The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  “That much,” Rodrigo says lightly, “is true. Keep her safe back to our tent, Sacha. There will be trusted guards posted, so you needn't stay. Javier will wait on you.”

  “My lord.” Sacha's voice is barely a whisper, and he offers his elbow to Akilina with all the attitude of a whipped puppy. Rodrigo nods to them both and removes himself to the strategy tent, while guards-trusted escort or no, there are always guards-fall into step ahead of Akilina and Sacha to bring them to the battlefield tent that's the home of Essandian royalty.

  “You've lost the look of pleasure you had about you in Isidro, Sacha.” Akilina speaks in Khazarian; Sacha has enough of the tongue to be passable, and the guards are Isidrian. She can say anything she likes without fear of being understood by those who should not understand. “Are things not well with the king?”

  “He's besotted by his priest.” God, the bitterness in Sacha's tone! Akilina has the lighthearted impulse to bring his hand to her mouth and lick it, to see if he tastes as sour as his words. Instead she squeezes his forearm, perhaps imparting comfort, but more important, offering solidarity. She and Sacha are in this scenario together, and she would choose him over Rodrigo if she could: these are the things she wants him to believe. For an amusing moment, it occurs to her that the latter, at least, is true: Sacha's easier to control, and Akilina prefers men to bend at her whim. Lips pursed, she walks a little way, considering that, and decides she's glad she hasn't had Sacha murdered yet. He's close to Javier, and if she should need to have the young king killed, Sacha might easily give her the way in.

  But that's not where her thoughts ought to be resting, not now. “Does the priest weaken him?”

  Sacha makes a derisive sound. “He's been weak all along. I never knew how weak, not until I learned about the power he's been granted. He's had this his whole life, and still he hid behind his mother's skirts, and now behind Tomas's cassock. He doubts his every step and begs forgiveness from a God who gave him power to be used. And nothing I do or say seems to sway him, not anymore. Not with the priest on hand.”

  Akilina barely thinks about her response; doesn't think at all, but lets the obvious fall from her lips: “Then the priest must be removed.”

  The young Lord Asselin, who is not as pragmatic or hard as he likes to imagine he is, comes to a stop and stares at her as though she's voiced the unthinkable. Akilina widens her eyes and, if they were not in public, would put her fingers against his chest, mould herself to his body, make of herself an innocent and sweet thing ripe for the taking. Sacha's an easy mark, and will agree to anything if he believes she'll be his reward. But they are in public, and she's not fool enough to throw over a throne in favour of a crude lordling with tall ambitions. She jostles him into walking again, quickly enough that it should look only as though one or the other has put a foot down wrong, and when they're once more in pace she says, “Would it not solve many problems, my lord? His majesty has been led astray so often this past year, looking for salvation and answers in newcomers. You three must know, though, that you're his heart and his guides, if only his eyes can be cleared. Beatrice Irvine is gone. Without the priest, who else can he turn to but you?”

  “It would be better.” Sacha's speaking to a dream, not to Akilina, but that's all right. They've reached Rodrigo's tent, and the guardsman there-Viktor, poor Viktor, so besotted and bewitched by Belinda Primrose that he has, in the months since she broke his mind, become little more than an automaton. Akilina had hoped he might heal with Belinda's death, and so brought the wretched man to watch the beheading Sandalia had staged. But no, the axe fell and some poor girl's head rolled, and Viktor let go a terrible shout and fell to his knees, face in his hands as he cried, “She is not my Rosa, she is not my Rosa, she is not my Rosa!” He has said nothing else since, not in Akilina's hearing, and yet she's kept the guardsman on, waiting for some thread of sanity to work its way through his fractured mind. It may never, but the dvoryanin is curious, and it does her no harm to have a guard who never speaks. So it's poor Viktor who pulls the tent flap aside and allows them entrance, and Viktor who lets it fall again without any thought as to whether the Essandian queen ought to be left alone, in private, with a man.

