The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  That thought spiralled too near her own sins. Belinda deliberately opened her hands, smoothed her skirts as if they were emotions, and exacted control.

  “I think he never knew the magic was awake in me. I think he was waiting for it, to train me in it, but the talent's been there since I was-”

  “Eight or nine?” Belinda guessed, and Ivanova nodded. Memory scoured Belinda: how Robert had quieted the power in her when she was that age, rather than offer training in the discipline of thought that would master the witchpower. Perhaps if he had, she might have been the precocious witchlord Ivanova was now.

  “I thought at first he'd realise it, but time went on and he didn't seem to, and I grew more talented.” Ivanova smiled suddenly, bringing all her youth to the fore. “I would sneak after the boys and watch them at bathing, or listen to councils my mother hadn't invited me to. And I came to war,” she said more seriously, “because my father loved it more than his wife or daughter, and I would not be refused the chance to see what had drawn him from us. I didn't know then that there were others like me, with the magic.”

  “Witchpower,” Belinda murmured. “Javier calls it the witch-power. You held me back when I would cross the Gallic lines. I thought it was Javier's power turned colder, but yours is iron and his silver.” And her own gold: soft metals, compared to iron, which seemed more telling than she wanted to consider.

  “I couldn't risk that you were going to kill him.” Ivanova spread her hands, expression that of utmost reason. “I couldn't risk either of you dying before I even had a chance to meet you and see the magic that we share. I watched, when you went to him. I listened to it all.” Her eyebrows drew down over dark eyes, a frown marring her forehead as though the expression could give her the talent to see through Belinda's soul. “You believe the stories you told the Gallic king. That the magic we're born to is… foreign.”

  “I do.” Hairs stood up on Belinda's arms, tiny thing she couldn't control. “You listened to it all? Then you-”

  “Know that my father was in all likelihood not Feodor?” Ivanova shrugged, the first stiff movement Belinda had seen her indulge in. “And yet I'm still his heir, as you are Lorraine's and Javier is Sandalia's. These witchlords of yours have woven a complicated game toward a nightmare ending.”

  “A nightmare that's all the worse if we don't arm ourselves to fight it.” Belinda knelt forward, reaching for Ivanova's hands. The girl didn't accept, leaving Belinda in a position of pleading subservience. “Javier is my ally in this, but reluctantly, and only because I can give him-”

  “Yes,” Ivanova said impatiently. “I was there. He's a coward, your br-”

  Belinda, already close to the younger woman, already with her hands extended, clapped a hand across Ivanova's mouth so sharply it might have been a slap. “Never say those words aloud.”

  Ivanova's eyes widened over Belinda's hand, outrage coupled with astonishment, and iron witchpower shot out, not quite an attack, but unquestionably a rebuff.

  It crashed into Belinda's own golden magic and was absorbed without a ripple.

  “You're clever,” Belinda whispered. “You're talented, and you're skilled, and I like you. But you had the advantage of surprise against Dmitri, and you will never be able to surprise me. I may not be your superior, but I am your elder, and my life has been made of treachery and deceit. I believe you're right. I believe Javier de Castille is a coward, but the rest of it, little girl, the rest of it will go unspoken.”

  She loosened her fingers and Ivanova wet her lips to protest, “You can't. You can't…!”

  “Of course I can.” All the whispers of envy had slipped away in a tidal pull of golden power. Someday, someday this young woman might challenge Belinda's authority, and that, an ancient instinct told her, was as it should be: every queen, in time, gave way to another. But not while in their prime, and not to a youth, even one whose talents were manifest.

  A more ordinary part of herself insisted that she needed Ivanova, needed her power and perhaps the diplomatic bridge she provided, and that part, by slow degrees, reeled her back so she sat across from Ivanova once more, both of them flushed with passion. “Some things are too dangerous to be spoken aloud,” Belinda said as softly and with as much cajoling as she could. Witchpower tendrils encouraged Ivanova's anger to relent. This was something Belinda could no longer do with Javier, but Ivanova, for all her youthful strength, was still a stranger to Belinda and her magic. “We're not seeking to topple thrones, for all that that's my father's will.”

