by C. E. Murphy
He wheels his horse, leaving a gaping Javier behind, and gallops back to the Aulunian camp grinning with delight.
TOMAS DEL'ABBATE
Javier has gone to make treatise over a prisoner of war, and Tomas has turned to God for guidance. War has undone him in every way: the sound, the death, the rushing sand of time, all of it hissing forward with no chance to sleep, no chance to think. Hours and hours ago Javier sent him away with an order to never again think or speak on Eliza Beaulieu's unworthiness as a king's bride, and in all that time he's thought of nothing else. Rodrigo spent half the night rattling the camp with his new guns, and instead of studying them and exulting in their coming victory, Tomas's thoughts have strayed again to Eliza and Javier. Indeed, even now he should be praying for Sacha Asselin's soul, and instead he's on his knees begging God to let him be happy for Javier, to let him be happy that the young king has gotten himself an heir, a confidante, a wife, in the midst of war. God, it seems, isn't listening, because all Tomas is left with are heartbeats of envy mixed with pulses of sorrow.
He's the newcomer to their group, the one who has replaced one of their own; the one who has lived in that one's place, through a grace Tomas believes, sacrilegiously, is wholly Marius's, and none of God's. He cannot quite make himself believe that it was the Lord's will that Marius die in his place; he can't make himself believe at all that it was God's plan that Eliza should live. That was the witchpower at work, and not just Javier's, but the Aulunian woman's as well. She and Javier cannot both be blessed with God's gift, and so if Eliza lives, it's at the devil's bidding.
Which means Javier has bound himself to Hell in wedding Eliza Beaulieu, and that Tomas has failed in every way.
He feels that madness has come on him, a grief that tears up from the bottom of his soul with the intent to strangle him. His body is by turns cold and hot, his hands shaking even as they're pressed together in prayer. He has failed Javier and failed God, and he's no longer certain which distresses him more.
There is a way out, a terrible way out, and Tomas both shies from thinking on it and pursues it with all vigour. One more death, a death where God intended no life anyway, might turn Javier back to him, and save the king's soul besides. It's a sin, specifically against one of God's great commandments, but for Javier's sake Tomas must consider it. For Echon's sake, he must consider it: Eliza is an inappropriate bride, and the Parnan Caesar has daughters a-plenty to choose from.
Dread certainty fills his heart. Tomas lowers his gaze, whispers a thanks to God for showing him a clear path, and looks up once more to gather strength from the crucifix and the image of God's only son, whom He sacrificed out of love for Man.
A shaft of light spills through the tent, quick brilliance that says another has entered. It turns the jewel-encrusted cross to fire, and the ivory Son to blinding white, and there's an instant where an unusual and clear thought stands out in Tomas's mind: he ought not have knelt with his back to the door.
Then pain sets in, pain so astonishing it might be God's own touch, reached down from the heavens to grace His beautiful son. To burn him where he kneels, immolation in a moment of piety, but instead of God's face, instead of an angel lifting him to Heaven, Tomas feels a brush of lips against his ear, and hears a woman's voice whisper, “Sacha Asselin is dead, priest, and I have no other recourse to hold Javier's ear but to force him to turn to family. A pity. You were so lovely.”
He twists, spurring agony through his back, but he can't lift a hand to pull the knife away, nor to mark his murderer in any way. The earth's pull takes him, and he's falling clumsily, toppling backward as soothing blackness begins to overcome the pain, and the last thing in this world that Tomas del'Abbate sees is Akilina Pankejeff's razor smile fading into darkness.
BELINDA WALTER
4 July 1588 † Brittany; the Gallic camp
Raging witchpower woke her half a breath before Javier's hand in her hair pulled her from the cot and flung her to the floor. Her own power lashed back and she tamped it, training far older than the magic making her small and vulnerable beneath a man's wrath. Instinct made her breathless, wide-eyed, lips parted with fear and excitement as she cowered as prettily as she knew how.
