The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  Such a moment had not come in some time, and wouldn't until one side or the other took a significant loss. They had fought since the morning, and with sunset's late arrival in the middle of June, it was all too possible they might continue on until twilight turned to darkness. They fought over a bit of land that meant nothing in absolute terms, but should Javier's army fall beyond it, they would no longer be able to see the straits. Aulun would have pushed them back from the water's edge, and that would strike a scar against his men's hearts.

  “'Ware, Javier!” Sacha's bellow cut through the cacophony somehow: they fought only a few feet apart, but voices were nothing more than part of the indistinguishable noise of war. When one came clear it was as startling as the cold breeze off the distant water.

  Instinct responded to the warning more than thought: witch-power flared, almost invisible in the brilliant afternoon sunlight. Flared not just around him, but around dozens of men close by, and when a cannonball smashed into the shielding, it sent Javier staggering, but it sent the men to cheering even as they ran from its explosive finale. That, too, Javier contained, and in doing so saved not only his own men's lives, but innumerable Aulunians as well.

  That had not been a sought-after effect, and it had less sway on Aulunian morale than Javier might have hoped. They did not, and had not any of the half-dozen times he'd made such a rescue, suddenly flock to him, proclaiming him God's chosen one and the right and true king for whom they should fight.

  Instead they jeered, unimpressed with even the safety of their own lives: all he could do was stop a cannonball or two, where the newly revealed heir to Aulun's throne could beg God's will in directing the weather to favour Aulun and her navy.

  Storms, it seemed, were more impressive than cannonballs.

  Not for the first time, Javier unleashed a volley of power as devastating as the cannonball itself, but vastly more selective: those men of a different army whom he'd just saved crashed backward, breaking against one another, collapsing in heaps that no longer had much in common with bodies.

  He had learned very quickly that his own men would accept injury, would even accept death, when he dealt it to the enemy with his power, so long as it was clean. Broken bones, broken necks: these were acceptable, and if he could lance men with silver witchpower the way he might with a sword or arrow, that, too, was a show of power his army would rally behind. But the uglier aspect of war, the damage done by cannonballs ripping limbs away, caving in chests, smashing faces—all easily replicable with an unfocused burst of magic—were not things his people would rally behind. There was too much to fear in an ugly kill, and within the first minutes of their first battle Javier had felt that fear growing in the soldiers around him, and had changed his tactics. They wanted the devastation he could wreak, but only in the deepest bloodlust could they drop their worry about what it meant that a man could do what Javier did. Battle was the heart of bloodlust, it was true, but even now, even in its midst, Javier feared the witchpower's strength, and preferred to protect his men from its worst horrors.

  Belinda, if she was out there in the battlefield, and she had to be, still seemed inclined to use her magic less visibly. The thought twisted a smile across Javier's face: less visibly, indeed. He didn't believe she could cloak the Aulunian navy, much less its army as they crept through Brittany to prepare traps for Cordula's combined might, from the distance of Alunaer. She would be amongst the army somewhere, very likely unbeknownst even to their generals. They might give thanks to their feeble Reformation God, but it was the witchbreed woman creeping around their edges who gave them the stealth they needed to have counted coup against the Ecumenic forces.

  Cordula's army was not losing. Javier reminded himself of that with a ferocity bordering on desperation. They had the numbers and now that his army knew the Aulunians were there, they were easier to see, even when touches of witchpower magic helped to hide them. Belinda made no effort to disguise them during the day: there was little need, when the armies were met on battlefields, everything about them raw and direct and bloody. It was only at night when scouts came searching that Javier could feel whispers of magic, and even that never came close to him. If he were of another mind, that would be pleasing: his ability to reach beyond himself and sense other emotion, other use of power, was growing. In time he might seek Belinda out without ever leaving his post as king and soldier.

  Seek her out, and end her in his mother's name.