  Which gives Akilina all the opportunity she could want to tuck herself against Sacha's side and sigh the sigh of a woman bereft. “If Rodrigo were not so sure he would return soon…”

  “I've done my duty by you both,” Sacha says, not for the first time, but without the smug attitude he once displayed. “Cuckolding's one thing, but asking to be caught for it, that's something else. Not even a queen's that fine a spread.”

  Someday, Akilina is going to stuff a knife into Sacha Asselin's guts, and smile as he bleeds out.

  The thought cheers her, and she turns a toothy grin on the youth. “Nor is any young buck, my lord Asselin.” Then, because she doesn't want him off her hook, she softens her expression and smoothes her hand over her belly as she adds, quietly, “But Rodrigo's not a young man, and children need fathers.”

  Sacha's gaze snaps to her stomach, then returns to her face with such neutrality it screams of ambition. Akilina smiles again, then lets her eyebrows draw together and says, gently, “Think a while on the priest, my lord. Find us an answer.”

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE

  There would be no battle, come morning. Not of the usual sort; that was agreed on. The day's duty was to unite the splintered aspects of the Cordulan army, and, those tactics decided, the generals and Rodrigo had left Javier to his tent. He doused torches with witchpower will, too weary to get to his feet as a normal man might, and sat in the dark a long while, his eyes gritty with exhaustion.

  No one-not Gaspero in Parna, not these gathered generals tonight, not Rodrigo-had struggled against his will as effectively as Tomas del'Abbate. Simplicity told him he should be grateful, that the young priest and his faith in God had greater strength than any of the other men Javier had tried to overpower, or that Javier's magic had grown to such strength that these men were easy to break. Here, at least, they were of a mind to fight; he hadn't needed to push them in an unnatural direction. And yet that they acquiesced so easily stole his confidence, rather than enhanced it.

  Nothing, it seemed, could satisfy him. Javier opened his eyes to the muggy black tent, of a mind to call for Tomas and guilty at how many times he'd interrupted the priest's sleep. Surely he could find comfort elsewhere for a while; Tomas carried enough of Javier's troubles on his shoulders. Sleep might be enough for Javier himself, at least for tonight. He shoved out of his chair, trusting his feet to know a safe path through the tables and seats strewn about the tent.

  “You faltered.” Sacha's voice cut through the darkness, a thick growl of accusation.

  Javier looked up blindly, exhaustion filming his vision as much as night did. “I didn't see you come in.” Witchpower only twitched sluggishly as Javier reached for Sacha with it, and subsided without bringing him any hint of his friend's intentions. That was all right: words had done well enough for all of them, most of their lives. Javier passed a hand over his eyes, trying to wipe away the haze, then picked out what sense he could from what Sacha'd said. “I faltered? When?”

  Concern washed weariness away while he thought of the day's battle, then sagged. “At the end, when Rodrigo came. I know. I was… so tired, Sacha. I should have tried harder.”

  “When Rodrigo came?” Sacha spat the words hard enough to send a cramp through Javier's shoulders. “I watched you this morning, Javier. After yesterday, we all know you can make concussive blasts with the witchpower, but you gave up on them almost before the battle was met. You threw a handful, no more, when you might have decimated the enemy troops.”

  “That-” Javier's voice cracked on the single word and he searched for wine in the dark tent, then gave it up and swallowed instead. “Sacha, I-”

  “What did the priest say to you?” Knives had duller edges than Sacha's questions, and fire, less heat. “I begged you to be strong for us, Javier. We needed
your power today, and instead you were a woman on the field. What did he say to you?”

  “He said nothing! Sacha, you understand nothing!” Javier crashed into the table, sending pages and quills to rattling. The witchpower awakened again, pounding silver through his veins, feeding on his anger. “There was no point in bombing-”

  “It was what we needed you to do!” Sacha flung a chair aside, crashing it into others to underline his shout. “It was what I asked you to do, Javier, and what am I to the king if my pleas fall on deaf ears? How can I advise a man who won't listen? How do I lend boldness to the troops if our king, with his God-granted gifts, shivers and shies at shadows? How-”

  Witchpower roared in Javier's ears, louder than blood. He moved with its tide, taking long steps toward his oldest friend with no thought in mind but to silence him. Sacha, unafraid, forthright, stood his ground, still bellowing accusations that he refused to hear answers to. Javier would make him hear, make him hear at any cost, and seized his shoulders with that intent.

