The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  When the flaps are pulled open, he looks at his dying wife, and a glitter of gold catches his eye. There's an amber rose on her breast, a beautifully carved thing that wasn't there when he left her side.

  Rodrigo snatches it up and races the few steps to the door, looking frantically through the camp with no clear idea of what he searches for. No, no real belief that he'll see it, though he knows well enough what he imagines is there.

  And there she is, slipping out of shadows cast by soldiers' tents, illuminated by the same new sun that guides Akilina into death. Belinda Walter stands in the middle of his camp, her hair alight with morning colour and the oval of her face darkened by the light behind her. She nods, once, as he did when he left her three nights ago, and then sunlight and shadows fold around her and she is gone.

  So, when he turns back, is Akilina Pankejeff.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  7 July 1588 † Brittany; the Gallic camp

  The past three days ought to have been a triumph, and instead they'd been a particular and new bleak hell. Rodrigo hadn't slept in two nights, sitting watch over Akilina; the only time he'd left her side was to attend first Sacha's, then Tomas's funeral services. The great guns still fought on, holding the Aulunian line; their enemy had lost both heart with Belinda's capture, and an impossible number of lives to the hideous weapons. Javier had overseen the guns' deployment, had stood and watched numbly as men fell before their fire, and had accepted the cheers and accolades of his own troops as they beat down the Red Bitch's army.

  They didn't know, and Javier didn't want to tell them, that they had bullets enough for one more day of slaughter, and then the war would return to the footing they had known: man against man, swords gutting one another, blood in the eyes, bile held back between clenched teeth, feet slipping in mud and muck as they all struggled to survive. Rodrigo had men pouring new bullets into moulds as quickly as they could, but it would be days, even weeks, before they had enough of a stockpile to continue the onslaught at its present rate.

  The old man's guns had evened the battlefield. Aulun and Khazar still had more men than the combined Ecumenic armies, but not nearly as many more, now. They could no longer count on sheer numbers to defeat Javier's troops, and that, he hoped, would take their heart from them, too. But then, it ought to have lent him confidence, and somehow it hadn't; it seemed he had nothing left to give, not certainty, not grief, not magic: Aulun had not gotten near enough to his men in the past three days to bother with the shielding, and his own witchpower attacks had been half-hearted. Ghosts sat on his shoulders, Tomas on one and Sacha on the other, urging him to different ends.

  “You could finish it.” Eliza spoke from behind him, an unexpected interruption to his thoughts. The words so closely echoed what he thought Sacha might say that Javier wondered if she, too, heard voices whispering from their past. She sat at his feet, an odd mix of awkwardness and grace born from the false pregnancy she carried. “We only have enough bullets for another day, and you've got the Aulunian heir locked up in a tent on our side of the lines. She can't, or won't, fight you. What makes you hesitate, love?” She put a hand up to catch Javier's fingers and draw him down to sit beside her. “Sacha would've had you act three days ago. Even Tomas wouldn't want it drawn out. What makes you hesitate?” Her voice was worn thin and dried out, and the new dawn's light aged her. No light was unkind to Eliza, but war, war was kind to no one.

  Javier folded his fingers in hers and sat, staring silently at the horizon and the fields of men below it before bringing her knuckles to his lips and pressing them there. “What if I told you I'd had a vision of the future?” he asked softly. “If it seemed this war's continuation was necessary to prepare us for what's to come?”

  “A witchpower vision?”

  Javier closed his eyes against the memory of Belinda's magic invading his own, showing him what she'd learned, and nodded. Eliza took a breath and held it long enough that a slight smile curved his mouth and he glanced her way. Her cheeks were puffed, gaze distant, and she let the air out in a sudden rush. “I wouldn't care, Javier. Marius and Sacha are dead, and Tomas, and now Akilina and her child. War has its price, and I know it must be paid, but they died in a fight that had a purpose. They died in a battle to reclaim Aulun for the Ecumenic church, not as part of some fight for a witchpower future. It's wrong to change the goals without giving us a chance to understand our new purpose. We can accomplish what you stood in Cordula and said you would do, my love. Between the guns and the magic, you have the power to end this war, and I would see it done. A child is coming,” she said more softly. “I would like us to live long enough to see its birth, much less its life.”

