by C. E. Murphy
And yet Javier has come into this room—burst into it in a manner more literal and frightening than Tomas has ever seen—clearly expecting to see his royal uncle lying dead, which is against all sense if his hand guided Sandalia toward death. Perhaps the prince is a consummate actor, for his next thoughts, as played on the stage an astonished Tomas watches, are full of terrible apology for frightening others over the status of his own life. It might be play-acted, yes, but to embrace such reversal of emotion so desperately does not smack of lies to the quiet Cordulan priest.
There is something in the air around the prince, a presence more palpable than anything Tomas has felt from Rodrigo, and Rodrigo is not a man to be taken lightly. Javier takes up more space than his slender frame allows; more than Rodrigo; more, even, than the Pap-pas. The Pappas bears God with him at all times, and yet even without Javier's gaze on him, without Javier's awareness of him at all, Tomas is more awed by the young prince's strength than he has ever been by the Pappas.
It comes to him very clearly, the thought: either Javier has been touched by God Himself, or he is the devil's child.
And then Marius speaks, shares dreadful news, and Javier turns from his uncle with a tide of rage rising in his eyes. Silver rage, silver eyes, making the ginger-haired, pale-skinned prince Tomas's opposite in all ways.
Another clear thought comes to him in the instant before furious, inexplicable power blasts him. I am lost, he thinks, and everything he knows beyond that is pain and breathlessness and blackness.
JAVIER DE CASTILLE, UNCROWNED KING OF GALLIN
Beatrice had asked if using his gifts had awakened a desire within him to dominate. Javier, standing over Marius's still form, over the slumped shape of a beautiful priest, recalled the question and his mocking, dismissive response with cold anguish. No, he wanted to say to her now. No, not domination, but destruction. Destruction came of the unchartered use of his power: two men lay at his feet to prove it, and two more lay beyond the shattered door.
But Beatrice had been Belinda, and nothing at all of what he thought she was. Nor, indeed, was Javier what he believed himself to be: a prince in control, hiding his cursed magic, a creature alone in the world. Now he was a king, and moreover a king who had shown his hand to another monarch, and shown it against his childhood friend, whose life was as dear to him as his own. Marius could be trusted; Marius had spoken of Javier's weighty will naturally, as if it was to be expected of royalty, and now he lay unmoving under that will's lashing strength.
“The priest had better not be dead.” Rodrigo's voice cut through Javier's thoughts, getting a flinch out of him.
“The priest. What about Marius?” Foolish words, pushing away the inevitable: refusing the admission of what he'd done. Javier's knees wouldn't bend, wouldn't lower him to check Marius for a pulse.
Rodrigo came to Javier's side, scowling, not an expression of anger or fear: it was too controlled for that, too examining. Javier read nothing in his uncle's gaze, and set his jaw against giving the Essandian prince anything to read in his own.
No: he searched for one thing, after all. He sent a whisper of witchpower, of profound will, to test Rodrigo's. The magic came from somewhere, and for Belinda, it had come from her father Robert. If there was a glimmer of such power within Rodrigo, all of Javier's fears and hopes would be answered. King and prince, for Essandia called its monarch a prince, met ferocious gazes a few long seconds, and it was Javier whose shoulders slumped as he looked away.
Strength of will reigned within Rodrigo, as it must. Strength of will and of vision, as any ruler who sat on the throne as many decades as Rodrigo had done must have. His word was law and none would stand against it, but they would bow and buckle because of his position and their awareness of it, not because witch-power fueled it and made his desire impossible to refuse. Rodrigo bore no magic; no gift tied him to his nephew in ways ordinary men could ever fathom. Javier might have rolled his uncle's will and taken his country in that moment, had it been his wish. It was not; it never would be.
Not, whispered a hateful voice of truth, not unless Rodrigo should try to cast him aside, or have him burned, or in any way threaten him. Javier had exposed his hand and now must play it. He had survived a lifetime of denying his own fears, and cool silver certainty told him that he would not now permit someone else's to damn him.
“You're not surprised,” Rodrigo said softly. “You've destroyed our Aulunian oak doors and knocked two men senseless, and yet you are not surprised.”
