The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  Belinda bowed her head. “I wouldn't presume to ask.” Nor did the refusal dismay her, as it would have done over Marius; Marius had deserved better than his fate, but Sacha was a player in his own right. “What's happening?”

  “Sacha will be buried at dawn.” Javier spoke so coolly Belinda knew he chose to misinterpret her question deliberately. Only a moment passed before he relented. Not, she thought, out of kindness to her, but out of a desire to remove himself from her presence as quickly as he could. There would be mourning to do, and a great deal else to face before Sacha's funeral rites.

  “Aulun retreated with your fall. Your father's sent an envoy to negotiate your return. The return of the Holy Mother's avatar,” Javier corrected himself. “They don't admit to who you are. Perhaps it's to my advantage to flaunt the truth.”

  “No.” Belinda winced at the sound of her own voice, too harsh and low. It scraped the inside of her head, shaking more sickness loose. “You hit me too damned hard,” she muttered, then pulled her thoughts back in order. “If you make noise about Aulun's heir being your captive, they'll parade the girl playing my part in Alunaer so your lies can be dismissed.”

  “And of those who've seen your face? How will he fool them?”

  Belinda shrugged. “They'll begin with the girl looking a great deal like me, but you can influence men against their will, and I can alter memories. Do you doubt Robert Drake can do these things, too? I'm his witchbreed daughter. He'll go far to bring me back under his control, and we need months in which to negotiate if this child is to be born yours. Don't rile him on this. Call me by whatever title he wants to give me and play at the game until we've finished this part of the bargain.”

  “Is it so easy for you?” Javier turned her way, not quite looking at her. “Is it all nothing more than deaths and deceits? You're so cold, and it's worse when I think of the woman Beatrice Irvine was. How can you construct a character of that nature and be so ruthless yourself?”

  “It's the only way I can construct such a character,” Belinda whispered. A dozen other comments came to her lips and didn't pass: Javier would neither believe nor care for the truths she'd come to face, that Beatrice had become too much a part of her, that what had once been easy was now matter for endless internal debate, that none of Beatrice's softness or Belinda's own questions took away from what must be done, regardless of the price. Out of all the things she might say, one wanted most to be spoken: I didn't drown Marius's ship. It would do no good; she'd drowned dozens of others, and Javier would have no pity or pleasure for the solitary act of compassion she'd engaged in that day. If Marius still lived, perhaps, but that she'd saved him only to see him die a few weeks later took the strength from a childish hope of absolution.

  Javier gave her a hard look, then went to the tent door, not speaking until he'd reached it. “You'll be kept under watch, not because I think we can keep you from escaping, but for your protection, though God help the fool who comes at you toward any end. I go to treat with your father.” He stepped through the flaps, leaving a bar of sunshine across the floor, and after a moment Belinda gathered herself to cross the dim room and look at the world from within the Gallic camp.

  Sunlight splashed hard and white into her vision, turning Javier into a blur as he strode away. A wobbling old man leaning on a staff crossed between them, cutting away brilliance, and turned his head to give Belinda a querulous glower. Her headache flared, and with it a spike of light burst around the old man.

  More than burst: even with her temple throbbing and a fingertip touch telling her a bruise was purpling there, witchpower answered that burn of white, matching like for like. Belinda blocked the glare with her hand, squinting to get a clearer picture of the man.

  There was more than an old man's height and breadth to him, though witchpower buzzed around him until it became a hiss almost indistinguishable from the sounds of the world. Within that cloak of power he was ageless and full of a mischievousness she'd never seen in her father or in Dmitri Leontyev. Unbidden, a name came to her lips, a name stolen from Robert, from Dmitri; not one she had known until this moment: “Seolfor.”

  It was too soft a sound; it would never cross the distance between herself and the silver-haired witchlord. But he smiled and hefted his staff a few inches in greeting, then dropped a blue-eyed wink. Belinda took a step forward, and inside that step the burning afternoon sunlight took him away as thoroughly as it'd swallowed Javier only moments before.

