The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  He answered well before she reached his side: silver power came to bear, hammering her until she slipped in her mare's saddle. An opportunistic fool seized her arm and she backhanded him with her sword's hilt and the mare's weight behind the blow. His neck snapped, but his fingers, tangled in her sleeve, didn't loosen, and Belinda, yelling, fell atop a dead man.

  Witchpower kept her alive a few seconds, golden shields shattering swords as they drove down at her. Belinda scrambled to her feet, shoving men away with her arms and her power alike, and came up on the defensive and subtly dismayed to discover she was at the heart of a Gallic push: not one of the men around her wore the colours of Aulun or Khazar. Teeth bared in another grin, she called a vestige of stillness to herself, trying to hide in its shadow, but at least one armoured rider saw her fade away, and shouted out a warning that drew attention all around.

  Breathless, swearing, shockingly high with enthusiasm, Belinda let him ride her down, and when he swung at her, stepped beneath the blade's arc and brought her own sword up in a sweeping circle of its own.

  Its tip slashed a long deep line through the horse's shoulder, but momentum carried the blow through, her sword slamming into the knight's belly and rendering his armour as though it was soft meat. He was past her then, nearly wrenching the sword from her hands, but she dug her feet in and hauled the blade back, cutting even more deeply and earning a scream from the metal. Witchpower, Belinda thought: she hadn't the strength for that strike without magic's help. Blood splashed over her and the knight was wrenched around to face her. His head dropped and his fingers came to the cut before he lifted his head and his visor to meet Belinda's gaze.

  Sacha Asselin stared at her, genuine astonishment in his hazel eyes before he shuddered and toppled silently from his horse. One foot caught in the stirrup and the animal tried to shake him off, then began to run. Belinda's sword slipped in her hand, fingers numb as her thoughts as Sacha's body crashed and slipped alongside the horse, then finally fell to the ground and disappeared beneath the feet of fighting men.

  War raged on around her, and the loose grip she held on her blade was enough to send a part of her mind screaming that she was a target, vulnerable, an easy mark. But intellect had no hold on her: she stared at the place where Sacha had fallen with dull incomprehension, and her clearest thought was that a mistake had been made.

  Not in Sacha's death: she'd intended that for months, had sharpened the tiny dagger she wore at the small of her back and promised it its first heart's blood from the young Lord Asselin's breast. It pressed there now, scolding her for promises broken. No, the mistake was in his death being done on a battlefield. It was supposed to be personal, a gift from the queen's bastard to the prince's friend, and done this way there was no surge of satisfaction, no wicked pleasure. Murder was an art, and this only a crude means of survival.

  Witchpower swept around her, and Belinda, stupid with disbelief, turned toward it to greet Javier's armoured fist with the side of her head.

  Nausea came with waking. Belinda kept her eyes closed, already certain she lay in a tent; the light was too dim to be outside. At least one other person was with her, but the witchpower wouldn't respond and let her ascertain her companion. Javier, probably; maybe Eliza. Belinda wet her lips. “I'm surprised to be alive.”

  “You should be.” Javier, yes, his voice torn with pain. Belinda was abruptly glad the witchpower lay quiet, that she couldn't feel his anger and agony. Fresh sickness rose on the edge of that relief: he'd hit her hard, hard enough that she might be pleased to have survived it, though her surprise came from not waking with a dagger through her heart. Pain swam through her skull, looking for a release of laughter: she would not, of course, have woken with a dagger through her heart. Finding that funny made her head ache all the more.

  “Why am I?” Safer words than a declamation of intent in killing Sacha Asselin; she'd meant to do that, either in the need to live on the battlefield or in doing murder at a later time. Javier would see through any facade she tried to weave, and so it was better not to try at all.

  “Because not even I knew Sacha was riding the front line,” Javier said after a long time. “Because this is war, and a man in armour was about to kill you, and I think you could not have known who he was. Am I wrong?” His every word was precise, measured out in misery.

  Belinda sagged against the cot she lay in, tension running from her shoulders and lessening the pain in her head a little. “You're not. I wouldn't have killed him that way, had I known.” Her tongue ran too free and she was unable to stop it even when Javier barked a rough sound and said, “You'd have killed him some other way.”

  “In private, in intimacy. He deserved that. He'd earned as much.” Belinda bit her tongue, wondering which phrase would get her throat cut.

  Javier breathed the name of God and got up silently enough to tell Belinda he'd shed his armour. She dared open her eyes and stared at the ceiling, nausea edging around her again. The Gallic king might have all the secrets of Aulun of her, if he knew what questions to ask. But instead of pursuing them he said, “There's the other matter, as well.”

  The child fell heavily after those words, though it remained unspoken, and that, Belinda thought, was the truth of why she still lived. Had she not bargained the child away and had Javier and Eliza not already put in play their false pregnancy, she had little expectation that Javier de Castille would have stayed his hand over the matter of Sacha Asselin's death. He had lost too much too quickly, and that was a thought unusual to one such as Belinda Primrose. She sat up cautiously, vision swimming, and counted herself lucky she'd survived Javier's blow at all. “I'm your prisoner, as we intended. I'll do nothing to risk it. And I am … sorry for the cost it came at, Javier.”

  “Are you,” Javier said, but not in a way that asked for her answer. He was grey in the dim lighting, his hair's lustre lost, his eyes hollow and face aged. Too many losses, Belinda thought again, and wondered if it was sympathy that spiked through her. “You will not be welcome at his graveside.”

  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 o
f 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.”