“Four men,” Javier said dully. “The guards outside the door. I have never done this before, but no. I am not surprised.” We, he thought; he was a king now, and should use we when he spoke of himself. “And you are not afraid.”
Acknowledgment flickered in Rodrigo's eyes, notice that Javier had forgone any kind of honorific and called Rodrigo “you,” as though they stood on equal ground. Whether it was daring or not caring, or perhaps simply an assumption of his rights, Javier felt uncertain. The idea of his mother's death was in most ways beyond him, only a few cold pieces of meaning slipping through still-boiling silver power allowing him to make choices and move onward.
“My sister is dead. I may have no room for fear left in me.” Rodrigo's gaze shifted to the men on the floor and he muttered a curse. “Unless the priest is dead, in which case you will have far more to answer to than the simple how of what has happened.” He knelt, unceremoniously pushing Marius off the priest. Marius's cheek slid onto the cold stone floor and he groaned.
Relief swept Javier and he, too, knelt, pulling his brother in all but blood into his arms and mumbling an apology over him. “What does the priest matter? He's pretty, but I didn't think your tastes ran that way.” No sooner had he spoken than he regretted it, catching his tongue between his teeth.
Rodrigo gave him a look that said once, only once, and only because Sandalia was dead, would he be forgiven such crudity. “His name is Tomas del'Abbate, and he is the bastard son of Primo Ab-bate, who will in all likelihood be the next Pappas. Abbate is very fond of the boy, and we none of us want to make an enemy of the church's leadership.”
“Jav.” Marius turned his face against Javier's chest with a weary smile, then stiffened and pushed away, memory all too obviously coming back to him. Javier knotted his hands, trying not to reach out in supplication and a hope of forgiveness. The air in the room went still, not just with Marius's sudden wariness, but with Rodrigo's tense anticipation as he turned his attention from the priest to the two wakeful young men. Javier recognised the flavour of waiting: it tasted of the moments before a fencing bout was met; tasted, he thought, of what the seconds before war broke out must taste of. Danger lay all around them, a presence of its own. Shielding magic surged, briefly illuminating the room in witchpower, and for that moment, Javier understood.
Rodrigo was afraid. Afraid on more than one level: afraid of Javier's inexplicable magic, afraid of the priest's death, afraid of Marius's response. Afraid, at the end, of losing a nephew as well as a sister, and so each of those fears mounted the other until the last was all-consuming. There would be a price to pay later: the narrow hard lines around his uncle's mouth told Javier that much, but for now, the Essandian prince would neither show fear nor allow harm to come to the young Gallic king.
“Javier,” Marius said again, but this time the name was a question, edged on desperate. He had pulled away, but his hand made a fist of itself in Javier's shirt. Rough loose wool, that shirt, not the fine stuff that befitted a prince, not at all. Witchlight twisted, giving him leave to step outside himself and see himself as clearly as he saw others. Narrow-cut black pants, the wide leather belt, the tall sturdy boots: they had suited him on the sea. He looked the part of a brigand, not a prince, and wondered that the guards had opened the gates to him, despite his raging command. Marius's hand, by comparison to the weathered fabric it gripped, seemed clean and soft and cultured.
Javier closed his own hand over Marius's, struggling to call on ordinary human
strength and not the silver power that lit everything he saw. He had little doubt he could allay any fear Marius felt or frighten him further into pretending that nothing was wrong. The idea soured in his mind, liquid silver turning black and poisonous as mercury at the thought. They had spent a lifetime together, he and Marius and Eliza and Sacha, and ever since Javier had recognised that his friends didn't share his magic, he had reined in every impulse, stepped on every opportunity, to influence them with his will. He could, if he so desired; he had learned only lately that he had, whether he willed it or no, but he would not deliberately subsume Marius's impulses, even if the cost should be scored on his own skin. Rodrigo, yes: he would do whatever necessary to survive his uncle's fears, but not Marius. Never Marius.
“What is it?” The question was softer than the echo of his name had been, Marius's gaze and grip tight on Javier's. His voice shook as though exhaustion or pain had come to bed down with dread, leaving him nothing to control himself with. “Javier, what is it that you do to us?”
