The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  “We've yet to see a full day of battle, and you would already have me packed off to Isidro.” Akilina is teasing, but her accusation is full of other emotions as well: exasperation, pleasure, anticipation. The pleasure is not for his concern, but for what she regards it as meaning: that he is weaker than she, and can be directed through his fear for her well-being and his need for an heir.

  If circumstances were utterly other than what they are, Rodrigo de Costa and Akilina Pankejeff might have made a devastating team.

  But they are not, so he gives her a rueful smile that will no doubt play into her idea of his weakness, and he shrugs. “I anticipate this battle,” and he gestures between himself and her, “to be a protracted one, my lady. I thought I had best get my first volley in now, the better to begin wearing you down.”

  Coquettish is not a look Akilina does well: there's too much challenge in her sharp features, but Rodrigo can see her appeal, when she gives a sly look through black lashes. It stirs amusement in him more than any baser emotion, but he can see how men might fall before it, and so when she says, “There might be better ways to wear me down, my lord,” he is obliged to take her hand and draw her toward a more private part of the tent.

  Obliged to murmur, “We must be quick, then, and quiet, for the men will think poorly of their prince rutting in the shadows while they prepare to fight for their lives.”

  “And if I wish to be loud?”

  Rodrigo releases her, and from the flash in her eyes that's not the answer she wanted to her challenge. “Then you'll get no wearing down until after our victory, my lady, when the men might forgive their prince his passion and dare to imagine themselves pulling those cries from their queen's lips.”

  Astonishment and perhaps offence parts those lips. “You would condone such crassness in them?”

  “It's a rare man who listens to a woman in the heat of passion and doesn't put himself in her lover's place,” Rodrigo says calmly. “Indulge in noisy desire in the heart of an army camp, and you'll become their fantasy. They'll undress you with their eyes where once they might have worshipped. Reverence is less dangerous than lust, lady. Choose your position wisely.”

  And she does, becoming a queen on her knees with her mouth hot on his cock, filling her throat and silencing any cries she might have made. It's a deliberate cruelty to leave her there when he's sated, but Rodrigo has a battle to worry over, and an interest in seeing to whom his lady goes if he leaves her with an itch unscratched.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  She doesn't have to be there to see the battle.

  The glee that rises in Belinda Primrose banishes every other moment of delight in her life as if they were the stuff of dreams, wispy and unobtainable. It is as though the storm itself carries the shapes of ships and soldiers to her: the storm, and Javier de Castille's witchpower, which she can feel on the water as though it's a living thing. Javier is aware of where his ship is—in the lead, a place of arrogance and power—and aware of where the other ships of the armada are in relation to him. Silver spiderwebs between them, catching water drops and shimmering with life; Belinda only needs to touch it and it vibrates. She can imagine a quiet gasp birthing from that touch, a sound any man might make in the midst of intimacy.

  Her own power searches out the other ships, the ones not latticed together by Javier's magic. Those ones are her own: they become golden with raindrops, not so much bound to each other as becoming bright spots in her mind, warm against the cold of the storm and against Javier's moonlight power. With these bits of magic, she draws an image in her mind.

  The picture is a dire one.

  The storm has driven the Aulunian navy back and the armada forward, and the armada's greater numbers are allowing them to close on the Aulunian ships like a crab's pincers. They are not quite surrounded on all sides: the cliffs at the Aulunians' back are dangerous, and while they still may be miles from shore, the Cordulan captains are being cautious. The pincers are still open at their tips, leaving a narrow gauntlet that the Aulunians could try to run. Assuming they survived that run, it would leave them racing for the Taymes with the entire armada on their tails. Tall protective cliffs and men ready to drop boulders onto enemy ships would only slow the Ecumenic army a little, should it come to that.

  Belinda, as though she reaches for a lover, opens one hand, then the other, and makes herself supplicant to the sky.