  There was nothing left in the air, no hint of power, no whisper that said he'd cloaked himself in magic: he was simply gone, and when her vision cleared again, one of the new guns stood where he'd been.

  ROBERT, LORD DRAKE

  Of the things that might have gone wrong, Belinda's capture by the Gallic king had not so much as entered Robert's mind. She was too quick, too clever, too bold, and Javier's intimate awareness of her person, both figuratively and literally, too much a danger to her. That they would clash on the battlefield, yes-that much Robert anticipated-but not that she would fall.

  Now, sitting on a bored warhorse, Robert wonders if he allowed himself to be blind in this matter. Belinda did, after all, collapse beneath Javier's power in Lutetia a few months ago, but her training beneath Dmitri-and, Robert thinks with a dour kind of humour, no doubt above and before him as well-strengthened her. She shouldn't have fallen, and should now be able to walk free easily. He had watched it all, the distance as nothing to his witchpower. She'd gutted a man and then stood numbed from it, bewildering when he thought of the innumerable deaths she'd brought just that day, nevermind in the course of her young life. Javier'd ridden up to her as she stood unawares, and hit her hard enough that Robert, a mile away, had winced.

  So, though there are no doubt a hundred other things he ought to say, when Javier de Castille rides up, what Robert can't help asking is “Who was it she killed, before you captured her?”

  “Sacha,” Javier says in a flat voice, and says it as though he expects Robert to take meaning from the name.

  Indeed, Robert does, and Ana di Meo's whispered warning flashes back to him across the months and across her death: Belinda is lonely, my lord, and almost nothing else matters. Belinda was lonely, and Sacha Asselin was a friend to Beatrice Irvine. That, then, explains it all, and gives Robert a measure of horror: Belinda has become soft, if that young lord's death drew her up that badly. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he says aloud, and Javier smirks, ugly expression on his thin features.

  “As are we all. My lord Drake, we have captured your holy avatar, and we are inclined to keep her as our guest until Aulun surrenders. We are,” the young king says, and manages to sound as dry as Lorraine, “willing to accept that surrender now, and save ourselves the trouble of riding back and forth under truce.”

  “Perhaps your majesty would be willing to consider a ransom instead,” Robert says, but his heart isn't in the negotiation. In fact, he has no real idea of what he's just said, because the king's vocal inflections have opened a window in Robert's mind. He stares at Javier de Castille and sees in him the young Aulunian queen, her titian hair long and loose over her shoulders and her thin grey eyes full of pride and wit. Javier hasn't the widow's peak that graces Lorraine's hairline, or Robert might have seen it immediately, but the truth is, Lorraine's features sit better on a man's face than on her own: he's a more handsome boy than she ever was a woman.

  If it were within Robert Drake's power, he would retrieve Dmitri Leontyev from the grave so he might take the pleasure of killing him again. Heat stains his face, and Robert doesn't remember the last time he blushed. His hands are cold on the warhorse's reins, and it's only a lifetime's worth of habit that keeps him calm and solid in his seat. He can -just -forgive himself for not seeing it, because he's only met Javier once, and that under unfortuitous circumstances. But he should have known. He should have known, and he did not, and that means Robert Drake has been out-played.

  Javier has dismissed the idea of a ransom and is waiting
for Robert to name an outrageous ransom fee that Javier will take under consideration and ride back to the Ecumenic camp with. Right now, though, Robert can't name a price he wouldn't pay just for the chance to face Belinda and learn how much of this game she was aware of when she came to war. For a rash moment he actually considers surrendering just to achieve that end.

  But no, Lorraine would stare incredulously if he did capitulate, and it would in no way serve his queen beyond the stars, and so what he says is ill-considered, but at least it's not a surrender: “I think my Primrose knows, but do you, or has she kept that secret from you, king of Gallin?”

  The skin around Javier's eyes tightens, so fine a wrinkling that if Robert had not spent thirty years and more bedding the queen of Aulun he might not have seen or recognised it at all. These mortals learn much from their surroundings, but can do nothing about the form they're given. Though it's stretched across an unknown mind, this face is so familiar it cannot lie: Javier knows that he's Robert's son and Belinda's brother, and if Javier knows, Belinda's the one who's told him.