It was the wrong reaction: the wiser part of her knew that, knew she was better fighting than making herself pluckable, most especially in this place, with this man. But this was a game she'd been trained in since she was a child, and for a few seconds all she could do was gaze up at Javier de Castille in half-real terror and utter supplication.
He kicked her, which was unusual for a man superior to her. Even through a red burst of pain in her ribs Belinda was grateful: it helped shake her from her instincts. She rolled back, hiding under the cot, and dug her fingers into the ground, trying to drag her thoughts into a semblance of order. Trying, most especially, to neither make herself an object of desire nor to hit back with magic: there would be a reason for Javier's attack, and fighting back would only convince him he was right in whatever matter had infuriated him. Neither seductress nor witch—that left Belinda with nothing but the woman, and the role was a strange one to her.
Javier flipped the cot away and kicked her again, and this time Belinda screamed, shock as potent as pain. “What? What have I done?” That, at least, was born of honesty, not seduction, and helped bring her further from that place which, should Javier's mind clear enough to see it, would very likely end in Belinda's death. She would have no forgiveness for her wiles in his position, not even under the most serene of circumstances.
She scrambled back from another kick, and finally saw that tears streaked the king's face, marks as wild as the fury he indulged in. Belinda lurched to her feet and stumbled to the thrown cot's far side, trying to put something, regardless of how insubstantial, between herself and Javier. He'd been dry-eyed over Sacha, that wound too deep to bleed; this was something else. His magic felt shattered, streaked with black despair, and below his rage, despair boiled over. Impossible loss, so bleak it left a chasm in him; Belinda's heart spasmed in sympathy above her fear and confusion. “What's happened?”
A bolt of thunderous power slammed into her, barely deflected by golden witchpower that seemed to know better than she did that an attack was coming. A gasp knocked free of Belinda's lungs, the charge of shared magic with Javier as strong as it had ever been. She clenched her teeth against desire, refuting it; the magic wasn't stronger than she was, and base needs were things to be put away. There would be other men to satisfy herself with: this man would condemn her soul to Hell.
The next blow she caught more easily, and the next more easily still, until Javier lobbed magic at her with all the finesse of a screaming child, and she only stood deflecting his power as it gradually lost strength. She would not fight; would not, no matter the cost. In time Javier slumped, then fell to his knees and bent forward against the earth to scream out rage and frustration. Only then did Belinda gather her nerve and approach him, crouching to hover her hands above his back, not knowing if a touch would earn her another beating. “Is it Eliza?” Genuine fear broke her voice: she was certain her own life would be forfeit if Eliza Beaulieu was dead.
Javier shoved her away, but without the heart of his earlier blows. “As if you don't know.”
“I swear on my mother's name that I don't. I can't lie to you, Javier, not anymore. I don't know what's happened.”
“It's Tomas,” Javier whispered. “Murdered, and with him any hope of salvation for my soul.”
“Tomas?” Belinda frowned, then dropped her chin to her chest, eyes closed. “The priest.” She had no more words after that, protestations of her innocence seeming gauche, and expressions of sorrow alien to her.
“Why would anyone kill him?” Javier's voice cracked. Belinda put a hand out again, then let it fall, more uncomfortable with offering solace than with his pain.
“To remove your inner circle,” she answered, though she doubted he wanted a response at all. “To make you vulnerable, king of Gallin. There
are very few who've been so close to you, and most of them are dead now. If I intended on weakening you, it's how I would do it. Marius and Sacha, now Tomas. The only one left is Eliza. Protect her, Javier. Give up your quest for the Aulunian throne, if you must. Don't let her die, too.”
Javier lifted eyes gone black with hate to meet Belinda's gaze. “If you intended on weakening me. You would know. Is this what you planned, when you were Beatrice?”
“I thought it would make you too fragile,” she said coolly. That was necessary, the icy exterior, for below it she felt Javier's loss, tearing at him until it tore at her as well. Better by far to be the untouchable bitch he thought her than to break beneath the weight of his sorrow. “I considered it, yes, and if it had become necessary I might have taken one of them from you. Not two, not three. Taking one would have made you cling harder to those who were left, and I numbered among them then. This many dead is a waste.”