  “And the future I've seen? Do I let it come to pass with us unprepared?”

  Eliza turned to sit on one foot, the other knee drawn up against her chest. She'd taken to wearing gowns since their marriage, and her short hair blew in her eyes and fell away again, making her soft in the morning light. Soft, but for her gaze, which might have been chipped of brown marble. “You're witchbreed, blessed by the Pap-pas and by God. If there's a future this war is meant to lead to, or prevent, you have the magic and the vision to lead us where we're meant to go. If you need another war to follow this one, so be it. I'll stand by your side through it all, but give me one war at a time. Give me a victory before you change our direction.”

  Javier thinned his lips and looked toward the horizon again, a quietness coming on him from within. “How long have you been waiting to tell me this?”

  “Three days,” Eliza said steadily. “I was waiting to see if you would act on your own before we ran out of bullets. Sacha wasn't wrong, you know. You've always been too shy of exerting power, whether it's the magic or your crown. I understand why,” she added swiftly. “I do, Javier. I would have been hesitant, too, but you can no longer afford to be. We need who and what you are, king of Gallin. End this, and after you're crowned king in Aulun we can look to other wars and far-off futures.” She twisted her hand in his and brought his knuckles to her lips in turn, then stood and walked away, a dark-haired wraith in the breaking light.

  Javier watched her go and wondered at the women in his life, from his mother the queen to the Aulunian heir and back again to a queen, this one the pauper he'd crowned. They were the fairer sex, weaker in physique but more bloody of mind than he'd ever realised. Ambition, wit, wisdom; the men of his court should be so blessed with talents as the women, and he wondered if more history than he knew had been shaped by women such as these; if kings throughout time were pushed and prodded where their queens and lovers would have them go. He would have to ask Rodrigo, whose expertise with women might be limited, but whose studies of the past were extensive.

  Javier rubbed his hands on his thighs and stood, gaze bleak on the sunrise-bloody countryside below. He would ask Rodrigo, if they all survived the day.

  ROBERT, LORD DRAKE

  Javier will have to run out of bullets sooner or later. Sooner is more likely: even aided by witchpower, even given years or decades in which to work, Seolfor could only have made so many without some form of automation. Robert has been blindsided repeatedly these past few months, but he doubts he could have missed a factory in the Alanian mountains. So when the Ecumenic machine guns are rolled forward on the distant hills, Robert feels a surge of satisfaction: Javier is squandering his advantage, and Robert will soon be able to ride men of equal numbers into Javier's front lines.

  What's unexpected is that for the first time in days, Javier calls witchpower at a level Robert hasn't felt since Aria Magli. The first volleys of power are so quick and so strong it takes Robert a few seconds to recover, and to throw up the same kind of shields that Belinda and Ivanova both kept in place during some of the war.

  Ivanova: there's a distraction, and one Robert doesn't need now. The girl retreated to the heart of the Khazarian camp after Belinda's capture, suddenly afraid for her own life. It's preposterous: if Ivanova Durova is afraid of anything,
Robert has yet to put a name to it. He would dearly love to know the truth of what sent her back to her big-bearded generals, and at the same time is boyishly glad he doesn't. He ought not take glee in being played and out-played, manoeuvred, and out-thought, but this isn't an aspect of conquering that's mentioned in his people's history. Certainly other worlds must have brought cleverness to the fore and done battle against their manipulators, but Robert's people care only for the end result, not the details of arriving there. Other races' ingenuity has been lost, as human ingenuity will be, but discovering and facing it makes for a far more interesting mission than Robert expected to participate in.

  Even as he pulls his thoughts back in line, the tone of the witch-power volleys changes. Javier gathers himself and turns his magic against Robert himself. Silver smashes down, searching for weaknesses, searching for a way in; searching, in essence, for paths that will let him into Robert's mind, where he can tear his power apart from the inside out. Robert doubts Javier knows quite what he's trying to do; there's no finesse to his attack, no sense of understanding how he might capture and command another witchlord's magic.