  And that, Robert should think, means they've built an alliance in the shadows, and her capture is not a capture at all, but a deliberate retreat on her part. Only one reason carries enough weight: the child Belinda's carrying, which she has not yet confided in her father about.

  Oh, yes, he's been out-played, and to his surprise, he's delighted.

  He's known Belinda is clever, but he never imagined she might be a worthy opponent. She was meant to be a tool, not to put pieces on the board herself and set them into action.

  Javier has expressed some sort of polite incomprehension, but Robert's no longer listening. Lorraine gave Belinda a cryptic order before sending the girl away, to take care of the matter they discussed. The Titian queen-the Red Bitch, Robert thinks both ruefully and lovingly-would have meant the pregnancy, would not have accepted a daughter with an illegitimate child. This, then, is Belinda's way of protecting the babe, and moreover, she intends on giving it over to Javier de Castille and his new bride, whom Robert would now wager is not pregnant and indeed can never be so.

  It's a brilliantly insidious plan to gain the Gallic throne, and Robert is astonished Javier agreed to it. The child isn't his: that much Robert's sure of; Belinda's not round enough to be carrying Javier's child. The king must love her, Robert thinks, and the idea takes him aback. The Gallic king must love the girl he's married, if he's willing to go to this length to get a child with her and keep his throne.

  He will have to send Seolfor, Robert decides; will have to put Seolfor into play at the Gallic court, so the witchpower child will be under some vestige of control. His other choice is to snatch Belinda back and keep her hidden from Lorraine until the baby's born, but in truth, Belinda's done a fine job of manipulating events herself. He'd applaud her for it if she were here, but he doubts he'll see his daughter again until the new year, when some kind of truce in the war will be negotiated in exchange for her return. That will do, even if he might personally want to face Belinda down; he needs the war to go on, and personal wishes must be subsumed beneath the greater plan.

  His mouth is running without his thoughts behind it; he and Javier are snipping over surrenders and ransom, neither of them with any intention of giving in to the other. Robert raises his hand suddenly, cutting off the discussion. “Our beloved daughter remains safe in Alunaer,” he says coldly. “Keep this avatar if you wish. All of Aulun has faith that the queen of Heaven rides with us, and if one girl is captured by the damnable Cordulan forces, then when Belinda is called to host the holy spirit again, another woman shall become her avatar here in Brittany.”

  He wheels his horse, leaving a gaping Javier behind, and gallops back to the Aulunian camp grinning with delight.

  TOMAS DEL'ABBATE

  Javier has gone to make treatise over a prisoner of war, and Tomas has turned to God for guidance. War has undone him in every way: the sound, the death, the rushing sand of time, all of it hissing forward with no chance to sleep, no chance to think. Hours and hours ago Javier sent him away with an order to never again think or speak on Eliza Beaulieu's unworthiness as a king's bride, and in all that time he's thought of nothing else. Rodrigo spent half the night rattling the camp with his new guns, and instead of studying them and exulting in their coming victory, Tomas's thoughts have strayed again to Eliza and Javier. Indeed, even now he should be praying for Sacha Asselin's soul, and instead he's on his knees begging God to let him be happy for Javier, to let him be happy that the young king has gotten himself an heir, a confidante, a wife, in the midst of war. God, it seems, isn't listening, because all Tomas is left with are heartbeats of envy mixed with pulses of sorrow.

  He's the newcomer to their group, the one who has replaced one of their own; the one who has lived in that one's place, through a grace Tomas believes, sacrilegiously, is wholly Marius's, and none of God's. He cannot quite make himself believe that it was the Lord's will that Marius die in his place; he can't make himself believe at all that it was God's plan that Eliza should live. That was the witchpower at work, and not just Javier's, but the Aulunian woman's as well. She and Javier cannot both be blessed with God's gift, and so if Eliza lives, it's at the devil's bidding.