“Who stands to gain from my weakness?” Desperation filled the question, as though the young king of Gallin truly had no answers. Belinda stared at him, then got to her feet and went to ruck through the ramshackled tent in search of wine.
“Aulun, most obviously. Could Robert Drake have done this?” She found wine, poured it, and returned to Javier, standing over him as he drained the cup.
“No,” he said less hoarsely when the drink was gone. “I left him and rode straight to Tomas, to seek his advice on what to do with you. Your father's unwilling to bargain for you,” he added shortly. “His heir's in Alunaer and her avatar can be replaced.”
Worry seized Belinda's gut and forced her to sit, still reserve too distant to support her. Threads of plots came unravelled before her eyes, replaced by grim certainty. “Then he knows what I'm doing.”
“What?” Javier turned his own hollow gaze on her and Belinda took his cup away, pouring more wine and drinking it herself. “How can he know?”
“I don't know.” Belinda flattened her fingers over her belly, staring beyond Javier. “Lorraine knew, too. About the child. Perhaps she told him, perhaps…” She closed her eyes, drawing a slow breath to calm her heartbeat. Too many emotions, twisting in and out of being too quickly. Perhaps that was what war did, tore every possible reaction from deep in the soul and gave exhausted men and women too little time to deal with even one feeling before another rose up to drown it. “We're witchbreed, all three of us,” she finally said. “He would want the child born. He'd see it as a tool to be used in the future, a new generation to shape this world. So perhaps he saw what I did: that the only kind of safety I can find is here.”
“And the rest of it?” Javier's voice cracked again. Belinda brought her attention back to him, seeing pale skin and grey eyes and ginger hair all working together to make him look sallow. Grief etched lines in his face, aging him and offering no hint that he'd been distracted from his losses by the change in topic. He'd only set them aside, and not far, at that: they scratched just under the surface, until looking at him was painful. She had not, she thought, ever suffered a loss that scored her so deeply; indeed, the closest she'd ever come was in Beatrice Irvine losing Javier de Castille to Belinda Primrose's duties. She looked away sharply, suddenly feeling as though she'd given away too much.
“One problem at a time,” she whispered. “This game is hard enough to second-guess. Until we have other proof, let's assume he's looking only as far as the child's birth. I think he wouldn't expect me to look farther.” She hesitated a moment, thoughts running ahead of her words, then murmured, “Go to Eliza. Bury Sacha and your priest. I don't belong in the midst of your sorrow, and will not keep you from what needs doing.”
That he accepted the dismissal, got to his feet and left the tent, might have been amusing, had Belinda not thought of someone else who might profit from his solitude.
It was not done for the queen's daughter to slip from one enemy tent to another in the middle of the night, no more than it might have been done for that same daughter, unacknowledged, to demand an audience with her mother. Still, Belinda did the one as readily as she'd done the other, and did it exquisitely aware that not so long ago, she might have been acting on official orders to enact what she planned. No more. The Aulunian heir would never be sent to assassinate anyone. That part of her life had passed in Lorraine's courtroom, as final as any death.
She'd called stillness, and, wrapping herself, entered Akilina Pankejeff's tent with no one the wiser. She had no proof at all that the Khazarian duchess was responsible for Tomas's death, only a sense of rightness about it. Javier was almost entirely bereft of friends now, and had no one beyond family to turn to. Rodrigo had never in all his years as Essandia's monarch proved himself so cold, but Belinda well knew Akilina's ambition and skill in the game of politics. Even if the priest hadn't died, there was still a matter of Belinda's own vengeance to be answered. Akilina had stripped her bare in Lutetia; she would repay the dvoryanin by stripping her of her life.
In more than ten years of doing murder, Belinda Primrose had never moved with such focus. Death was a duty, not a passion: not until tonight, and she succumbed to the desire to forget all else while she pursued her retaliation. Once inside Akilina's tent she released the stillness to stand and watch a dead woman breathe a while. It was a dangerous indulgence: Akilina might open her eyes, might have time to draw breath and scream. Even so, she'd have no more time than that, and she would die with Belinda Walter's image burned into her mind.
