The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  Dmitri ducks his head, evidently satisfied, and after a moment leaves Robert alone to watch the quiet battlefields.

  BELINDA WALTER

  The distance from Javier's wedding site back to the heart of the Aulunian camp seemed less when she had no witchpower shields to fight against. It was a mile or two, no more, and Belinda traversed it within an hour of the wedding. She felt safer on her side of the Aulunian line, and was glad to climb the hills that gave her a view of the battlefields from the south.

  Gossip amongst the troops warned her that Robert was there, and she came on him speaking with Dmitri. She hung back, listening with mild curiosity until the Khazarian witchlord left. Only then, without dropping the blind she'd wrapped around herself, did she ask, “Do you know why he doesn't trust me?”

  Robert didn't flinch, which perversely pleased her: he shouldn't have known she was there, and yet a part of her wanted him to be the infallible father, looking through her veil of deception as he had when she was a child. “Either he's built a plot with you, or has been unable to,” her father said. “If it's the former, he knows you're untrustworthy; if it's the latter, he hopes to make me think you are. Which is it?”

  Belinda loosed the power that kept her hidden and, smiling, stepped up to Robert's side. “He believes you serve your queen poorly. That this war is wrong, and that alliances must be built instead. He thinks a people inspired by peace and education will leap forward more quickly than a people ravaged by war. He would take your place in the line of fathers, by proving himself wiser and more clever than you.”

  “Really.” Robert sounded astonished. “I didn't think he had it in him. He shouldn't. What did he offer you?”

  Belinda gave a laugh that belonged to someone she no longer fully recognised. She knew her role so well that it could never falter, and yet the light note of sarcasm and dismissal in her voice felt harder than she wanted, anymore, to be. “A crown. A kingdom. All the things I never coveted, and which patience has brought to me anyway. I sought none of this, Robert. How can I be who I am, what I am, and have truly never reached for what lay beyond the glass?”

  “Because you're a good girl,” Robert said seriously. “Because you've been given tasks and duties and have been happy to fulfill them, knowing yourself a vital and integral part of the dark moments that keep a queen safe on her throne. We live in a world of ambition, my Primrose, but there are those who truly wish only to serve. I'm one. I've raised you to be, too.”

  “And Dmitri?”

  “Dmitri.” Robert fell silent a few moments, watching the fields below. “Dmitri ought to be. How much intelligence have you gathered on his plots, Primrose?”

  “Enough to know he means to use me to displace you.” Belinda's forehead wrinkled, the thought difficult to pursue, even still. “He thinks my ambition, whetted, will push me toward ridding us of you, because he'll tell me more, teach me more, and give me more than you might.”

  “And you think?” A cautious note sounded in Robert's voice, so faint Belinda might not have heard it if she hadn't spent a lifetime attuned to his hints of approval and censure.

  “I think I'd like to know. But from childhood what has mattered to me is that I serve my queen as best I can. I never asked,” she added, almost lightly. “Du Roz was sent to plot against Lorraine, and I never asked what part a young Gallic noble might play in her downfall. Perhaps I was too young then, or perhaps it never mattered. What mattered was you told me it must be done for the queen's safety, and asked me to do it, and I would rather have died than disappoint you. So would I still.”

  “Ah, du Roz,” Robert said. “Du Roz meant nothing to anyone. He was only convenient, and I needed a man no one would miss to see if you could do murder and walk away unscathed. The haste I came for you in was born from his intention on returning to Gallin in a day or two, having spent only enough time in Alunaer to pride himself on walking through enemy courts.” He threw the man away with a gesture of his hand, and in so doing left an empty place of astonishment in Belinda's chest. “Dmitri, though; Dmitri could do us harm.”

  “No.” Belinda's voice sounded thin to her own ears, though it was unmarred by the tremours shaking her body. Du Roz had been a fop, a tool used to shape her, and nothing more. Not an enemy, not a criminal, not a threat: only a man barely beyond a boy's years in the wrong place at the wrong time, where he could die to make Belinda Primrose the queen's most secret assassin. She called stillness and was dismayed at its lack of strength, at how it all but deserted her when she stood at her father's side and needed it most. “Dmitri won't be a problem. He trusts me,” she said with a smile as thin as her voice. “Let me teach him the folly of standing against his queen's desires.”