  Which means Javier has bound himself to Hell in wedding Eliza Beaulieu, and that Tomas has failed in every way.

  He feels that madness has come on him, a grief that tears up from the bottom of his soul with the intent to strangle him. His body is by turns cold and hot, his hands shaking even as they're pressed together in prayer. He has failed Javier and failed God, and he's no longer certain which distresses him more.

  There is a way out, a terrible way out, and Tomas both shies from thinking on it and pursues it with all vigour. One more death, a death where God intended no life anyway, might turn Javier back to him, and save the king's soul besides. It's a sin, specifically against one of God's great commandments, but for Javier's sake Tomas must consider it. For Echon's sake, he must consider it: Eliza is an inappropriate bride, and the Parnan Caesar has daughters a-plenty to choose from.

  Dread certainty fills his heart. Tomas lowers his gaze, whispers a thanks to God for showing him a clear path, and looks up once more to gather strength from the crucifix and the image of God's only son, whom He sacrificed out of love for Man.

  A shaft of light spills through the tent, quick brilliance that says another has entered. It turns the jewel-encrusted cross to fire, and the ivory Son to blinding white, and there's an instant where an unusual and clear thought stands out in Tomas's mind: he ought not have knelt with his back to the door.

  Then pain sets in, pain so astonishing it might be God's own touch, reached down from the heavens to grace His beautiful son. To burn him where he kneels, immolation in a moment of piety, but instead of God's face, instead of an angel lifting him to Heaven, Tomas feels a brush of lips against his ear, and hears a woman's voice whisper, “Sacha Asselin is dead, priest, and I have no other recourse to hold Javier's ear but to force him to turn to family. A pity. You were so lovely.”

  He twists, spurring agony through his back, but he can't lift a hand to pull the knife away, nor to mark his murderer in any way. The earth's pull takes him, and he's falling clumsily, toppling backward as soothing blackness begins to overcome the pain, and the last thing in this world that Tomas del'Abbate sees is Akilina Pankejeff's razor smile fading into darkness.

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  BELINDA WALTER

  4 July 1588 † Brittany; the Gallic camp

  Raging witchpower woke her half a breath before Javier's hand in her hair pulled her from the cot and flung her to the floor. Her own power lashed back and she tamped it, training far older than the magic making her small and vulnerable beneath a man's wrath. Instinct made her breathless, wide-eyed, lips parted with fear and excitement as she cowered as prettily as she knew how.

  It was the wrong reaction: the wiser part of her knew that, knew she was better
fighting than making herself pluckable, most especially in this place, with this man. But this was a game she'd been trained in since she was a child, and for a few seconds all she could do was gaze up at Javier de Castille in half-real terror and utter supplication.

  He kicked her, which was unusual for a man superior to her. Even through a red burst of pain in her ribs Belinda was grateful: it helped shake her from her instincts. She rolled back, hiding under the cot, and dug her fingers into the ground, trying to drag her thoughts into a semblance of order. Trying, most especially, to neither make herself an object of desire nor to hit back with magic: there would be a reason for Javier's attack, and fighting back would only convince him he was right in whatever matter had infuriated him. Neither seductress nor witch-that left Belinda with nothing but the woman, and the role was a strange one to her.

  Javier flipped the cot away and kicked her again, and this time Belinda screamed, shock as potent as pain. “What? What have I done?” That, at least, was born of honesty, not seduction, and helped bring her further from that place which, should Javier's mind clear enough to see it, would very likely end in Belinda's death. She would have no forgiveness for her wiles in his position, not even under the most serene of circumstances.

  She scrambled back from another kick, and finally saw that tears streaked the king's face, marks as wild as the fury he indulged in. Belinda lurched to her feet and stumbled to the thrown cot's far side, trying to put something, regardless of how insubstantial, between herself and Javier. He'd been dry-eyed over Sacha, that wound too deep to bleed; this was something else. His magic felt shattered, streaked with black despair, and below his rage, despair boiled over. Impossible loss, so bleak it left a chasm in him; Belinda's heart spasmed in sympathy above her fear and confusion. “What's happened?”