  For weeks she has practised with the quieter weather in Alunaer. Has brought rain, has pushed clouds around the sky and has blown skirts and hats awry with wind. Once, walking back from Dmitri's home, she brought a patch of sunlight with her, no larger than a half step in front of her or a half step behind her. She imagined the sisters would see it as walking in God's light, graced by His presence, and had been obliged to let her little square of warmth go before entering the convent, for fear fits of giggles would overcome her. She'd scolded herself once more that Beatrice Irvine had been bad for her, but in the obliging tag-along sunlight, she'd felt no real remorse.

  She has entertained herself with rainstorms and downpours, and they have only hinted at preparation for opening herself to the raw, uncaring weather of the straits.

  There is no will behind the storm; that's her first thought. It truly is uncaring, a thing of neither malice nor goodwill; it simply is, just as the sun is, just as the ocean is. Nothing in it pushes back at her magic. Dmitri makes a warning in the back of her mind, things he's said in study: that a weather pattern changed here affects the weather there; that it is the sort of thing she must keep in mind.

  She has, it seems, dutifully kept it in mind. Now she discards it, because like the storm, Belinda has no care for what happens there, only here, and here, she demands that the winds bend under her will, and break themselves on the silver net of Javier's power.

  Astonishment lashes back at her.

  Of a sudden, there are two games at play: there is the wheedling of the storm, calling on it to pitch and roll and fling silver-bound ships toward the sea bottom. She knows it's her own eagerness that she assigns to the waves; they themselves have no care for the destruction they wreak. But there's more satisfaction in imagining she's unleashed a fury hungry for purpose, and that she's given it that purpose through benediction of heart.

  It needs to be kept tame, though, this storm, because without taming, its indifference to which ships it sends to the ocean floor counts in cost to the Aulunian navy. And there is the second game: Javier, in the midst of the straits, now tries to bend the storm to his own whim. He's in the heart of it, and she can feel his confidence, thrumming with the same power the bashing water holds. He has defeated her once, and now has rage to back his magic.

  For an instant, deep inside her, a knife cuts, and lets stillness out.

  Too much is lost in that moment. She's safe, protected from her own scattered and confusing heart, but the stillness is an internal thing, and has no use for magic vented on the outside world. Javier rips away her control as easily as he overwhelmed her in Sandalia's court. The tempest is his, and it turns, lashing at Aulun's navy: in her witchpower vision she can see ships shudder, can see men swept into the raging water, can see Lorraine's crown resting on Javier's brow.

  Belinda Primrose has not known much fury in her life. It's a wasted emotion, difficult to hide and dangerous to show. She has trained herself so very carefully to take anger and feed it to her stillness, making herself untouchable. That training has slipped these past few months; slipped enough that she indulged in temper and commanded Dmitri against his will.

  The insult and ambition from which that pique was born is a weak pale flame against the wrath that surges through her now.

  She is on fire. Witchpower burns through her until her skin is lit with it, and it's her own sentiment that it helps put into words: she will not have her people destroyed, she will not have her mother's crown lost. She will not have it, and with her fury comes a backlash of power so extraordinary that a league away, Javier de Castille is knocked off hi
s feet and smashes back against the Cordoglio's mast.

  DMITRI, IN ALUNAER; AND ROBERT, IN GALLIN

  Two witchlords lift their gazes to the horizon, one looking south and the other north. They see power flaring: no, not flaring. Erupting, sustaining itself, boiling through storm clouds, announcing itself as a presence not to be contained, nor to be denied. Dmitri, in Alunaer, folds long fingers in front of his lips and wonders if the woman who bears such magic is his to persuade; Robert, twenty miles and a world away, smiles, certain that the woman who bears that magic is his to control.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE

  Javier staggers to his feet among a white-faced crew and stares into the storm as though he can see a face in it; this is what the survivors will say, that the young king of Gallin's grey eyes were possessed, his face grim, and they will say that he, graced by God, looked on the fallen one himself…

  … and then threw himself forward with a howl that cut above even the sound of rain and wind and lashing water. Threw himself into the eye of it and from the bow of the ship slammed his hands together and sent forth a terrible lance of God's own strength, so brilliant it turned black clouds to silver and ripped a rainbow across the sheeting rain. Some will say he shouted his mother's name; others that he called on God's son to guide him. They will all say he faced down the devil to save this crew, and much later, when he's come to his senses, Javier won't find it in his heart to deny them.

