “You've sent the orders.”

  Akilina widens her eyes in a mockery of concern. “My husband was indisposed for some time this afternoon, and I thought swift action was best. Was I mistaken?”

  Khazarian's a better language for hiding anger in than for pretending innocence, but Rodrigo doubts the shift in language has hidden their tones from anyone listening. He says “You were not” in as civilised a manner he can, then lowers his voice further to warn, “You aren't here to command, Akilina. You're here to give the Khazarian army a figurehead and to keep waters smooth with Irina. I will send you back to Isidro if you overstep your authority again.”

  Oh, she's a viper, yes, and, perversely, Rodrigo admires her for it. She's a woman in an unprecedented era; not even Javier's vaunted many-times-great-grandmother Gabrielle seized and held so much power as the three great queens of this time. Lorraine and Sandalia and Irina have set a dangerous precedent.

  But Sandalia is dead and Lorraine, God willing, soon will be, leaving only Irina. Their time is coming to an end. Akilina will have to satisfy herself with one throne, and a prince above her. And to that end, Rodrigo will cut the wings of her ambition, by sending her back to Isidro in shackles if he must.

  Though she's sitting, Akilina manages a curtsey, ducking her head so it hides her expression for a critical second or two. When she lifts her gaze again it's full of beguilement, as though Rodrigo might be a youth susceptible to such games. “I meant only to hasten our inevitable victory, husband, and spoke not in my name, but in yours. Forgive me my boldness; I know now not to extend myself so far.”

  Each word a literal truth, Rodrigo thinks: Akilina's not fool enough to give orders in her own name, even if the Khazarian army would accept them. And now she does know not to extend herself so far, but she was willing to test the boundary. “Then we understand each other,” he says, and for a moment falls silent, considering the changes in the world around them.

  Sandalia is dead, yes, with Lorraine soon to follow, but Lorraine has pulled a trick that Rodrigo never expected. She has produced an heir after all, a woman grown, and a woman whom the Aulunian people believe to be God's favoured child. It's at her feet their victory at sea has been laid, and she, near-mythical creature that she is, is now beloved to the wet island nation. He wonders if she would be even more loved if they knew it was she who'd poisoned Sandalia's cup.

  He cannot yet decide which is stronger: the impulse to enact vengeance and claim Belinda's life, or the desire to end a war and put Javier on the Aulunian throne by political means. Weddings between mortal enemies have been a matter of state so long as there have been states to matter; Rodrigo is thinking not of Javier's happiness, but of lives spared and bloodshed averted, all while achieving the same ends they reach for now. With his nephew on the Aulunian throne, and Aulun folded back into the Ecumenic church, Cordula's reach would span from Parna down the length of the Primorismare, and all around Echon's western coast. Reussland, the Prussian confederation, the icy Norselands, and all the smaller city-states and mountain countries in Echon's belly would be caught between the Ecumenic empire and allied Khazar.

 
Best of all, perhaps, is that the lives not wasted on the field in Brittany could be turned to the church's expansion wars in middle Echon. Reussland is vulnerable now, with only women left as heirs, and could easily fall to the Cordulan faith.

  It will not be as smooth as that; it never is. But the idea has merit, much more merit than a war that could go on for months or years before the Aulunian crown is placed on Javier's head. Ignoring the pain in his ribs, Rodrigo sits up and reaches for a shirt while speaking to the ward in general-someone in a position to act will hear him. “Leave a small battalion here to deal with the encroaching Aulunians. We ride to join our brothers in Brittany.”

  DMITRI LEONTYEV

  16 June 1588 † Alunaer, capital of Aulun

  Dmitri's knees ache.

  He's been on bended knee on a hard floor for what has extended past politeness, past any mark of respect, past anything but pettiness and belittlement, and he has been thus because Lorraine Walter is punishing Irina Durova for allying herself with Essandia. Unfortunately for Dmitri, Irina is hundreds of miles away, and a sovereign queen besides, so it is he who assumes a position of subservience and holds it until he is bruised and sullen.