“I call it witchpower.” Javier lowered his head over Marius's, more afraid to look away than to continue meeting the merchant lad's eyes. “When I was young I thought everyone had it. When I realised I was the only one … I've never meant to hurt you, Marius. I've tried so hard to not influence you with it. Any of you. My friends. My family.”
“Witchpower.” Marius and Rodrigo both echoed the word, and it was Marius who continued as Rodrigo fell silent. “Witchery is the devil's work, Jav.”
“I know.” Javier kept his gaze on Marius, trusting he would find censure in Rodrigo's face and hoping against all wisdom that there might be some hint of forgiveness in Marius's. “So perhaps I'm Hell-born, for neither my uncle nor my mother carried this power in their blood. Did my father?” He glanced up with a sharp look, and saw instantly from Rodrigo's expression that Louis of Gallin had been as ordinary a man as any. Resignation drooped his shoulders and brought regret to his voice. “I thought not.”
“Beatrice had this power.” Comprehension was worse than condemnation, Marius's whisper knifing through Javier with its weight of pity and absolution. “That first night when I brought her to meet you, something passed between you. She defied you, Jav No one defies you.” By the time he finished, bewilderment had replaced pity, and Marius's brown eyes were wide. “My God, Javier, why didn't you just tell me? I would have understood.”
“Would you?” Savagery drove Javier to his feet, sent him pacing away from the three men on the floor. The priest hadn't roused yet, as much cause for relief as alarm: Javier's family of blood and friendship might yet forgive his damnable magic, but a man of the cloth would do no other than call for a green oak stake and thick chains to bind him with. “Would you have understood if I said I carry power within me that forbids men to deny my will? Would you have ever trusted your thoughts with me again? You have been my friend all my life, Marius. You, Liz, Sacha. I couldn't risk that. I'd have been alone.”
Marius rubbed his shoulder as he sat up, then dropped his head, strong fingers lacing through his dark hair. “It's easy to say I would've understood, Jav. Maybe I wouldn't have, but I knew the boy you were and the man you are. You're a prince, my lord. A king, now.” His voice shook with the recollection, but he freed his hands and looked up at Javier. “Even as children we all knew who we played with. It didn't matter that much, not to me, because I was still stronger than you, and you never cried mercy on your rank when we wrestled. It was only as we got older that I realised I should have let you win.” A fragile smile skirted his mouth, then fell away again. “I thought no one stood in your path because you were heir to the throne, Jav. That was mystical enough for me. You've had a lifetime in which you could have used this witchpower to be cruel, and you've never done it.” Hesitation followed the last words, highlighted by a blanch Marius failed to hide.
“Except to you,” Javier said softly, putting voice to the thought he knew had burdened Marius's mind. “Except to you, in the matter of Beatrice.”
“Aye, my prince. But I think I would have understood.”
The fire left Javier as suddenly as it had come on, leaving him drained all over again. It was no longer witchpower, he thought, plying his emotions, but simple human fear and misery. His mother was dead, his friends scattered, his uncle wisely wary of him. Even a man accustomed to heavy burdens would buckle under such a weight, and for a bitter instant, Javier recognised that he was not at all accustomed to bearing difficulties on his princely shoulders. “You might have,” he whispered. “Perhaps I've done even more badly by you than I knew, my friend, and I have known that I have done badly by you indeed. But without you I'm alone. You three, my only true friends. And then Beatrice … Belinda,” he corrected himself wearily. “Belinda came to you, to me, to us all, with her own power, and I was no longer lonely in spirit or in body. I had thought to give up the throne.”
He lifted his gaze beyond the palace walls, turning it north, toward Gallin; toward, in the end, Aulun, the country of Belinda's birth and heart. “I must have seemed very foolish to her,” he said quietly “So eager to give up so much, all so I would no longer be alone.”
“It is not a choice we are given, Javier.” Rodrigo rose from beside the fallen priest. “We who are born to these families are born to serve, not to choose selfishly. Your mother knew that, and married twice for God and peace and power, and it is your duty now to follow her.”
“For God and peace and power?” Iron: the words were iron in his mouth, flat and hideous on his tongue.
