The Pretender_s Crown ic-2

by C. E. Murphy

  Dmitri did not yet know, unless her swelling bustline had informed him. She'd kept the knowledge wrapped close in her mind, walled it off with golden power as her own magic had once been tucked away. He would leap on a child as a way to bind himself closer to Belinda and pull her further from Robert, making the babe a wedge between them with plans to guide it toward his own ends.

  Belinda intended that shaping for herself.

  She paused where she was, letting a blind gaze come into focus. She had climbed the guard stairs along the palace's outer edge, and Alunaer spread out before her in the fresh new green of early summer. It had been winter the last time she'd stood on these steps, with blue smoke rising in straight lines toward grey clouds, and with snow making white patches over black rooftops. Rodney du Roz had lain twitching, and then all too still, on the flagstones many feet beneath her while she'd admired the view, and now she glanced toward the distant ground, half wondering if some other unfortunate might lie there in homage to the first man whose life she'd taken.

  There was not, but a hand of guards trotted across the courtyard and turned sharply to come up the stairs. Not until they were almost upon her did Belinda realise that they hadn't seen her, that her own desire to remain hidden from Lorraine's too-sharp gaze had drawn the witchpower stillness in all its strength around her. She gathered her skirts and ran up the stairs, pressing herself against parapet walls with a gasp that bordered on laughter, though not of joy. Her power was growing, if she could gather near-invisibility without a conscious thought. Dmitri's teachings had stood her well.

  The guards trotted by, leaving behind the sour rich scent of men, far more noticeable with pregnancy changing her body.

  Drops of witchlight fell around that thought, golden and bright and illuminating. Belinda spread her hand across her belly, gaze gone sightless again as she stared over the city. Her sense of smell was more sensitive, her awareness of touch more exquisite, her witch magic more powerful.

  Two were tales she'd heard spoken of pregnant women; the third was not an experience others might share. But if the two and the one were born of the same changes in her body, then the serenely confident answer she'd given Lorraine might depend on the strength lent to her in having fallen pregnant.

  A bark of laughter gave away her presence to anyone near enough to hear it. It was a triumphant excuse, one Lorraine would accept; an inconvenient grandchild paled in comparison to a country lost. Besides, she was queen, and Belinda had no doubt she could and would find a doctor willing to say Belinda's child hadn't quickened, and could be ridden of in much later months without endangering anyone's immortal soul. It might, in fact, do very well to find a way to let Lorraine think the babe lost; then Belinda would have free rein in raising it.

  It was a desperately large command to pit herself against, as the one she chose not to obey. Indeed, it shouldn't have taken Lorraine's orders; a lifetime's service should have sent Belinda to a wise woman weeks ago, removing complications before they were well begun. This, perhaps, was what the first sip of freedom was flavoured with: not defiance, but calm. Unrooting the babe had never been an option worth considering, and that, above all, was a thing in which Robert, and no doubt Lorraine, would find cause for alarm.

  But a war was coming, one outside of Belinda's capability to grasp. Weapons for that war would be necessary, and if she had been bred to shape and guide her world, then the child she carried was also a weapon. No wise general facing battle threw away a potential weapon without first considering all the ways in which it might be used. Even the most dangerous-an unknown assassin, for example, in the form of an ordinary young woman-would rarely be discarded. Dismissed, perhaps; detained, yes, but not discarded; there was too much value in dangerous things, and the future always held a need for them.

  The war season was only now beginning. Lorraine wouldn't expect to see Belinda again for weeks, even months if the weather held well into autumn. Seven months: if she could remain on the battlefields, a secret weapon herself, for that long, then the orders she'd been given could be disguised. If not, she could use witch-power to protect herself and the child. Belinda disliked the idea of tampering with Lorraine's memories; the woman was, after all, a queen, and not merely a parlour maid. But one brief thought to turn aside might not be too much to manage, in the name of protecting an unborn weapon.