  For a time that ambition drove him: pushed him forward, in fact, and though he didn't see it, those around him did, a fiery-haired young king filled with silver rage. Aulunian soldiers fell back and his men advanced, all of them in a resounding mess of cannon-fire and swordplay and witchlight. Javier noticed Sacha in a moment of clarity, the sandy-haired lord grimacing with battle joy as he slammed his way into a formation of Aulunians. Then, very suddenly, there were no more, and the view to the sea was open. A cheer rose up around them and Javier put a hand out so that a banner might be thrust into it. He drove its pole into the earth, and witchpower gave him the voice to shout “Hold this ground!” so that all his people, and aye, all the Aulunian army, too, might hear the claim he made, and the challenge inherent in it.

  A guard, more pragmatic than passionate, put himself between the Gallic king and the retreating Aulunian army, and took an arrow in the chest before Javier could give thanks or motion him away Javier's hands went cold, youthful surety of survival collapsing with the guard, and while a roaring, insulted contingent of his men surged forward to take vengeance, Javier himself was pulled back to safety.

  Eliza did not, quite, slap him for his bravado. Not quite: a slap, a proper slap, the kind she clearly wanted to deliver, would have stained a handprint across his cheek; instead she only hit him alongside the head, sending drops of sweat flying from his hair. Then she kissed him, and then she hit him again and stormed away, leaving Javier staring after her in befuddlement. “I knew there were dangers in bringing women to war, but I never realised I might lose my head to Eliza's ministrations rather than the Aulunians'.”

  Sacha growled, “You should have left her behind,” from a few feet away, no farther than he'd been all day. Now, though, he was bent over a tub, sandy curls dark brown with water as he washed grime out. He'd stripped to the waist against the heat, and a handful of minor cuts scored his stocky body. The gondola boy, forever in the way but lithe enough to avoid being booted, washed away dirt and muck, then stuck bits of plaster against the small cuts. Sacha growled again and the boy scampered away, dragging his washing cloth through the cleanest water he could find before attacking Javier's own unimportant injuries with it.

  Javier lifted an arm, letting the boy do his job, and hissed a sharp breath before exhaling it with a shrug. “Then I should've left her in Aria Magli. I don't know how else I might have kept her from coming to war. Throw her in the dungeon?”

  “At least she'd have stayed safe.” Anger boiled off Sacha, a different flavour of it than drove him on the battlefield. There was glee in that rage, a revelling in battle lust with no room left for anything else. Out of fighting's heat, though, it was tainted with something else.

  Javier waved the gondola boy off and got to his feet, brow furrowed until the pinch of it made his head ache. The witchpower had done this to all of them, damnable stuff that it was. Useful, perhaps, but damnable, and not worth the price of friendship. “Sacha …”

  Sacha snapped his head up at the difference in Javier's tone, spraying water across the open tent they shared. Wet curls fell in his eyes, making him look the part of a youth. Javier smiled, suddenly hopeful, and felt that hope die at a spike of bitterness from his oldest friend. “Is it the crown or the witchpower?” he asked very softly. “Which of them has changed what we had?”

  “Neither.” Sacha snatched up a towel and rubbed his hair into a tangle, cutting off conversation, but Javier waited on him, bringing surprise and consternation to his face when he lowered the towel again. “Neither, Jav,” he repeat
ed, then threw the towel away. “Neither, or both, or all of it. You woo Eliza,” he said abruptly, as though the words surprised him, and then in a smaller voice, an even tighter voice, added, “You'd have never done that, before.”

  “Because I was a fool. I've learned a little, perhaps. Someone was going to,” he said more softly. “Woo her, or wed you, or me, or Marius. We may have all denied it, but we were never going to go into our age unchanged.”

  “You must know she's barren.” Sacha's gaze sharpened on Javier, judging to see whether he did know, and when Javier inclined his head, angry triumph blazed in Asselin's eyes. “So she can be nothing more than a means to your ends. She deserves better, Javier.”

  “I have a little hope,” Javier whispered. “A little hope that the witchpower may heal what the fever took. One's no less God's will than the other, no? And you need heirs, too, Sacha, making her no more an easy choice for you than myself. Of all of us, Marius might have most logically gone to her, but I think he was the least likely.”

  “Clearly,” Sacha spat. “And she's only ever had use for me when she was drunk. Sober, she's never looked beyond you.”

