The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  Even now his heart is a fist in his chest, refusing breath for his body. His hands are cold, most particularly the fingertips, and when he looks to them they're bloodless, whorls standing out in dreadful relief, as though all the wet beneath his skin has been sucked away. Every part of him clinches with fear at the thought of the boy who is his heir.

  He has felt God's power, has Rodrigo de Costa. He has stood in church and chapel and courtyard and felt God's grace, His warmth and generosity, and seen the wonders of the world He has created and granted life. God has guided Rodrigo, to the best of his frail human ability to follow, through all the years of his princedom. He has tried to act with wisdom, with grace, with compassion; it is why he has avoided war as best he can, when other kings and queens of Echon have made or agitated for it.

  It's not that Rodrigo believes infidels and heathens will be spared Hell; it's that he doubts God would approve of murdering unlettered peasants and unwise children as a means of spreading His word and changing their minds. There are better ways; if there were not, men would not have been granted reason or free will, but would have been born to follow blindly. To Rodrigo, it is far more a triumph to bring one thinking man to God's path than to slaughter thousands of innocents who have been led astray. The dead, after all, cannot convert.

  Faced with Javier, Rodrigo wonders if it may be better, this once, to condemn a soul to Hell so that many more might live.

  Because Javier is not touched with God's power. What Rodrigo saw in his nephew was selfish hurt, lashing out. God has more mercy and more wisdom than that: His chosen few are not of a temperament to redress personal wrongs with the power He grants. Of this, Rodrigo is confident.

  And yet; and yet; and yet. There is the matter of Sandalia's death; there is the matter, perhaps even more pressing, of Sandalia's heir. Of his own heir. Yes, Rodrigo is afraid of the boy, but far worse than Javier's selfish use of power might lie ahead if neither Essandia nor Gallin has an heir to take their thrones. Aulun will sweep in and roll over the Ecumenic countries with its armies and its heretical faith, and while Lorraine has no heir of her blood to put on the throne, she has lackeys and hangers-on a-plenty, and no small willingness to back a pretender to the Gallic and Essandian thrones.

  Humour ghosts through him. It's only fair; he and Sandalia are happy enough to put their prince on Lorraine's throne.

  Were, he reminds himself. He and Sandalia were happy enough, and now that duty lies with him.

  Mouth thinned with determination, Rodrigo leaves the fire he's been contemplating and rings a bell. In moments a servant enters, and Rodrigo orders his nephew brought to him. Fears must be faced, and weapons must be forged.

  When Javier enters, Rodrigo's before the fire again, fingers steepled against his mouth, eyebrows drawn into a headache-causing crease. He has been thinking—thinking of the instinct that made him seize on Javier's devil's power as a gift in the first moments he saw it manifested. That's the pragmatic streak in him, stronger than the fear; it's to that which he must now turn. Ambition can be shaped, is what Rodrigo is thinking, and when Javier hesitates at the corner of his vision, the Essandian prince drops his hands and gestures to the other chair settled before the fire. He says “Nephew” gravely, and Javier sits with the wide-eyed expression of a child uncertain if he has been caught at some illicit activity.

  “Uncle.” Javier hesitates again, then makes a feeble smile. “You've had the door fixed.”

  Rodrigo's smile is much better than Javier's, but then, he has many years more practise at dissembling. “I thought you might be more comfortable returning to my chambers if everything appeared normal.”

  “I'd be more comfortable, or you would be?”

  “Some of both.” There's no sense in lying; he needs Javier's utter trust in order to guide him. He needs Javier to believe what Rodrigo does not: that his power is God's, and that God intends him to make war on Aulun.

  For the briefest moment Rodrigo looks at himself as though from the outside, as though he is another man listening to his own thoughts. They are contradictory and complicated, pulled one way and another, and yet from within they feel a steady course. He is not one who likes war, and yet when it must be made—and it must, because Sandalia is dead and there seems little doubt Aulun's throne struck the blow—he will use whatever weapon is at hand. If that weapon should be his nephew, bedamned with a power that no man should carry, then he will use it even without trusting it. He, who believes so strongly in God and faith that he has set aside certain earthly expectations of a king and has chosen not to wed, not to father children, will lie and corrupt in order to achieve the ends he must have.