  Satisfied, Belinda crossed the parapets and left the view of Alunaer behind, going in search of an army and a choppy sea.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  3 June 1588 † Gallin's northern shore, some twelve miles from Aulun

  Sunset turned the sea crimson, turned sails to bloody slashes across the straits and men to red-skinned savages, the like of which Javier had heard tales of from the Columbias. The water was quiet tonight, letting soldiers rest instead of fighting for their sleep before they fought for their lives. Javier, for the thousandth time, turned away from watching ships and water, and stared bleakly at a map that told him the same thing it had always told him, ever since he was a child.

  Alunaer rested some little distance away from the sea-mouth of Aulun's greatest river, the Taymes. It was a usual place for a capital city, near the ocean but not on it, a protected port. It might have been easy to sail up the Taymes and seize the town, but for one thing.

  White cliffs made up Aulun's southern shores. Alunaer's centre was in truth no great distance from the straits, but the land sloped downward from those cliffs, until Alunaer's heart was at sea level, and its watery border was protected by high ground dangerous to send an armada through. With dawn they would have the tide with them, but the battle would not be met on the river, not until Aulun's navy had been ruined on the straits.

  Twelve ocean miles separated Gallin from the island nation, and those waters were where Aulun's fate would be written. “Lorraine's ships are smaller and older. We have the advantage.”

  He spoke to himself, but wasn't surprised when someone answered: “We have all the advantages, nephew. Our navy is the greater, and our army vastly stronger. You,” Rodrigo said with a hint of mock severity, “are meant to be walking among your men, giving them hope and cheer, not poring over maps that will tell you the same things they've always said, and wearing a line in your forehead with that frown.”

  “Uncle.” Javier turned from his maps with a relieved smile, though the expression fell away in slow surprise as he took in the woman who walked at Rodrigo's side. “Akilina,” he said after a moment. “Forgive me if I don't call you aunt, just yet. I have yet to accustom myself to our new relations.”

  It had been days now since he'd learned of Rodrigo's wedding coup, days in which he'd vacillated between astonishment and awe, and in which he'd wondered a dozen times what the Pappas in Cordula thought of the Essandian prince's daring. The Holy Father would be furious at losing control of Rodrigo, and yet almost had to admire the union that brought seventy thousand Khazarian troops marching under the Ecumenic banner. Not for the first time, Javier shook his head, and Akilina's brief smile said she suspected what he was thinking.

  “We are all adjusting.” Her Gallic was nearly flawless, marred by only the slightest hint of a Khazarian accent. That accent was the only thing that set her apart from a true Essandian beauty: she'd taken some colour in the few months she'd been Rodrigo's bride, and her hair was loose, as an Isidrian woman might wear it. Even her gown was of Essandian cut, as though she had put away all things born of her icy homeland and had embraced the life she'd married into. “Your expression says you think a woman doesn't belong on the battlefield, my lord king.”

  “I think I remember you from my mother's court,” Javier said with honest diplomacy. “I think few men would conduct themselves as boldly, and so I think if you see your place as here, and my uncle doesn't dispute it, that I have no argument.” His eyebrows darted up. “And I think Irina wants one of her own watching over the troops your alliance has provided us with. I grew up with a queen as the centre of my world, Lady Akilina, and when
I find myself matched against an imperatrix and a dvoryanin, I am wise enough to hold my tongue in matters of where a woman does or does not belong.”

  “Besides,” Eliza said drily, from a shadowed corner of the tent that had, Javier was certain, been empty only seconds ago, “if he can't keep me out of here, he's hardly going to try to keep you away. My lady queen,” she added perfunctorily.

  Javier spread his hands as he sent a look of wry despair toward Rodrigo. “Has it always been thus, uncle? Have women always come and gone on battlefields, despite what the men around them command?” Humour danced through him at the question, more comforting by far than scowling over maps and dwelling on the coming day's events. He had no more tried to keep Eliza away than he might have sent Marius or Sacha from his side; she, like them, was a symbol of confidence and support.

  “Queens have ever ridden with their kings,” Rodrigo said with a hint of more real dismay than Javier had voiced. “Or ridden without them, if their kings could not. I think it was your Gallic grandmother three centuries back who began this unfortunate habit. She rode to the crusades, and brought her favoured son a wife while doing so.”