  “Leave off, Sacha.” This time the unexpected voice came in a shaft of moonlight, Eliza pushing the tent flap open far enough to admit herself. Sacha bit off his fury with a snap, and Javier flinched, suddenly too aware of what he was about to do. Too aware that in another breath he would have snapped Sacha's will, would have proven himself, once more, untrustworthy amongst his friends. A blade gutted him, bright and mocking: his own power, stronger than he was, and Tomas not there to lend him the hardy faith he needed to stand against it.

  Silver clarity brightened his world, witchlight anger filling the tent because it had nowhere else to go, with Javier's will to dominate abated. Everything was illuminated: each action they'd taken in the last weeks had been well-lit, forbidding them to hide their darkest thoughts in shadow. Only the night of the blood storm had been a black one, and that, too, seemed as it should be. Heart hammering, witchpower still surging in him, he released Sacha and turned toward Eliza.

  No light was unkind to Eliza Beaulieu. In witchlight she was porcelain, short hair grown long enough now to tuck behind her ears and frame her face, making her eyes larger and darker than ever. There was insufficient strength to the blue moon to make a shadow of her body within her clothes, and witchlight only offered promises and hints, but Javier imagined her lithe curves so easily it seemed he could see them. So, he thought, did Sacha, and there again lay a sword between friends, one Javier had never intended to forge.

  “Destruction has a price, Sacha.” Eliza left the flap pulled open so light spilled in and came between them in fact as well as figuratively. Fingertips on Sacha's chest, she pushed him back a step. “The skies rained blood, and we survived, but at what cost to Javier's soul? We need a warrior, but we also need him to come out a king on the other side of this war, and I'm not sure anybody can do what he did for long and hold on to what makes him human. Is your pride worth that price? Go on.” She jerked her chin toward the door, dismissing him more crudely than a king might, but with as much finality “Get drunk if you have to, but sleep it off and come to your senses, Asselin. He's going to need you in the morning. We all will.”

  “Women and priests.” Sacha looked beyond Eliza, looked to Javier again, and his mouth twisted as he hissed the words. “If this is what you are, Javier, I've been a fool all my life.”

  Eliza patted his cheek and used a voice of sugar and honey, teasing as if they were still children. “Yes, Sacha. You are. It's not news to any of us, my friend. Now go drink yourself stupid-if it's possible to be duller than you already are-and get some rest.”

  Sacha curled his lip and left them alone in a tent suddenly full of silence.

  “Will you make a light?” Eliza asked after a long time. “Or shall I get a torch?”

  “Belinda is out there,” Javier said at almost the same moment, then flinched with a spurt of embarrassment. “I can see. I forgot you couldn't.” Witchlight spilled through the darkness with a soft glimmer, changing the quality of his sight. He couldn't remember the magic offering him night vision before, but nor did he remember needing it to. It reminded him now of the shadows he and Belinda had cast the first evening they'd lain together, working magic and losing themselves in each other's bodies. When it lent him, and him alone, sight, it was of a more ethereal quality, more as though he saw spirits and souls than true forms. Even now the witchlight trembled, trying to retreat into him where it could replenish and face another day. “Find candles, please,” Javier whispered. “I'm more weary than I should be.”

  Eliza ran to do it, striking flints and lighting a candle or two before moving papers off the map table so she could set the waxworks down safely. Only then, watching the flame, did she say “Belinda?” with great caution.

  Javier sank down into the nearest chair, his head a heavy weight in his hand. “It wasn't weakness or fear or Tomas's warnings that stayed my hand. Belinda Primrose -Walter -is out there somewhere, fighting for her people, and one of the first things we learned to do together-”

  Eliza snorted loudly enough to get a tired chuckle from Javier, though he left it alone otherwise. “Was to catch each other's power in a shield, rendering it inert for such purposes as I'd been using it for. She contained the witchpower bombs, Liz. There was no point in wasting my energy creating more of them, not when I could be shielding the men and trying to keep them from harm. It wasn't weakness. But Sacha…”

  “Sacha's in no mind to listen. I'll try to tell him for you, Javier.” Eliza pressed a fingertip into softening wax, then looked over her shoulder at him. Candlelight wavered along her jaw, turning her to a creature of shadows again, but this time of warmth and comforting secret places, rather than the cool moonlit goddess of earlier. “I thought you were the stronger.”