  God, he thinks irreverently and unusually, might have done Man no favours in giving him free will.

  “Some of both,” he says again, hoping it will sound like a ruefully considered admission, and that it will warm Javier's heart to him a little. “I stand in awe, Jav, you know that.”

  “You sit, uncle,” Javier says, deadpan.

  “My legs are too weak with wonder to hold me,” Rodrigo says promptly, and Javier grins. He's a handsome lad when he smiles, brightness of expression bringing life to a pale, long-featured face. Javier has nothing of Sandalia in him, unless her nut-brown hair and Louis's washed-out blond somehow mixed to give Javier his ginger head. “I have questions, Javier. This godspower of yours, do you practise with it?”

  “No.” Javier's voice has gone as pale as his skin, all a-shudder and revulsion. “I did, but no longer.”

  “You must. Javier—” Rodrigo leans forward, but it's Javier who lifts a cutting hand this time, and bounds to his feet with the unconstrained energy of youth.

  “What would you have me do, uncle? I made the priest's will my own, took from him what God granted Man. I cannot continue that way. It makes me—”

  “Desperate,” Rodrigo interrupts, strongly. “Desperate, perhaps, and also perhaps guided by the hand of our Lord after all. The priest is pious, yes, but he's not the one granted this talent. You and I and Marius know that Tomas would see it as his duty to condemn you to the church, and we all know that you are not the devil's instrument. What cannot be permitted is Tomas's declamation, not when God has laid a clear path for us from here to Alunaer. It is a necessary measure, Javier.” Wisdom, compassion, age, passion: Rodrigo would believe himself, if only he were not obliged to live with his own contrasting thoughts.

  “I don't sleep for fear of it.” Javier sinks into his seat again. “For fear of what I might become.”

  “A king?” Rodrigo asks, arch as a woman. “Your crown is not meant to help you sleep more easily, Jav It carries responsibilities, often hard ones. More often hard than not.”

  “Have I no responsibility to Tomas?”

  “You have served that. He lives. Beyond that, to permit him leave to betray your gift to Cordula fails to serve your own people, or your dead mother's memory. God forgives us our sins if we truly repent, Javier, you know that. I have no doubt you repent, but sometimes we must sin to answer the greater call. What aspects does your talent have?”

  Javier looks blank, as though he's forgotten where this began, then scrubs his hands across his face. “Shielding. Manifestations of light. Wanton destruction, and the ability to take a man's will from him and make it my own. God would not give one unwise youth such power, uncle. I cannot fathom it.”

  “You presume to know what God might or might not do?” Rodrigo puts rich humour in his voice and Javier shoots him a scowl. “Unwise, perhaps. Untried, indeed. Is it of use on the battlefield, Jav? These shields, this wanton destruction? We must explore it,” he insists, even as sympathy slices through his soul. For his own sake, Javier would be better served by a monastery cell, where he might stay on his knees through the length of days and long nights, begging mercy for succumbing to the temptations offered by his devil-born witchpower.

  For Gallin's sake, for Essandia's, for Cordula's, and for Sandalia's, he must be made to believe God has graced him, and be made to
train until his dark gift can reach forth and destroy that which has harmed his family and would ruin his people.

  “Explore it how? Would you have me march out to a hayfield and see if I can murder straw men, like a youth new to the bow or sword? Men understand the blade, uncle. They would not understand this.”

  “But that's precisely what we must do. In secret, yes, I'll grant you that. There are unused halls in the palace—”

  “And what if I bring them down around my ears?”

  “Then you'd best hope your shielding is strong.” Rodrigo's voice is wry, but he means what he says. Then curiosity seizes him and he takes up his wineglass. Drains it, because it is a fine vintage, and then without further warning flings it toward the young king of Gallin.

  Silver flares and glass shatters, both so sudden that Javier flinches. Then outrage darkens his cheeks and he springs to his feet again. “What—?!”