“Oh, yes.”
Javier had never heard his uncle sound so, and turned to see calculation on his handsome face. “Oh, yes, Javier. For God, for peace, and with this magic you bear, oh, most certainly for power. I think you've named your gift poorly, nephew. I know you to be a good and godly boy, and I will not believe that this talent has been granted by the fallen one.” Calculation turned to avarice, driven by grief and anger. “I believe it is a gift from God. Call it so: call it God's power, not witchpower, and with it we might at last retrieve Aulun from its unholy church and return its people to Ecumenic arms and Cordula's wisdom. And if there is so much as a whisper that Aulun's hand guided Sandalia's to a poisoned cup, then we will raze its throne, its nobility, its very heart and soul to the earth, and when the new sun rises we will crown you king over the western islands and a bold new banner for our faith.”
Power wrenched Javier's heart, brightening his eyes with tears. He dropped to one knee, head lowered and hands outraised to honour Rodrigo's passionate vision. “Aulun's hand will have tipped that cup, my lord prince. I have no doubt of it,” he grated through a throat gone tight with emotion. “Belinda Primrose, called Bea trice Irvine, is the daughter of Robert Drake, the Red Queen's courtier. I saw the truth of it in the witchpower I shared with her, and that she shared with Drake. I had hoped I would see that same power in you, uncle, or you would tell me it had ridden my father Louis.”
“No,” Rodrigo whispered. “More proof that it's God's gift, nephew, our holy father preparing you to stand against a black and terrible magic born from the Reformation church's devilish ways. Trust in God, Javier. Trust in your gift. We will exact our vengeance together, in God's name.
“Do not kneel to me.” Rodrigo drew Javier to his feet. “Do not kneel to me, for you are a king now, and bend knee to no man. Instead stand beside me and allow my age and wisdom to guide your youth and talent. Do this and our sister, your mother, will be avenged, and you will wear the crown she had long since sought for you. Some measure of vengeance has been taken already,” he offered. “Marius tells me this Belinda Primrose is dead, and Robert Drake ransomed at a handsome price. These were Sandalia's final acts.”
“No.” Javier's voice cracked. “Not Belinda. Someone else in her place, perhaps, but I … took her from the oubliette. She was like me,” he whispered again. “She bears the same gift I do, and so, too, does Robert Drake. I raised no hand to save him, but I couldn't let her die. I was a fool.”
Rage cold enough to turn grief to ice rose in him, closing his throat against more words. His weakness had brought his mother's death to pass, an unforgivable offence.
Rodrigo went silent for long and deadly seconds, absorbing that. “Any man can be bewitched,” he finally breathed. “If she's free, it's a mistake we'll set to right, and if she has power, we can be certain it's a gift from a false and dark god. We will prevail, and she will burn as befits a witch.”
Despite fury, despite loss, sickness lurched Javier's stomach as a childhood terror came real in Rodrigo's threat. Pale skin blackening, the stench of burning hair, screams of horror and pain: he had seen them come to pass in his dreams. For all Belinda deserved such a fate, it came too close to how his own life might end, even with Rodrigo's confidence and trust at his side. “I would have her made mine to deal with,” he whispered, and wondered if it was sentiment or self-preservation. “I have, I think, been cut more deeply than any by her ways.”
“So shall it be.” Rodrigo drew Javier into a hard embrace, then loosened the grip, hands remaining on his shoulders. “We have a great deal to do, Javier. The armada will sail come spring, but before then we must learn the depths of your ability, and train.” Rage and sorrow flitted across his face. “And even before that, we must put our beloved Sandalia to rest. It will call the Gallic people to arms, Javier, and where Gallin rides, so, too, does Essandia.”
“And where our brother countries go, so, too, does Cordula,” Javier whispered. “Cordula, and the might of all the Ecumenic armies it can call to bear.”
“Aulun will be ours.” Rodrigo tightened his hands on Javier's shoulders. “In time, if we are bold, all of Echon will be ours, brought safe into the fold of our church and its wise fathers.” A dark smile creased his face. “You're young and unwed. Perhaps we might look farther than even Echon's borders.”