  “Gabrielle,” Javier murmured with rue. “We are besieged in history and in the present, uncle. Ambitious women surround us.”

  “And we make war in their honour.” Rodrigo flickered his hand, dismissing the women of whom he had just spoken so highly. Akilina held herself still a few seconds, disdain and insult evident in her carriage, and then Eliza sauntered by and offered an elbow, one beautiful woman squiring another. Javier watched them go with uncertainty curdling his stomach: they were not, he thought, friends, and the prospect of them becoming so unsettled him. When they were gone Rodrigo exhaled a noisy sigh and flung himself into a chair; Javier's tent was well-appointed, even if its front flaps were flung back to show him the straits and the navy nudging its way around them.

  “How are you, nephew? Well-crowned, I see, and with the Pappas's blessing shining along with the crown.”

  “My burden's become easier with his blessing.” Javier sat as well, his eyes fastening on the map once more. “I imagine myself this magic's master, and if I'm wrong it has at least not yet managed to overwhelm me again. I'll be the weapon you need me to be, Rodrigo. Don't worry.”

  “Could I not worry for my nephew, instead of for his status as a tool of war?” Rodrigo's light voice betrayed strain.

  Javier slid his gaze from the map to study the Essandian prince for a moment or two. “As well I might worry for you, who seem to have gotten a tool of war yourself. At least mine's not sharing my bed. Have you heard from the Pappas?”

  Rodrigo's strain slipped away in a brief smile. “He wasn't pleased, but he can't undo this marriage without undoing the treaty that puts the Khazarian army at our back. Besides, now you're free of any possible marriage to Ivanova. You're a king, handsome, young-”

  “Malleable,” Javier said.

  Rodrigo tipped his head, agreeing with the conclusion, but aloud said, “But less so than our Cordulan father might think. It's a shame, though, that you're not married, Javier. An heir would be useful.” He glanced toward the open tent flaps, after Akilina and Eliza, then turned that look back on Javier, eyebrows elevated. “Unless…?”

  Silver warning seized Javier's throat, cutting off the dismissal he might have made. Eliza's lack of womanly blood would set any politician against Javier marrying her, and that was a road he would not yet sever himself from. Instead he curled a corner of his mouth up; tilted his head as Rodrigo had done, and let his body tell a story that his words would not. Then he returned to the map, putting away the topic of succession to repeat, “We have the advantages. But will we win?”

  “A storm follows us up the straits. It's a day, perhaps a day and a half behind; it blackened the horizon before we made the easterly turn. It will fill our sails and drive the Aulunian navy back, unless I miss my guess. They'll crowd against their own cliffs, frantic to hold their one choke point, and when we break through we'll have them in a wedge.” Rodrigo slapped his hands together, making Javier flinch. “They'll have soldiers on the cliffs to pour pitch and flaming arrows on us, and they'll drop stones to break our ships. We'll lose more in the mouth of the Taymes than in the twelve-mile of straits between us, but our navy is the larger. An arrowhead of our fastest and strongest ships will ride the tide into Alunaer's heart, and we'll take the fight to them.”

  “There will be garrisons upon garrisons in the capital.” The worries were already familiar to Javier, as were the solutions: he echoed them in his thoughts as Rodrigo outlined them aloud, reassurances to them both. The Parnan navy, not as strong or new as the Essandian, had ships barely off the Aulunian coast both north and south of Alunaer, soldiers already ferrying to land. Reports of skirmishes came by pigeon, but Lorraine was concentrating her army in the capital city. So, too, would Javier have done, in her position: Alunaer represented Lorraine's beating heart, and should she let it fall her people would lose all faith. That was a price too dear to pay, and so the worst of the battle would be fought in the Aulunian capital.

  And it would fall, crushed by a three-prong attack by an army far larger than what Lorraine could command.

  On paper-on the map that continued to draw Javier's eye-it seemed as though they not only couldn't fail, but that devastation could be wrought within a day or two, that he might well stride through a burning city in a week's time and take the crown that his mother had intended for him.