  “Then be happy for us,” Javier said, still softly. Asked: to his own ears it was a plea, hardly given voice at all.

  Sacha lowered his eyes, murmuring “Yes, my lord” with such meaningless subservience as to light rage in Javier's breast. There was nowhere he could turn without engaging Sacha's anger, and his own temper lashed out, words low and harsh: “I could command you to be. I could shape your will to mine, so your heart was as happy as mine has been.”

  “And what a hollow victory that would be, my king.” Sacha lifted his eyes, hazel gaze cool with anger. “Because I might not know the difference, but there's no one to bend your memory to suit. You know I've always wanted you to pursue your birthright. Now you have, and these are the prices we all pay.”

  He turned without being dismissed and walked away, stopping at the tent's far edge to snarl a handful of words over his shoulder: “I'll send you your priest. He should ease your pain.”

  TOMAS DEL'ABBATE

  15 June 1588 † Brittany, north of Gallin

  Tomas knows that he's watched as he goes to Javier's tent. Most of the gazes on him are friendly, seeing him as God's guiding hand on the young king's shoulder. It's what he'd like to imagine he is, though what hastens his footsteps isn't an interest in theological teachings, but a hunger for the fire that is Javier de Castille. He has not, he thinks, kept Javier on a righteous path, but has rather fallen from it himself; he has no other answer as to his eagerness to spend time in the king's burning presence.

  Other eyes are more judging and less kind. Sacha Asselin, who brought word that Javier bid him come; Marius Poulin, whose gentle heart has brought him to working the hospital tents rather than doing battle on the fields. Marius straightens from someone's sickbed to watch Tomas go, and if Sacha watched him with resentment, it seems Marius's gaze is full of sympathy and regret. He's the quiet one of their foursome, the one whose faith in Javier seems strongest, and he's lost his place at Javier's side to Tomas. He knows it, and so, too, does Tomas, who also knows he should relinquish that place to Marius again.

  It is the better, not the greater, part of him that knows that. He looks away, not wanting to meet Marius's eyes, and hurries past the field hospital to enter Javier's tent.

  The king is half-dressed and sprawled across a chair, blood seeping from a thin cut on one shoulder. Always pale, the blue undertones of his skin make him look hollowed now, as though whatever life once animated him has fled and left a still-breathing corpse behind. Tomas hesitates at the tent's open front, and glances back to where Sacha Asselin delivered a message with daggers in his voice.

  It's a moment before Tomas realises what the young lord has done. “You didn't ask for me.”

  “No. Sacha condemned you to me, or the other way around.” Javier lifts a hand, twirls his fingers against the setting sun, and Tomas, as though he were a servant boy, releases one of the ropes that holds the tent flaps open. Shadow falls across most of Javier's body, making him even paler, but the darker light is more flattering to him than sun: he looks less unwell, and the colour in his hair becomes richer. “He's growing to hate me, Tomas. Are they all?”

  “Not Eliza.” Tomas moves to let the second flap fall, then thinks again and leaves it as is: there's no need to spend candlelight while the sun can still brighten a room. Javier shifts until he's entirely free of sunlight. He seems healthier, taken out of direct light, and Tomas wonders how the sun was so kind to Javier when he sailed into Lutetia. All light is God's light, of course, but when one walks in God's light one walks in sunshine. It's curious to him that Javier seems so drained by it. But then, they're all drained by days of battle, even those who don't take up swords themselves, as Tomas does not, as Marius does not, as Eliza does not.

  “No, nor Marius,” he adds, because Javier seems to take neither hope nor extrapolation from what he's said, and for all his jealous dislike of sharing the king, Tomas also doesn't like to see him in despair. “They only worry for you,” he says in a rush, and wonders at his own pettiness, and what he imagines he'll gain if he steals all of Javier's time for himself. Whatever wish he might hang on a star, it will not come true: there are too many duties a king must see to, and Tomas's knowledge of the world too small to be a good counsellor in all matters secular. He wants Javier for himself, but not at the expense of the king's reputation.