  “Of Belinda and myself? So had I.” Javier rolled his head back, closing his eyes to capture Eliza's image behind the lids. “She's grown more talented since we last saw her.”

  “When I last saw her I thought her only particular talent was in getting a prince between her legs,” Eliza said drily. “Javier, I am-I'm sorry that she wasn't what you thought she was. For what it may be worth, I'm sorry.”

  Javier put a hand out and heard Eliza move before the warmth of her fingers covered his. “I thought you loathed her.”

  “I did.” Eliza kissed his fingertips, then slipped onto his lap, warm comforting weight. “And do, even more than before. But if she'd been as she appeared, and had made you happy… the part of me that's more generous than a penny-stealing street rat would have been glad for you. So I'm sorry that she was other than as she seemed.” She kissed his throat, full mouth forming a smile against his skin. “And glad that through all the convolutions you were made to see me, my king. Had Belinda not come amongst us you might never have done so, which makes it hard to hate her entirely.”

  Javier scowled. “Women are bewildering.”

  “Yes.” Eliza bumped her nose against his, amusement in her voice. “Accept it. We're complicated creatures, able to love and loathe with equal ease, even when the object of such varied emotion is a single person. I should think men can too, but that they prefer not to think about it.”

  Javier opened his eyes, meeting Eliza's bright gaze. “Men, perhaps, are obliged to choose one emotion to act on. I may go into battle afraid, but I show courage, or we all lose heart.”

  “I think I would rather be a woman.” Eliza smiled, making herself merely lovely, instead of the beauty she could be. “Especially a guttersnipe woman on the arm of a king. It affords me such freedom. Tell me, king of Gallin. If your witchpower is so muted as to leave you trembling and frowning at calling a little light, does that mean the woman in your lap, ungraced by God as she may be, has the better of you tonight?”

  Javier groaned and sat up, gathering her in his arms as he tucked his nose against her shoulder. “You've had the best of me all along, Eliza, and if it's not God's grace that's put you by my side, then I've nowhere to lay my thanks.”

  “Never fear.” Eliza
slipped out of his arms and took his hand and a candle, leading him to the curtained-off area that was his private space in the battlefield tent. “I know just how and where to lay your thanks, my love, if that's the name we're giving it now. The rest will come in the morning,” she said more softly. “Explanations and battle, but for now, Javier, come to me and rest.”

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  Not until noon, with the sun overhead and sweat pouring into his eyes, did Javier think of bridging the space between the two halves of his splintered army with witchpower.

  Tomas heard his curse and glanced at him with curious concern that Javier shook off He already held shielding in place, with rare attempts at witchpower bombs aborted early by Belinda's magic. Eliza had been unable to find Sacha that morning, unable to explain Javier's tactics before the armies came together in a terrible clash. She was with the doctors now, as safe as anyone could be on a battlefield. Marius and the gondola boy were with her, and if Javier concentrated he could pick out the notes of their determination amongst all the others. It was a poor use of his attention, though, and he'd only tried it once.

  As he would only try this trick once. If his luck held, Belinda wouldn't recognise what he did until it was established, and would be unable to break it. She might be his match, even his better, in power now, but he thought he could hold her off, so long as he had nothing else to do.

  Witchpower extended in two shimmering walls, creating thin silver shields for his men as they struggled against the enemy and struggled toward one another. Aulunian troops made a broad river of red coats between those two banks of power, crashing against them with all their might. They were too many to hold back entirely: they found weak points and surged through, or Cordulan soldiers forced their way forward too quickly for Javier, trying to see the entire battle at once, to account for. Men died despite his efforts, but not, perhaps, in the numbers that they might have.