“She's pregnant.”
With a silent howl at her own lack of caution, Belinda snapped the stillness back into place, wrapping it tight so that all eyes might slip away from her, but when she turned toward the voice, Rodrigo of Essandia seemed to stare at her still.
She had not seen him. She ought to have seen him, ought not to have allowed herself to concentrate so compleatly on her own revenge. Her life was a trinket now, one dangling from the Essandian prince's long and well-shaped fingers. Those fingers were steepled in front of his mouth, and he sat relaxed in a scoop-shaped chair, one leg cocked at the knee and the other loose and straight before him. He was nearly as hidden by shadow as Belinda herself could be, but she ought to have seen him.
“My nephew cannot do what you're doing,” he murmured, more curious than afraid. “More's the shame for him, perhaps, though I can imagine why you might have developed that skill where he did not. He was brought up in sunlight, and you, in shadow. I wonder why you dropped this cloak of obscurity at all. Is it so she would see your face and know whose vengeance was exacted in the moments of her death? Let me see you, Belinda Walter. Let me see our beloved Aulunian queen's bastard. Please,” he added after a moment, almost droll, when she remained where she was, draped in dark safe shadow. “You and I both know that I'm no match for you, if you want me dead.”
Because that was true, and because he knew it, and, in the end, because her curiosity was as great as his, Belinda released the witch-power again. Stillness faded away, exposing her to moonlight and vision once more. She felt beacon-bright, unmasked. A glance at Akilina betrayed her intentions, and she turned her attention to Rodrigo, suddenly aware of the sound of his voice in the air. Robert had once muffled noise around himself: Belinda drew on that feeling of rag-stuffed ears, and built a circle of silence around herself and the Essandian prince. Only then did she dare to speak. “We know why I'm here. Why are you, my lord?”
Amusement creased Rodrigo's eyes. “My lord? How formal. You're well-trained.”
Belinda said, “I am,” without regret, and looked toward the sleeping woman on the cot. “Will you try to stop me?”
“The child isn't mine.”
Surprise snapped Belinda's gaze back to Rodrigo. He spread his fingertips, thumbs still touching, making a wave of indifference with his body that his emotional presence echoed. The temptation to cross to him, touch him and steal his thoughts, raised hairs on Belinda's arms, though she quelled the impulse and instead said, “You're certain?”
“I paid her washer-woman
very well for certainty of when her courses came. Even if she'd had the wit to lie to me with her words, her face told me what I needed to know. She should have been bleeding the day we married. She was not, nor has she since. The child is not mine.” Rodrigo smiled thinly. “I sit here in the nights, trying to decide which page from your grandfather's book I might follow.”
Belinda, suddenly as droll as he'd been a moment before, said, “Let me encourage you to divorce her, my lord prince. Join Aulun in its Reformation, and set Cordula on its ear.”
A broader smile flashed over Rodrigo's face. He was handsome, better-looking by far than Javier, though Belinda's insides twisted at that thought. His looks would have left no mark on Javier, of course, but it was easier not to dwell on that, and to try to ignore the taste of ashes in her mouth.
“I think not,” Rodrigo said, thankfully not privy to Belinda's thoughts. “I might have the marriage annulled; the Pappas would grant me that willingly enough, knowing the child wasn't mine. He'd grant it anyway,” he added shrewdly. “He wants me wedded to one of his own faithful women, the better to control me.” His gaze slipped from Belinda to Akilina. “Or I might have her beheaded. No one would blame me.”
“Irina might.”
Rodrigo's smile changed again, became something smaller and more approving. “You think quickly. Lorraine may have chosen well. But then what am I to do,” he said, and his hands spread again, making mockery of the question. “Do I close my eyes and pretend I don't know? Do I raise another man's child as heir to the Essandian throne?”
“Whose?” It hardly mattered, but curiosity had her in its grip, and Rodrigo de Costa seemed inclined to offer answers.