  Ivanova had a fine rage on her, all the insulted fury of childhood not quite left behind. But she was impressed, too; impressed and perhaps a little frightened, having never faced another woman with her talents. Ambition was temporarily quenched, and with it a degree of her certainty, though a slow bloom of confidence crawled up to salvage what was left of her pride. “You still need me as an ally to keep your father distracted. You shouldn't treat a needed asset so.”

  Amused, Belinda inclined her head in a show of apology. “You're right. I shouldn't, and I apologise. Panic struck me, and panic often asserts itself as domination. I do need you,” she said, humour fleeing. “I'd like to have your belief, but your agreement will do.”

  “I'm not a coward.” Ivanova lifted her chin as though she'd been insulted. “I can see the truth of what you've shown Javier, and can look on it unafraid. There are men from beyond the mountains and beyond the oceans who look different from me. Perhaps it's no surprise they might come from beyond the stars, too, and look even more strange to my eyes. I have met women they call witches,” she added far more quietly and sounded suddenly like a child. “They are women who know herb lore or who are unattainable, but with whom men still fall in love. They're old crones or great beauties, and none of them at all have a hint of the witchpower. This magic of mine isn't like anything anyone has ever known, and if it comes from a foreign, far-off place, then at least what I am makes sense.”

  “Is it so easy?” Belinda knew she shouldn't ask, but the question spilled out regardless. “You accept it that easily? I've-” She laughed with resignation. “I've struggled and fought for the past half-year, and can still barely grasp what we are, but you can turn it to sense in your mind so quickly?” Perhaps it was the malleability of youth; perhaps Belinda was too much the thing she'd been raised to be, but another sting of envy ran through her at Ivanova's shrugging nod.

  “Our people-Khazarian or Aulunian, Gallic or Essandian-don't have witchpower. Either we are impossible, or we are blessed or damned by our gods, or the figments stolen from Robert Drake and Dmitri Leontyev's thoughts are true, and we're children of… foreign queens,” Ivanova finished in a whisper. “That we exist negates our impossibility, and that our fathers wield this same power and attribute it to foreign masters rather than gods or demons gives credence to the third possibility.”

  “Dmitri did teach you clear thought,” Belinda murmured, though a supposition she hadn't considered came on her as she spoke: perhaps Dmitri and Robert were simply mad, the stories they'd concocted were ravings of deranged minds, and their children were heirs to nothing more than insanity.

  “The trouble is,” Ivanova said, “that if we ignore these bits of dreaming and they're true, then we are wholly and terribly unprepared for what the future brings. If we listen and they aren't true, then we're ready for a war that may never come… but it's better to be ready than caught off-guard.” She looked up, her eyebrows lifted. “Dmitri is dead. Robert Drake will rely on you. Tell me what we do now, and I'll go to share your intrigues with Javier de Castille.”

  “Primrose?” Robert Drake threw back the tent flap with enough force to set the room shuddering. He looked wilder than she could remember ever seeing him, eyes round with alarm and hair crackling as if alight from within. He had been a long distance across the camp to have taken so long to come to her side, even if he'd known instantly that Dmitri was dead, and she had no way of knowing if he had. If not, a runner would have gone for him, an
d even still, he'd not been quick in coming. No need to be, perhaps, when it had been his plan as much as hers to remove the dark witchlord from their plots.

  She sat in a huddle on the ground, Ivanova wrapped in her arms. They had washed the blood from Ivanova's hands, but stained cloth lay at their feet, and tears welled and spilled from Ivanova's wide staring eyes. “She saved me,” Belinda whispered. “In the heat of battle, she leapt on him and cut his throat, that the Khazarian-Aulunian alliance might not be broken. This is Irina's daughter, Robert. This is Ivanova Durova, and she has pledged herself to us in blood.”