  Robert, grinning, lets the boy try.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE

  Half a year past, Robert Drake threw up a wall of witchpower that stopped Javier's magic dead, and proved beyond question that Bea trice Irvine was in truth Belinda Primrose, and heir to Drake's witchpower. The world has changed since then; changed in so many ways Javier wouldn't know where to begin cataloguing it if he wanted to, and he does not want to. Still, today, now, armed with the things he's learned, he should be able to stand before the witchlord's power. Ought to be able to turn his attack from the Aulunian lines to the Aulunian consort, and devastate Drake with his will.

  The one he can do easily enough: witchpower magic turns from troops to a single man, bearing down with a lifetime's expectation of being accommodated; with the expectation that, like any other man, Robert Drake will bow his head and his will to Javier de Castille, and that the day will roll on in the same way it began.

  But Robert's power has the strength of the tide, pulling relentlessly, bending and washing over Javier's own, subsuming it rather than being subsumed. Every volley Javier throws out is absorbed, and when Robert lashes back it's as though an ocean crashes down on him, staggering with its weight. Too little sluices away from Robert's own magic, and with the third driving blow Javier drops to his knees, hands buried in the earth as though he could draw strength from it. Robert is the source of the Aulunian alliance's strength; if he can be defeated the serpent's back is broken and Cor-dula might triumph.

  Cordula must triumph, for anything less risks not only Javier's neck, but Eliza's, and that's a price too dear to be paid. Too many high costs have been cut from his heart already, and he'll die here on the battlefield before he'll risk losing Eliza Beaulieu as well.

  A crack appears in his shields, Robert's power worming its way inside his mind, and Javier thinks he may well do just that, and lose Eliza after all.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  Javier's voice is a clarion call, crisper than Robert's the single time he touched her mind with words. Help me, Javier says silently across the distance. Help me, or I am lost.

  Belinda Primrose comes to the door of her tent and steps through without the guards noticing her; walks a little distance down green grassy hills to look at the front lines, where Javier de Castille is on his knees, silver magic pouring off him so thickly that it can only be a matter of time, and not much at that, before everything that he is burns out in his battle against another witchlord.

  Against Robert, Lord Drake, Belinda's father and Javier's own, though at the heart of it there's almost no matter to that second part: he is Sandalia's son in every way that counts, except that one blood sin they've shared. There, in that small detail, it does matter, matters so much her skin still crawls with it, even when she's looking beyond their paternity and at the lines of battle that have been drawn.

  Javier's voice is in her head, his magic drawing her to him, the sharing of an integral part of their souls. He screams of need, and a part of her still responds, perhaps will always respond, in a way she should not. With passion and desire rising to meet need and want, with thought uncoupled from body, so action is all that's worth considering.

  But a part of her is given over to thought after all, and thus unwinds desire from need and leaves her with a weighty choice on her hands. There's no return from whichever path she takes: whichever man she turns away from will never forgive her, and Belinda's heart aches in her chest with the strength and pain of that knowledge.

  Javier is the easier sacrifice to make. She crawled away from him once, bound to duty; that duty now makes a clear and easy road to follow. He has no love for her at all, and a great deal of righteous hate, and there's nothing in this world or any other that might change that. Not now; not with who and what she is. Eliza's life, even the child's, isn't enough to earn forgiveness, and a part of her wonders at even using the word; it's not one she's ever given a care for. In truth, she has little use for absolution, as she has no loathing or uncertainty for what she's been, any more than she might rage against the snow for being cold. So, aye, Javier de Castille is the easier sacrifice to make in all the ways that she is Robert's daughter.

  But she stands on the wrong side of the front lines, in the midst of an enemy camp, and the stillness that wrapped her in safety as she grew up has failed her, because she's cold there in the summer sunshine, and her breath comes short and hard, she can't control it. The truth is, Belinda Primrose isn't the same woman she was a year ago. That woman would never be here; that woman would never debate which of the evils she faced should be grasped, because it would never occur to her that she could, much less ought, to turn against Robert, Lord Drake, her beloved papa.