  “That's my girl.” Robert smiled, a bright and genuine thing she would have given her life to earn as a child, and he pulled her into a powerful embrace. “I'll leave it in your hands. Keep him alive if you can bend him to your will, but if not, better dead than a troublesome thorn in our sides.”

  “This is how it shall go.” Belinda curtsied, smiled, and left Robert on the hillside so she might find a private place and fall to her knees in horror of what she had been made into, and how.

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  She emerged at dawn, having spent the night hidden in stillness. The world had gone away from her, no cold, no breeze, no biting bugs; no witchpower or politics pushing or prodding her in any direction.

  Now, with the first morning light, she felt Javier's joy in Eliza, and felt, too, the cold iron will that had kept her from crossing Gallic lines. She admired that he could separate his attention so thoroughly, and do so much with his divided will.

  Robert was closer, a waterwheel of power, running deep and fast and utterly self-absorbed. That, perhaps, defined him in a way Belinda had never realised: all that he was, was meant to serve another, and the single-mindedness of that duty allowed him to look no further than his own needs and ends, with no care for the cost it might extract from others.

  But then, she was little different. She'd come out from hiding clear-eyed, clear-minded; clear of all difficult and weighing emotion-or that was what she told herself. The why of du Roz's death didn't matter: it was a thing done long in the past, and if it had shaped her, then it had done so that she might slip across battlefields inciting both wars and alliances. Come the end of the day, she was as she needed to be.

  So, at least, she told herself.

  Belinda curled a lip at her own softness and wrapped her arms about her shoulders, ending with a hard shake, the sort of thing a frustrated father might visit on an aggravating child. For a lifetime she'd embraced what she was. Becoming coy and shy about it now bordered on absurdity Doubt had to become action, a truth that had been made vividly clear when she'd squatted to pee: her belly was beginning to swell, and she had almost no time left in which to implement her plans and retire to the comparative safety of Javier's war prison. Dmitri had to be dealt with: that was foremost. From there, she could turn her mind to other plots.

  She had no immediate sense of where the dark witchlord was. Perhaps he had deliberately tamped his magic, making himself invisible to her.

  As though anyone whose bed she'd shared could hide from her, much less a man whose own power she'd commanded more than once. Incensed by the idea-and then, below that, faintly amused at her own ire; the witchpower still, even now, tasted of its own opinions and ambitions, though at the same time she couldn't say they were anything other than her own-she cast out a web of witch-light, watching it glimmer briefly in the early-morning sun before it faded into nothing more than her will searching for a singular and most particular presence.

  She found it like a battlecharger riding her down, a wall of black magic with no cracks or infirmities she could sense. Dmitri himself stalked out of that black cloud, fiery, full of passion, beautiful in his hawk-featured way. Oh, yes: even in repose this man was compelling, and when driven by ambition and anger, then whole continent
s might fall before him, ready to cry his name and take up his banner.

  “That has been my purpose,” he snarled, and for an instant Belinda was taken up in his dream, a whole world united behind a powerful leader whose vision led them to technological wonders and mechanical glories. A world united behind him, venerating him, lifting him to his queen's notice on their words of praise. Cordulan emperors might have striven for such adulation, and wept to see how easily he commanded it.

  Belinda's laugh came soft beneath that picture, making mockery of herself as much as Dmitri. “I thought I was to be the leader under whom this world rallied.”

  There was no apology in the rolling wall of Dmitri's power. To his mind she was a tool, easy to manipulate. “You turned against me, against our dream, and think to steal my child.”

  Belinda had an instant in which to gape, in which to absorb shock. Dmitri had not been meant to know about the child: she'd shielded her thoughts and taken her body from him before she thought he could know. Yet if he did know, reason followed that he would hold back his onslaught of power: surely a witchbreed babe was worth more than the cost of his plans betrayed to Robert Drake. Even as she thought it, though, threat formed as a black-edged weapon in the witchlord's hand.