  “A test,” Rodrigo says, mildly. “Have you always reacted thus when an object flew your way, Javier? That must have been inconvenient, playing games in the gardens.”

  “No.” Javier is sullen now, not at all a nice aspect for a king. He sinks into his chair like a kicked dog, lip thrust in a pout. “I only learned it in playing witchpower games with Beatrice. I didn't know it had become instinct.”

  Beatrice, Rodrigo notes: the boy has corrected himself in the past, but this time lets it slip. The Aulunian witchbreed girl he saved is still “Beatrice” in Javier's mind, and that could prove dangerous. It will be worth watching, as well worth watching as his unholy magic. “You're born to power, Javier. Wielding it, even if it comes in this strange form, should be natural to you. Did you and she play at explosives, as well?”

  Javier slides him a look that suggests he thinks he's being mocked, but he finds no teasing in Rodrigo's face, and relaxes. “Only once. It's noisy, but I learnt I could do it.”

  “As can she?” At the second hard look from his nephew, Rodrigo raises an eyebrow and a hand. “I'm not looking to raise uncomfortable memories or to ridicule you. Belinda Primrose is alive and our enemy, and we must know what we can about her.” He hesitates, facing a question he doesn't want to ask, but makes himself do so on a long exhalation. “Might she have managed Sandalia's death through her power?”

  Javier pinches the bridge of his nose, a gesture that makes him look older than he is. “Belinda,” and now, reminded, he emphasises the name, “is different than I. She has extraordinary willpower, enough to stand a while against me, but she falls beneath an onslaught. She calls it ‘stillness,’ an internal gift,” he mutters, bitterness in the words, “as benefits a woman.”

  Silence reigns a few long moments as Javier stares into his own palm, before he breathes a curse and continues. “She said she used the stillness to hide in shadows once, so she went entirely unseen, but that she had forgotten how. That was before she and I woke the witchpower in her, though, and so I would say she might have managed Mother's death by witchpower, yes, but not in the way you mean. Marius says Mother was poisoned.” The words came raw from his throat, as though in voicing them he finally made the terrible and impossible real. A quaver, barely steadied, accompanied what he said next: “If Belinda used the kind of power I've shown, lashing out… it wouldn't look like poison. She has the ability to do what I've done, but she's a snake, uncle. Slithering into our friendships, into my bed, into the palace. Poison suits her better than blasting. She might have slithered into Mother's chambers and set the trap, perhaps by hiding within her stillness.”

  Rodrigo swallows the implications and refuses himself the luxury of expressing his thoughts. But Javier makes it unnecessary, looking up with grey eyes turned orange by the firelight. “I woke the power in her. I gave her the ability to murder my own mother. I am damned. I cannot do this, uncle. I can't follow this path.”

  “What will you do, then?” Inexorable tone to his voice, the one that his advisers and the men of his court know not to argue with. Javier has literal power behind his voice, but Rodrigo has a half-century's practise, and most of those years he's been a king. “Will you slink to a monastery and shave a tonsure, spend your days on your knees and castigating yourself?” For all that it's what he'd have Javier do if he could, it's not what must be done. If it takes heartless derision to push Javier to the path he has to take, then Rodrigo will be cruel. Life is made of difficult choices, and as he told his nephew, being a king makes none of them easier. “Will you abandon your throne as you threatened to do? Show yourself a coward in God's eyes?”

  “I am not!” Javier's cry is as plaintive as a child's. “This isn't God's gift I own. How could God do other than approve if I walk away from it?”

  “Because you are His chosen son for the Gallic throne, aye, and for mine. Who would you pass it to, if you walked away, Javier? You have no sons, nor do I. Would you let Gallin be swept away by Aulun or Ruessland, left as nothing more than a memory of a place that once was?”

  “No.” The answer is dull now, no longer plaintive, no longer sullen. “I have no other answer.”

  “Then accept it.” Rodrigo comes to crouch before his nephew, putting his hands on the youth's shoulders; making himself small before the king of Gallin. His stomach churns as he does it, all the warrior in him cringing from the weakness of his stance, but he is not on a battlefield now; at least, not one of swords and archers. “Come with me. We'll go to one of the lower halls, and we'll see what can be done with this talent of yours. I'll guide you when I can, Javier. I have faith you'll stay on God's path and make use of this gift as He intends. Do not be afraid.”