  The truth is that as he surges forward to reclaim his place at the prow and to meet magic with magic against Belinda Primrose a second time, the ship pitches just so, and he's flung fifteen feet forward, as ignominious an approach as his retreat was seconds earlier. The truth is that the bolt of witchpower that crashes from him is little more than a desperate attempt to keep from flying overboard.

  It does, however, do the things they later claim it did: it sears moon-coloured light through the storm, cuts rainbows across a landscape that has recently been a second cousin to Hell. It's good that others appreciate it: Javier himself is in no shape to.

  He can't see Belinda, but he can feel her, a source of golden burning power in his mind. She might lie beneath him again as she did in his gardens, coaxing her first witchlight to life: that is the closeness he feels to her. She's not part of the Aulunian navy; there's a sense of solidity to her presence that even his own can't match, not while he rides the tempest-torn sea. He won't be able to drown her with her failing ships, but he knows now that she's near, and only has to reach land to find her and take a knife to her wrists and ankles and body before finally drawing a red weeping line across her throat. She will lie insensible, awaiting him; of that much he is certain. She fell once beneath his will, and he is stronger now.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  Witchpower surges at her, a lance flung through the tempest. It flies straight and true, and the woman she was six months ago would have fallen beneath it.

  Today it might be a bit of straw, and she a kitten at play: she bats it away, and her own magic pounces after it, rolling it in her own will and bending it back toward Javier de Castille. She bent Dmitri; it is no great thing, now, to deny the red-haired Gallic king.

  But she cannot simply cut him off from his power the way she did Dmitri: his awareness of the Cordulan armada is too useful if she wishes to drown those ships. So she falters, drawing the image in her mind: Javier standing above her, a spear in hand, thrusting down, and her own hands reaching to catch its haft in a desperate attempt to save herself. She twists silver power to one side, sending Javier stumbling; he recovers, and jabs again, and she flinches aside herself, letting magic slam into the earth around her. None of this happens on the physical plane: it's all within her mind, pictures to help her guide the play.

  She split her willpower once while exploring talent with Javier, and he failed to see her attack until it was too late. It's more difficult to do that now: the battle they fight for dominance is much more deadly than that game had been. But then, she's stronger than she was, and so a part of her mind goes to wrestling Javier while another leaks out along the latticework of conjoined sailing vessels.

  The harshest part of the storm is over the greatest number of ships now, battering not just the armada but Aulun's own navy. She's lost ships while fighting Javier, the storm's uncaring hunger content with Aulunian sailors. Belinda splits her attention a third way, sending out tendrils of witchpower meant to discourage the high winds from smashing her ships.

  Javier's power roars down on her, such strength that she drops to her knees, wide-eyed but unseeing on the storm-ridden cliffs. The picture in her mind loses focus, then comes clear again and now she's on a headman's block, and Javier stands over her as the executioner.

  Belinda, with a whimpered apology to her navy, withdraws the magic meant to protect it, and flings up a shield as Javier swings an axe toward her slender neck.

  Silver cleaves gold and there is a moment of joining and of erotic passion. It's filled with memory, with the trembling exploration of esoteric touch, and with the possibility of a future that neither Belinda Primrose nor Javier de Castille could have commanded outside of dreams. They are, for that brief instant, one.

  The raging storm comes to a stop inside that moment, and a single thin line of entwined gold and silver unfurls itself through time, whispering of hope as it goes. Gold and silver and crimson: that slim thread carries Belinda's heart's blood with it, too, against her will and with it all at once.