  More annoyingly yet, he knows what's in the letter that Lorraine is deliberately filling her time with idle chat and banter in order to avoid reading, and once she's read it, all this nonsense will be over. When she's read it, he will suddenly be her closest and dearest friend, and she'll be full of solicitous concern that he has not knelt too long or felt much discomfort, and he, of course, will have to lie about it.

  His people, with their rarely broken psychic links, don't play games of this sort. Just now, Dmitri wishes humans didn't either.

  On the other hand, it's not possible to play his own people off one another the way it can be done with these courtiers and kings. Dmitri is not above admitting that when he's the one controlling the game, he rather enjoys mortal politicking. He suspects that's a very human perspective, and is pleased by it: the person he'd been before submitting to the change was a creature entirely of loyalty, of no especial original thought beyond serving his queen. He'd been clever, yes; that was part of why he'd been chosen. Robert was steadfast, and so became the leader of their three, and Seolfor, well. Seolfor was as close to a dissident as their people knew, a thing of creativity and curiosity that served ends beyond those the queens dictated.

  Dmitri understands Seolfor far better now than he ever did before. Before, serving the queens was an end of itself, and a satisfying one. But it took surprisingly little study of humanity to begin understanding ambition, and by the time they had perfected the genetics of their new forms, an idea had shaped itself at the core of his mind. He kept it small, not fanning it in any way while he retained his original shape; it was all but impossible for his people to keep confidences, and the best way to do so was not to think about the things one wished to leave private.

  The human mind, limited in its ability to communicate with others, was wonderfully liberating for someone with a secret.

  Over the millennia the queens had developed a method of deciding their breeding partners. They were long-lived, his people, four and five times the length of a long human life span, and they gave cold birth: eggs by the hundreds, kept warm and safe by the queens and their lovers. With the near-infinite space between stars, and the comparatively few worlds suited for their needs, they had become a space-dwelling race, and obliged to constrain their breeding to what was appropriate for a ship to support. The queens only bred after the successful domination of a resource planet, and they chose the fathers from the genetic material left behind from the changed. The most successful of the changed became fathers to new generations, a genetic legacy made to children they'd never see. It was natural that the leaders, the steadfast ones, the organisers, of each small infiltration sect, should be the anticipated fathers.

  Dmitri intends a coup.

  The idea has flamed in his mind since taking this new shape. Robert follows staid old plans that they've used since the beginning of time: war to drive innovation, to keep populations off-balance; technological leaps great enough, over short enough times, to leave the infiltrated people numb with the shock of change. Time has proven these tactics create strong slave races: ill-educated and stupefied, a people don't need to understand how or what they're doing in order to provide goods to what may as well be their gods. But Dmitri believes a unified, thinking populace is of even greater use to his queen, that a people raised to fully understand their technology are more likely to be inventive, and to offer new choices and greater potential to a space-faring race that has spent millennia at slow war with other resource-hungry peoples.

  It is, he's willing to concede, likely to be a slower path than Robert's brutal means to an end. But if he can guide this small planet away from the war-ridden industrial future Robert intends, give them a freer hand in their own development, and in doing so provide new resources to his queen, then the time will be well spent.

  The gamble is enormous, but if it succeeds, Dmitri, not Robert, will father the next generations, and his innovations, not the old ways, will inspire his children.