  Belinda lifts a hand and throws witchpower, snaking it along Javier's magic and shoring him up. He can bend a man's will, but it's she who learnt to steal Dmitri's power, and it's that same trick she turns against Robert Drake now, lancing her magic along Javier's until it crashes against the waterwheel that's her father's power. Water, though, isn't a solid at all, and she slips lines of gold light through the individual droplets to search out all the lines of weakness that make up a man's strengths. Ana di Meo: the courtesan's face flashes in her mind's eye, heavy with regret and sorrow. Lorraine Walter: queen of a realm and a heart, whose fading beauty makes no difference to the man who loves her. A silver beast in the sky, alien, repulsive, awesome, encompassing: she is everything, that monster, and yet somehow has become only part of a whole.

  Her own self, from birth to childhood to womanhood, and all the moments in between: herself, dressed in a new gown awaiting a queen she was forbidden to meet; herself, in a grownup lady's dress at age three, solemnly dancing the steps of a Tinternell; herself, walking through court with Rodney du Roz; herself, using a weapon of a word, father, and never seeing how that blade struck home; herself, time and again, holding a place in her father's heart she's only dreamt she might.

  Belinda closes her hand and with it takes Robert Drake's witch-power from him, and in the blackness that's left, sobs.

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  Robert Drake wakes with what feels like a three-day drunk shrieking inside his skull. For a little while he lies in the dark, admiring the ache in his head, and then a splash of light breaks across his vision and makes him wince. “Ah,” says a voice so unfamiliar in its familiarity he can't place it. “You're awake. I was beginning to wonder. Tell me, is the magic there?”

  It's such a ludicrous question Robert can't answer for a few seconds, not until recollection rises up and drowns him. He dismissed Dmitri's warnings about Belinda's power, her ability to steal magic, but he'd thought that was a knack born in sharing her bed. Of all the various sins against man Robert's committed over the decades, that particular one isn't on his list, and so he reaches for witchpower with confidence.

  And finds
a wall between himself and it. It shines like gold, a weight in his mind filled with a sense of justice. It's flawless in its construction, making spheres around his magic, so no matter what angle he approaches it from, he only slips off its cool strength.

  Rage floods his vision, turning it red, and he slams his will at that wall, searching for a weak point. It dents; gold is soft, but it's also very heavy, and when he bounces off its weight, it flows back to fill the tiny cavity he made. Insulted, angry, a little afraid, he flings himself at it again, scrabbling and clawing into the shining surface.

  Outside his mind, Seolfor begins to chuckle, and then to laugh outright. He's grinning when Robert shoves himself into a sit. “She might've left you dead,” he says without even the slightest hint of sympathy. “Dead, instead of neutered. It's what you did to her, isn't it? Ah, Robert, it's a shame you lost control. She'd have been wonderful, on our side.”

  Robert snarls and turns his attention back to the wall in his mind. He has the advantage over the girl Belinda was: he knows his power's there, and it cannot possibly take so long to free it as it took her. It's a matter of determination and time, nothing more. Seolfor might help.

  Might, but ah, this is Seolfor, who only continues to chortle, and after a little while gets to his feet and leaves Robert Drake in a tent somewhere in the Gallic countryside, there to try to woo his magic back, and start shaping this world anew.

  A dire order comes from Khazar: Chekov is to return to Khazan with not only Irina's ill-behaved daughter in tow, but the bulk of the Khazarian army, as well. Irina has clearly misjudged the ease of expansion, when inside two months both her first allies failed utterly in their naval sweep of the war, and then her new allies fell before Ecumenic weapons as wheat might fall in a field. Oh, it's bad form for an imperatrix to change sides so many times, so quickly, but it is worse, in Irina's opinion, to leave herself vulnerable. Cordula may well look east once Aulun's been taken, and from hurried messages sent by pigeon, it seems very likely Aulun will fall. Rodrigo of Essandia has new weapons, and all Irina has are men: she wants them all at her border, protecting it. In time she may be able to repair her reputation, at least enough so that it doesn't make ruling an empire more difficult for Ivanova, but for now, Irina commands a retreat and regroup, and will let Echon fight amongst itself while she prepares for a coming war.