  He had never gone to war, but he knew the danger of dreaming it might be so terribly simple.

  “Things will go wrong,” Rodrigo murmured. “Lives you will not want to lose will be lost. Resistance will go on for months, even years, until we have routed out all of those faithful to the Reformation and to the Walters. But we will prevail, Javier. We have the armada, we have the troops, and we have you, guided by God and granted the unearthly power to strike at Lorraine in a way she cannot imagine.”

  “We've had no word of Belinda,” Javier said softly. “Nothing from our spies, nothing that says she's warned Lorraine against my magic. But dare we trust Lorraine has no knowledge at all of what I can do?”

  “Perhaps she's dead after all. She might never have made it out of Sandalia's palace. Even if she did, you've proven she can't stand before you, and nothing else can hope to defeat our numbers and your gift. Not in the longer game.” Rodrigo pushed out of his chair, all long comfortable grace in a man whose age dictated he ought to be at home before a fire, waiting out the news of war while grandchildren bounced on his knee. “Sleep tonight, if you can, Javier. Take your woman to bed, and then sleep. You may not see another chance for days.”

  Javier nodded, and Rodrigo strode away, leaving the young king of Gallin to once more study his map, and wonder what unforeseen thing would go wrong.

  C.E. Murphy

  The Pretender's Crown

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  4 June 1588 † The Aulunian Straits

  The sun rises red as blood over waters soon to be awash with it. Belinda Primrose is not a fool: she has not gone to battle on the sea. She could, if she must; her father taught her the sword, and her dancing master taught her the grace that stood her well in learning the blade. He would be horrified at the use his lessons had gone to. But she will not, today, make use of the rapier she wears; at least, she hopes not.

  Because a storm is coming up the straits, black as hell on the horizon. It will fill the Essandian navy's sails and press them on to Aulun's shores; press them up the short cliff-lined distance between the straits and the palace at Alunaer's centre. Belinda has no doubt that this is what the generals and admirals of the encroaching army expect and hope for.

  Any other day, they might be granted their desires. But this morning, Belinda Primrose is standing alone on a cliff-top, her hair bound so severely it looks short, and her breasts bound even more tightly: she is a man today, for the sake of making war. She wears pants, tall boots, a red coat; she might be any se
ntry, waiting for the first sign of conflict to be unleashed. A musket is held in one hand, loosely; Belinda does not like guns, though she understands their usefulness. A good general does not give up a weapon simply because he dislikes it.

  The wind, always high on the cliffs, is coming up. It smells of seawater and gunpowder, and tastes of salt. Belinda quells the urge to fling herself into it: to trust its strength and hang above the cliff's edge, unfettered by the world's pull. She has seen soldiers try it, now and then, and has seen how the untrustworthy wind cuts out and sends men plummeting to their death. The impulse to fly is enticing, but the wish to live is stronger. There will be other ways to die today, and it is her purpose to make certain those ways are visited on her enemy.

  The tide has changed in the minutes since she arrived on the crimson-lit cliffs. That will be the signal Javier's army is waiting for: water pulling toward Aulun's cliffs, not retreating from them. The first ships will be launching now, catching the storm's winds to drive themselves forward toward battle.

  Aulun's small and aging fleet is already waiting in the straits. They're too distant to be seen, but the bindings that hold Belinda so tightly restrain only her body. Witchpower flows free in her mind, golden power strong enough to rival the bloody sunrise, and it is that magic which will tell her the ships are engaged, and that it's time to turn the storm.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  Rodrigo told him not to risk himself on the sea, and Javier, cowlike, agreed. He lied, of course, but he agreed.

  It is the Cordoglio whose wings he rides; the Maglian captain put a fist to his heart and offered the swift tidy vessel as the armada's flagship. Javier accepted out of symbolism and out of dramatics, and in no little part to remind his people that the army they make is Cordula's army: not just Gallin, not just Essandia, but those two countries and Parna as well, each equal in God's eyes and in the true faith.