  Yes, Dmitri understands Seolfor better than ever before, and a part of him disdains the so-called rebel of their society, for he's seen nothing of Seolfor's hand in changing the shape of this world's future. He himself may fail, but if so, he'll do so gloriously-and that's a very human thought indeed. He's seen Robert succumbing to those same kinds of human weaknesses; seen it in his failure to recognise Belinda's burgeoning witchpower, as she calls it, when she was a child; seen it in Robert's loss of control in Khazar; and sees it in Robert's fondness for Lorraine, who's replaced their alien queen in his mind. Dmitri likes to imagine he has no such failings himself and, knowing that's unlikely, tries to guard against them. He knows Ivanova is coming into her own witchpower, and has trained her if not in the actual magic, at least in the thought patterns that will help her develop it. He is far less enamoured of Irina than Robert is of Lorraine, though the few brief months he spent at Sandalia's side, playing the part of her priest and her lover, still waken a hunger in him, all these years later. It's as well that she, like Lorraine, set murderers on his trail after he delivered Javier; both queens thought him dead, and while it meant a long time before he dared rejoin either court, even in such a disguise as the witchpower now lends him, it's still better by far to be dead than a dangling question in their minds. He might have grown soft on Sandalia, had he stayed near her, and he prefers the sweet memories of a lifetime ago.

  Lorraine, finally, is turning her attention to the damned letter. Dmitri has not been watching, not blatantly; that would be too obvious, and the longer he watched the less likely she was to read the thing. She opens it with a frothy indifference that would be charming in a woman a third her age, and which looks absurd in her. Seeing that he watches, she allows her attention to drift elsewhere, but her eyes come back to the letter with surprising alacrity. She caught a few words, then, before beginning her game again, and what's written there is more interesting than any playful foolishness.

  She reads it through once, gives him a sharp glance, then reads it again before letting it roll closed so she can tap its column against her cheek. She says “Very well” petulantly, like a child whose playtime is spoilt, and gestures her doting courtiers away. “If we must to work, then we suppose we must. Our dear friend from Khazar has brought us news, and we must speak with him.”

  This tells the court of the letter's importance: Lorraine stands and leaves the throne dais to greet Dmitri herself, to raise him up and make all the false apologies he predicted she would. Then she laces her arm through his and demands, prettily, that he walk with her; at least, it would be pretty if she were thirty-five, and her breath not wretched with sweets.

  “You've read the letter,” she says the moment they're beyond reasonable earshot. There are no doubt listening-holes all over the palace, even in the broad corridor down which they walk, but Lorraine
's boxy footsteps and the echo of the uncarpeted hall will help to disguise some of what they say, and as for the rest, it needs not be kept secret.

  “Of course, your majesty.” Dmitri rather likes the heavy Khazarian accent, but would keep it in place even if he didn't: it hides any familiarity the titian queen might have with his voice. It's been twenty years and more since the priest he was took away the son she'd borne, but the time was a momentous one: she might well recall the voice as well as the face.

  “We find it… unexpected.”

  It would be entirely wrong for Dmitri to grin, and so he doesn't, but it's a near thing. “Her Imperial majesty thought you might, majesty. And yet she feels she ought not compound a mistake already made.”

  “Few of us, queens or not, accept such truths with grace,” Lorraine murmurs. “Our sister in Khazar is to be admired. We have been

  … concerned,” she says, again with the pause that speaks volumes in understatement. “We had thought ourselves to hold a special place in our sister-queen's heart, given that we are so alone in holding our thrones as we do, and the Essandian alliance has brought us distress for that reason.”

  “I am instructed to beg forgiveness for any heartache her majesty may have caused your majesty.” This dance could go on forever, but Dmitri takes the steps, trusting that once form is met, Lorraine will become more forthright. If not, he'll grind his teeth and carry on, because protocol can't be ignored, whether in a mortal court or among his own people. There are things they have in common, his people and these; there are points all the sentient races have in common, though rarely enough to build an alliance on. That, in fact, is as alien a thought as any other: those who reach the stars conquer and infiltrate and control, but they rarely, if ever, ally themselves with one another. The known galaxies might have a very different shape if their peoples were inclined to cooperation. “As your majesty knows, the combined Cordulan armies, and the Ecumenic faith, are of a size to be concerning, even to an empire as great as Khazar's. Provided the opportunity, your majesty can surely understand why prudence dictated her majesty should build an alliance with a navy as powerful as Essandia's.”