  A blush curdles his cheeks at that thought, thick discomfort that he doesn't dare let himself follow through on. He's grateful the sun is at his back, so Javier won't see how his face has heated, if even he should care.

  “I threatened Sacha,” Javier says dully. “Threatened to make us what we'd been, to force my will on him so he remembered only what I wanted him to.”

  Tomas opens his mouth to condemn the idea, and instead says, “Can you do that? You only forbade my tongue from speaking that which you didn't want said, not took away my memories of your talent entirely.”

  Javier shrugs one shoulder. He might be a sculpture, so pale is he in the half-light, but his movements are fluid, and Tomas can see blue veins and a pulse in his wrist when Javier passes a hand in front of himself. “I've never tried, but yes, I think so. Shall I?” An eyebrow quirks up, small expression somehow made of cruelty. “Try resist me, priest, and I shall bend your will until it breaks, take secrets of you, and leave you with no memory of the violation.” He shudders, for which Tomas is grateful. Strengthened by that small show of revulsion, he pours Javier wine, and then a cup for himself before settling beside a blood-and-grime-stained tub of water.

  “What is it you want of him?” he asks after several emboldening sips.

  Javier holds his cup in long fingertips, not drinking as he stares out the open tent flap toward a battlefield he seems not to see. “Faith, I suppose. His faith in me, but in the end it's you who shows it. You, whom I used most badly.”

  “Perhaps God's grace has helped me to forgive.”

  “Perhaps it's easier to forgive a near-stranger his trespasses, no matter how bitter they may be, than a brother.”

  “Your majesty, if you'll forgive me a certain brashness…”

  Javier waves his wine cup and turns a silver-eyed glower on Tomas, contradictory answers in his body's speech, but Tomas takes the first to be permission, for he has a thing to say and, having embarked on it, is of no mind to have it turned away. “Royalty is expected to be capricious, but none of those three see you as their king, not first. You're their brother, their friend, and only then their sovereign. You may never have forgotten your royal birth, but you've allowed them to. Everything has changed, from your position to your—” Tomas hitches over the word, hating it, but it's Javier's, and not his own: “To your witchpower. Lord Asselin may have thought he was prepared for those changes, but I think he wasn't.”

  “What should I do?” Javier drinks deeply of his cup and scowls when he comes to i
ts base.

  “Nothing.” Tomas finds the hardness of his reply unexpected. “The choice must be his. He'll serve you because you're his king, but to hold on to friendship in the face of all these changes may be impossible, my lord.”

  “Have I asked too much of him?”

  Tomas wets his lips, sips his wine for courage, and dares an answer he's uncertain Javier will like: “I haven't the years of friendship, but you've not turned your witchpower on any of them in such a …” He draws a breath, searching for a word, and Javier lurches out of his chair to catch Tomas's wrist in a heated connection.

  “An intimate manner?” Grey eyes are gone entirely to silver, the weight of Javier's witchpower making the air leaden and hard to breathe. “I dream of that moment, Tomas. It disturbs and excites me, leaving me tangled in my sheets like a love-torn youth. The pleasure of your acquiescence, letting me fall into you as though I bed a woman. Do you dream of it, too?”

  He lets Tomas go as quickly as he caught him, breath coming short, and he makes a fist of his hand as he looks away. “It dances on my desires, this witchpower magic. Wakens them where I had none, hungers for them when I would have them lie in quietude. Too often I fear that it controls me, and not the other way around. Tell me again.” He reaches for Tomas's wrist again, but this time takes his hand, and turns a beseeching gaze on the priest. “Tell me again that this is God's gift, and that you've found it in your heart to forgive me what I've done to you. Tell me,” he whispers, and there's no weight of compulsion in the plea, only desperation. “Tell me that I will not be abandoned by all those I love.”

  Heartbeat riding in his chest too fast, heat rising in his cheeks again, Tomas whispers, “The Pappas has named your magic a gift from Heaven, Javier de Castille, and though I don't share the years of friendship you have with Sacha, you've turned your power on me more intimately than any of them. And still, I forgive you. If I can, then I dare say you haven't asked too much of him.” He crosses himself, and then Javier, and shivers when the young king kisses his knuckles.