  Then it twists back, becoming wire, becoming a garrotte, and the cut it makes is around Belinda's heart, slashing it to pieces and leaving an aching hole inside her. Javier sees no pretty pictures in their tangled futures, and false dreams aside, Belinda has known that's how it must be. She did, after all, murder his mother.

  Somehow there's humour in that thought. It enrages Javier and releases Belinda from her sorrow, leaving them a war to fight again. On the cliffs, Belinda gets to her feet again, slow joint by joint rising that's an act of defiance and necessity. Javier expects her to be on her knees; standing, she throws everything that she is into his teeth, and Belinda takes pride in that.

  What she does not know is the storm has ripped her hair from its tight bindings, that it has torn her clothes and left her clearly a woman standing alone on the cliff's edge. What she does not know is that first one, then another, and now thousands of Aulunian soldiers have seen her, black-haired in the rain, white-skinned, lit by gold: an unearthly creature with her hands and face raised to the storm. What she does not know is that they have whispered it amongst themselves already, and that their story burns like fire through the ranks.

  God, they say, may have lent Javier de Castille a gift of power, but He has sent the Holy Mother herself to watch over Aulun and her people.

  Belinda, who would laugh at the idea, is blessedly unaware, and when Javier strikes at her again with his silver magic, she only lets a tsk of dismay through the shield she has created. She could fight the Gallic prince to a standstill, could dominate and destroy him, but wisdom, though it's come lately, has at least come to her. Her shield may be gold, soft rich metal that it is, but it's heavy and solid, and the more time Javier wastes trying to pick his way through it, the more time she has to pull his fleet down around him. She ignores his own bright boat for the moment, so as to give him no reason to stop trying to destroy her, and instead turns her attention to the ships doing battle with her own in the belly of the storm.

  Most of them will never know what happened. Belinda's hands claw, and so does the wind-whipped surface of the sea. Heavy planks shatter under water shaped with human intent, holes smashed beneath the waterlines. A dozen ships are sunk before the others start to realise something is wrong.

  She cannot drown them all. The armada is too vast, too spread out, but many of their ships are at the centre of the fight and the heart of the tempest. Belinda reaches for those closest to Javier's, following his latticework, and comes upon a familiar presence.

  Marius Poulin is on board one of th
ose ships, and his terror is fresh and strong. A cramp seizes Belinda's heart, taking her breath and proving there's weakness in her after all. Marius has been badly used, both by herself and by his king. Whether it's mercy or foolishness, sympathy stings through her, and she releases his ship from the gold-laced network that drags the armada into the sea. Marius deserves better than a death by drowning, and that much, at least, she can give him. She can do nothing about the guilt that surges through him when his ship crashes to the top of the waves while others around it are drawn inexorably down, but there's the price of war: no matter how and no matter why, those who survive will bear a burden of self-inflicted censure.

  Another price is paid for that moment of mercy: Javier's realised what she's doing, and has unleashed his awareness of the other ships the better to focus on keeping his afloat. It's hardly a heroic response, but Belinda finds it commendable: he's the serpent's head, and without him the amassed Cordulan army will wither and die.

  He is also the particular threat to Lorraine's throne, and so Belinda stands, indecisive, for what feels like hours in the lashing rain. But in the end there's more damage to be done to his army's morale, and more safety for Aulun, if the armada is destroyed. She has a sense of her own navy's ships now, having singled them out as the ones not connected by Javier's awareness, and she can continue to lash out and sink the invading ships without fearing for her own.

  Whether it's the storm that loses strength in time or herself, she's not sure, but a block of sunlight falls through clouds that are white from releasing rain. Shocked by the brightness, she lets witchpower fall away from herself, and only a lifetime of stubborn practise keeps her from staggering with exhaustion. She stands where she is, wishing she had a staff to lean on, and watches the Aulunian navy sail back to harbour. Their cheers are audible from a half-mile away, and she lifts a fatigued gaze to the horizon, as if she could see the armada's remains limping back to Gallin. Javier has survived, but his fleet has not. It's a victory worth bringing home to Lorraine.