  Heed me well, she had whispered into Ivanova's hair. Heed me well, for this is how it shall go. Had Ivanova not announced herself so dramatically-and, Belinda admitted, to such good end; the men who'd been caught up watching her fight with Dmitri had needed an explanation, and the imperator's heir suddenly amongst them was a thing of legend-but had she not done that, Belinda might have secreted her away, might have found her a hiding place or sent her to Javier, and made use of a soldier as the man who'd taken Dmitri's life while paying for the audacity with his own. She had faith in her ability to tweak memories just enough to let that be the dominant perception, even without the sexual link that made altering minds so much easier. That had been before: she was stronger, now.

  But Ivanova had been announced, and to change memories that much seemed like too great a risk, especially when Robert Drake would see a malleable child in Ivanova's frightened eyes. He'd shunted Belinda's power into quiescence when she was younger than Ivanova; he would never imagine that Dmitri's daughter had already come into her own. Dmitri's loss would be more than made up for by the chance to shape Ivanova with his own hands.

  All they had to do, Belinda whispered, was let him believe himself the mentor, the guide, the saviour of a girl shocked and horrified by the actions she'd taken.

  Robert knelt, a show of both sympathy and honour due to the imperator's heir, and extended a fatherly hand toward her.

  Ivanova gave a choked sob and flung herself from Belinda into Robert's arms: into the protective circle only a man could offer, and into an assumption of safety created by the world they knew. Robert gathered her close and murmured an assurance, then lifted his eyes to Belinda and smiled with obvious triumph.

  Belinda returned the smile, returned pleasure, and kept all her own triumph hidden away where her father would never see it. “She should rest,” she murmured after a little time had passed. “She was very bold in the face of fighting, but it drained her. Let me put her to rest a while, Robert, and then we'll speak on what her being here means.”

  “It means my friend is dead,” Robert said after Ivanova was tucked into a warm corner and Belinda had breathed a command to sleep, or at least pretend to sleep, over her. “Was there no other way, Primrose?”

  “Not to Ivanova's mind.” Belinda poured wine and offered Robert a glass, aware that she had once more fallen into the position of servant. Better to keep to old and safe roles than to upset a balance she now needed. “How could she know I had the ability to defeat him, to bend him to my will and make him your subservient again? I saw a little of our battle from the soldiers' eyes, Robert, and even I would have thought it Heaven fighting Hell. Ivanov must have seen the Khazarian ambassador doing his best to murder the Aulunian heir. What could she do but try to stop him, and salvage her mother's alliance?”

  “How,” Robert said, “did she know who you were?”

  Belinda lowered her wine cup and stared at the handsome bearded lord across from her. “Father.” The word was spoken with acidic incredulity. “Half the Aulunian army believes me to be here, in spirit if not in physical form. I'm praying for them, remember? And God Himself graced me with the light and the power of Heaven so I might save the fleet from sure defeat against the armada. So when a woman bursting with God's light stands battling a man filled with black spite at the heart of the Aulunian camp, who else could she be?”

  Robert pursed his lips, then shrugged his eyebrows and took a long draught of wine. “A fair point, I suppose. You're meant to be safe at home in a convent in Alunaer, Primrose. How am I to explain your presence here when you've been seen there?”

  “My spirit has flown to war,” Belinda said airily. “My physical form kneels in dutiful prayer and God gives my soul wings that I might lift the hearts of my soldiers to His command, and inspire a conversion to the Reformation church in all those who fall before our army.” She smiled, and, clearly despite himself, Robert laughed.

  “Ah, and damn the nurse who taught you cleverness, girl, for certainly I'd have instilled a civil tongue in your head.”

  Belinda all but dipped a curtsey where she sat, a smile still curving her mouth. “Of course, papa.”

  Robert's voice softened. “You haven't called me that in a long time.”

  “We haven't played at games of family for a long time. I've been too long a tool, and not at all a daughter. Perhaps things are changing now.” She glanced toward Ivanova and then back to Robert, eyebrows lifted. “Things are unquestionably changing. I know you think it's unnecessary, but I need to understand. War brings innovation-that I can appreciate. But to make ships that sail through the sky, to dig pits in the earth so vast whole seas could disappear into them… these things are so far beyond us. How can we few shape a world that's worthy for our queen?”

  “Our,” Robert echoed, thoughtfully, curiously.