  New astonishment flooded her, though if she could build a shield with her magic, certainly a sword might be made of it, too, for shields were meant to be shattered by blades. Belinda shoved thought away, turning her attention to the needs of the moment, and Dmitri struck, a terrible crash of power that sent dark spider-webs over Belinda's golden magic. The blow came on as though it had struck through armour, blunted but still strong. She lashed back with a volley of thrown power like she'd used against Javier.

  Dmitri caught those bursts easily, flinging them back toward her. They penetrated her shields, her mind and magic unable to distinguish between her attacks and her own power turned against her. Dizzy more with surprise than pain, she fell under the onslaught, and for a vivid moment saw herself, saw Dmitri, through the eyes of frightened soldiers around her.

  Witchpower lanced back and forth, bright with gold and dark as death. It looked inhuman: she looked inhuman, blazing with more power than she'd ever imagined. Her hair was alight with it, answering to a breeze no mortal man could feel, and her eyes were vivid brilliance. A nimbus enveloped her, blurring her features so she was only feminine, and not any individual woman, and Dmitri, in turn, had become a black knife of masculinity, driving forward to strike at her. In witchpower regalia, they became gods, and for the first time Belinda fully grasped the power Robert's foreign queen could hold over Belinda's own people. If the witchblood could make her seem something so alien and magnificent, then a generation raised up under foreign rule would worship and fear their star-born queen, and never have the heart to stand against her.

  Unexpected compassion broke in Belinda's breast. She might have spared the men around her this battle, might have drawn a veil of secrecy around herself and Dmitri, but she had nothing to spare. Envy sizzled through her, that Javier had learnt to hold shields even when he was distracted by other matters; it was a knack she would bend herself to in the days to come. All she could do now was scramble back.

  Triumph slashed through Dmitri's attack, his view of her fall erupting as confidence in him. She'd stolen the upper hand a few times in Alunaer, but conviction soared toward her on his witch-power: he'd allowed it, had given up his own will in order to gain her trust.

  Belinda, on her elbows and her arse in the dust, seized that open channel of magic to ride it back into Dmitri's core. That should have been her plan from the start, forcing a weakness in his defences. Power blazed through her, shaking off the images stolen from watching soldiers and bringing her to life. Darkness cracked under the brilliant shafts of her witchlight.

  It opened astonishment in the witchlord; astonishment and disbelief, too fresh to yet turn to anger. Belinda released the water-wheel rush that had once captured her magic and had more than once stymied Dmitri's, and then his amazement did turn to rage. You are not my match, Belinda whispered, uncertain of whether she spoke aloud, but certain that he heard her. You aren't Robert's match, much less mine, and you will bend until you break beneath my will. You -

  Cold iron slammed into Dmitri's power, and black crumbled to dust with nothing more than a gasp of bewildered pain.

  Belinda flinched back with a cry, sickened to meet a terrible nothingness where Dmitri's presence had been; afraid of the silence that took his place. Witchpower faded and cleared into morning sunlight, and Belinda, icy and confused, jolted to her feet so she might see and understand.

  A girl stood where Dmitri had been, his body at her feet. Her head, crowned with thick black hair, was lowered, and her breath came in short hard gasps as she worked her fingers once, then again, as though they were alien to her and needed exploration. They were red with blood, and a knife wound opened Dmitri's throat, blood beginning to slow now, with no heartbeat to pump it forth. His power was as nothing, all the potential and all the possibility, all his promises and all his lies turned to sable dust that scattered across the surface of Belinda's power, and faded away.

  Skated, too, across the girl's witchpower, which sheeted off her, a cold iron magic of unexpected familiarity. Not Javier, after all: that iron will had belonged to another, and all of Belinda's begrudgment fell away as the girl lifted her gaze.