  Javier nods slowly and both men come to their feet together, Rodrigo making a playful light gesture that Javier should precede him. Javier echoes it in response, and smiling, they walk shoulder to shoulder from Rodrigo's chambers.

  Shoulder to shoulder, both pretending not to be afraid.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  14 February 1588 † Alunaer, capital city of Aulun

  She had no last name, not properly. Robert had always called her Primrose, for his imaginary sister who was supposedly Belinda's mother. But if she had taken her adopted father's name, she might have been Belinda Drake, who had been sent to a convent at age twelve, and who had never returned from it.

  Belinda Primrose wore those shackles now. For nearly a month she'd slept in a dull grey cell and said her devotions five times or more a day; had worn a scratchy woollen shift and knelt on cold stone, and had heard achingly little of the world beyond sturdy convent walls.

  The nuns were kind to their new ward, whom they'd been told had come from another convent. Belinda, when she spoke of her past, murmured obediently of a poor but pious abbey in the Aulunian west. She knew the names of her wimpled sisters, details of her mother superior's life, and could sketch a fair layout of the buildings if asked. Belinda had no doubt at all that such an abbey and such a woman and such sisters existed: she had no doubt, in fact, that a hazel-eyed, brown-eyed girl had played her role for ten years and more at that quiet western convent, and she had very little doubt as to what fate had greeted that woman when Belinda entered the convent in Alunaer.

  She tossed restlessly, sleep evading her more thoroughly tonight than it had in weeks past. If she were not obliged by Lorraine's orders to remain hidden, she would climb over the walls and explore Alunaer, seeking out whatever trifle it was that disturbed her dreams.

  A month ought to have been more than enough time to reestablish control over her actions and behaviour, but instead curiosity plagued her, a wondering to what purpose Lorraine had had her ensconced amongst religious women; to what purpose she was wearing the mantle that had been created for Robert Drake's adopted daughter over a decade earlier. It had been a lifetime since Belinda had been required to wait, and in that time she had become accustomed to performing one duty or another. For eleven years, since the day she had watched Rodney du Roz fall to his death and lie twitching on snow-covered stone, she had had purpose, and had known the purpose even of
waiting. As a child, not knowing why she was put aside, ignored and hidden, had chafed; now she had come full circle, and once more suffered the frustration of being uninformed.

  Eleven years. Her eyes opened and she sat up, blind gaze across the darkened cell. The sisters had spoken of it, but she'd paid no heed, assigning no meaning to the preparations for the feast of Saint Valentine that so occupied the others.

  Du Roz had died this day, eleven years ago.

  There would be no more rest found this night. Belinda flung her blanket back and slipped her feet into unpadded slippers, hurrying to pull her novice's robe on over the shift she slept in. More mundane clothes might be found in the laundry: there were often visitors to the abbey, rich or widowed women in need of time away from families or troubles, and from time to time they left behind gifts. Anything other than a robe would do, and she could escape the convent walls to—

  To go to the palace, and look down from the steps at the place where du Roz had died. Belinda stopped in the middle of her room, motionless, wondering at the thought; wondering what good it might do, or what doors in her mind it might open.

  That, then, was how the abbess found her moments later: standing frozen in a dark room, dressed to face the day, her face turned up toward the ceiling and sky as though God might offer an answer to some unknown question.

  Impulse had left Belinda by then, had left her cold and appalled. There were no answers in du Roz's death, not even if she knew what questions to ask. She knew why he had died: he, and all those who had crossed her path whose graves were now filled with rotting memories. He had presented a danger to Aulun and its queen, and there was nothing else to be taken from his short life or her hand in ending it.

  “Forgive me, mother,” she said in the quiet, cultured voice Belinda Drake had been given. “My dreams have disturbed me, and I thought to visit the chapel and find comfort in God's presence. Did I cry out in my sleep?”