  Belinda spread her hands. “Is she not? Is serving Aulun, and through Aulun, your queen, not what I have been made for?” She fell silent, looking away from Robert as she worked her way toward the right things to say. A lifetime of training had taught her to find them, had taught her to play silences and speech as instruments, carrying them each to the breaking point before shoring them up with the other.

  “I understand so little,” she eventually murmured. “Yet what I do know is that when I see the things that drive you, I see loyalty most of all. In my life I have been loyal and held faith and trust in you.” She shook her head, almost dismissing her own fancies. “‘Heed me well, Primrose, for this is how it shall go.’ Those words have always been true. Each time you've said them, the things you've named have played out as you've said they would, and Lorraine's throne has remained safe. You love her,” Belinda said, so clearly it might have been an accusation. “I think you didn't mean to, but you love her, and I think that if your foreign queen's needs should damage Lorraine's own that even you might hesitate in fulfilling them.”

  “I'm fortunate,” Robert said, “that the two have never run counter to each other. Nor will they ever; even if Lorraine should live to the greatest span of mortal years, her world won't change so much in that time that I'll find myself standing against her. I have been fortunate,” he said again, and a note of sorrow deepened the words, proving him too aware that fortune was a fool's friend.

  “So even if I look only to the things I understand, if I bend my head to my mother's crown and play the part she's given me, then I serve where and how I should. That's comfortable to me, Robert.” The truth there made her heart hurt, even when filtered through witchpower ambition. Aspirations born of magic ran down certain channels, willing to serve one far-off and mighty figurehead so long as her own supremacy went unchallenged by the greater populace. Bending knee to Lorraine felt right, even still; bowing to a foreign queen was not anathema to one such as Belinda, who was made to serve. It was this other thing she'd become, with awakening and breaking free from the rigours she'd been shaped to, that fit poorly, and yet even as she spun her web for Robert, she knew she would follow the lines she cast out for herself, rather than be drawn into his intrigues. He and Dmitri had demanded too much, had pushed too far, and in doing so had unintentionally set her on her own path.

  “If I look beyond those comfortable places then I see what I've seen all my life. My papa, guiding me toward something he understands more clearly than I do. I want to understand,” she whispered, suddenly harsh. “I want these goals and intentio
ns to be shared, I want you to think me worthy of that trust. But even if you won't give me that, I'll serve Lorraine with all my soul, and until the day I die, and in doing so, think I must give myself over to serving your queen. So yes, Robert. Our queen, whether she sits on a throne in Alunaer or in a ship amongst the stars.” Her confidence wavered on the last words, but she brought her chin up, defiant of her poor comprehension.

  A wave of pride broke over her, flooding from Robert with no evident care as to what he exposed. He offered a hand and Belinda took it, wincing at the strength he crushed her fingers with, and bemused at the witchpower wall that kept her from tasting anything of his thoughts. He'd learned, then, had learned to be wary of her, and that was as it should be, though she made no attempt to rob him of his secrets as she'd done half a year earlier in Sandalia's private chambers.

  “This war will carry on a while yet, and in its time you'll come to see how we'll shape this world for our foreign queen. You're right: we're too far away from it now for its form to be seen, but in another year, in another ten, you'll begin to understand. Lend me a little patience, Primrose. I don't ask from a wish to keep you unschooled, but because you lack the experience to cast your imagination as far forward as I would have it reach. It is asking a child who's only seen a rain puddle to imagine the ocean, or asking the blind to describe the stars. You'll learn to see the ocean, Belinda. You'll learn to describe the stars. But give me a little more time in which to open your eyes, so that you're not staggered under the weight of vision.”

  She had professed her trust in him and had made much of being willing to serve, so she bowed her head in agreement, and for a moment held tight to Robert's hand. “Will we win this war?”

  “It doesn't matter,” Robert said, ruthless with honesty. “Whether Cordula's combined might wins or Aulun's Khazarian alliance takes the day, all that truly matters is that we force our hands toward advances that will help us surge forward in technology. I'll try to win it for Lorraine, of course; my loyalty goes that far, and perhaps even further. But in the end what I need from this fight are new weapons, and new ways of making them, and so I must make a need for them.”