  She would have her mother's beauty: that, even more than the magic, struck Belinda. A strong square face and large eyes with crackling hair framing them; a sharpness to her nose that would come from her father, from the man who lay dead at her feet, but which only served to heighten how extraordinary her features were. It would be years yet before the pieces came together in a stunning whole, but even now, those who had the eyes to see it would know Ivanova Durova would become extraordinary.

  She could be no one else: not with those features; not with the power that fitted her like a cloak, comfortable and certain of its place. She had the slenderness of youth, as she should: she wasn't yet fifteen, and at a cursory glance her slim form, clad in soldier's garb, might have been taken for a boy. With her hair tucked up, the illusion might have lasted a few seconds longer, but looking her in the face, Belinda couldn't imagine that Ivanova could ever be mistaken for other than what she was: the imperator's only heir, a girl, and a beautiful one at that.

  The witchpower, then, had kept her safe from curious eyes; kept her safe for months as she travelled across Khazar and Echon with her army. Belinda stifled the impulse to throw her head back and crow with delight: this child didn't belong here, and yet she had taken a life with the ruthless efficiency of a trained soldier; with nearly the same cool calculation that Belinda herself might have shown.

  Voices were beginning to buzz around them as Dmitri was recognised; as fear and anger began to set in over what seemed a coup in the heart of the Aulunian camp. Ivanova stepped forward, fully comfortable in drawing attention as an unfriendly gathering turned their eyes to her in preparation for forgiveness or mutiny, and even Belinda knew not which.

  “This man who has been the ambassador from Khazar has come here to strip the heart of our alliance.” Ivanova spoke Khazarian in a sweet voice, a soprano that Belinda thought would deepen with age, but it suited her now, fresh and young and light, and it won the attention of all the soldiers around her. Caught in the moment, Belinda translated Ivanova's words, the girl breaking often to let Belinda's speech echo her own. “I have suspected him a danger, and I have come with my mother's army to watch over you all. You saw the evil that swarmed from him; he had made a bargain with the devil, and now that dark contract has cost him his life. I only regret that he was not made to stand trial and burn, but time was short and I could not risk this-”

  Her gaze fell on Belinda, who shook her head a fractional amount, not wanting to be exposed as the Aulunian heir. Almost without pause, Ivanova continued, “This dearly held alliance's failure by allowing a man like that to murder a fellow woman w
ho has come to war. We are expected to stay at home and pray for our men,” she whispered, and Belinda recognised something of true frustration in the girl's voice before Ivanova lifted it again and cried out, “But we are as made for war as you are! I have come to show you that the imperator's heir is not afraid of battle, and to command and know my brother soldiers in the fields! Now,” she said more conversationally, beneath the roar that answered her rally, “now I think we had best retire, you and I, and speak of what's come to pass.”

  What a spy the imperator's heir would have made; what a spy! Belinda had known few enough instances in her life when she'd been given over to veneration; there was her childhood with Robert, and her esteem for Lorraine the queen. Beyond that, though, she could think of no other time when she'd sat in open admiration, fighting the smile that crept over her face.

  For the moment Ivanova's power lay tucked so quietly within her that Belinda had no sense of it: the girl sitting across from her might have been any ordinary child. Any ordinary child, at least, who had secretly worked her way across fifteen hundred miles to be where she now was. Belinda knew with a touch of envy that her own magic was not nearly so well hidden.

  “It's a discipline of thought,” Ivanova said in her light voice. She seemed unimpressed with herself, unconcerned with the blood recently washed from her hands. “Father Dmitri was my tutor since childhood. He'd taught me the rules of logic that give the power a channel.”

  “Father?” Belinda's surprise broke the word as though she were a boy whose voice was changing.

  “He was my mother's priest,” Ivanova said, and an untoward relief snapped in Belinda's chest. The girl didn't know that Dmitri was her father in fact, and it wasn't a burden Belinda would lay on her. Sentiment, again; such sentiment, but she was a little enamoured of Ivanova's cool containment, and had no wish to risk shattering the girl's calm. Murdering a mentor was one thing; patricide something else, even if in the moment it was unknown.