The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  Weary beyond belief, Belinda turns from the view and hobbles away from the cliffs, entirely unaware that she's leaving behind a legend in the making.

  SEOLFOR

  † in Alania

  It's with an old man's chuckle that he kicks his feet off the stump they're resting on and hitches himself upright with the help of his staff. By evening he's packed mules and carts, chortling all the while, and by sunset, he's making his slow shuffling way out of the village that has been his home for forty years, to finally begin shaping this small blue world.

  JAVIER, KING OF GALLIN

  4 June 1588 † Gallin's northern shore

  There were too many drowning men to save.

  The Cordoglio had tried, pulling those she could to the safety of her decks. One such had been Sacha Asselin, so rudely snatched from Poseidon's clutches that he had vomited seawater when they dragged him on board, and whose cough still sounded wet and pathetic. Javier had refused to leave his side until he was delivered into a physician's hands, and had agitated until assured that so long as Sacha kept warm and dry, no illness should set into his lungs. Even then he'd not wanted to leave, and sat for a long time with an arm around Sacha, as if he could keep death away with a firm hand.

  Marius and Eliza had come to shore safely as well, their ship unscathed, though Javier'd only half-heard the story of their escape while they all huddled around Sacha. When sleep took the stocky young lord, Javier left his friends, returning to the beaches to stare down their length as afternoon turned to evening and the storm faded away.

  Bloated bodies washed up every minute or two. It would be the same across the straits, with soldiers rolling against the cliffs and deposited on sandy stretches, there to rot. Cordulan survivors, if there were any, would count themselves lucky to disappear into the Aulunian populace; most would likely end up in prison, awaiting the end of a war that Javier had meant to begin so decisively that its end would be brief and inevitable.

  “You've done your duty in mourning and watching the sea for survivors. Attend the mass for their souls, but we have a war to fight, Javier. The weather turned against us this time, and Aulun will come on the storm's heels, bringing the fight to us.”

  “It wasn't the storm.” Javier kept his eyes on the sea, surprised to hear his uncle's voice, surprised it had taken a full six hours from the Cordoglio staggering back to port before Rodrigo came to remind him of his duty.

  Now the Essandian prince stepped up beside him, no longer pretending the diffidence that had kept him behind Javier and out of sight. “The woman, then?” He sounded unexpectedly calm, while fear and fury rose in Javier's breast.

  “Yes, the woman. Belinda. Witchbreed bitch. That storm was hers to command.”

  “Had you meant it to be yours?” Genuine curiosity coloured Rodrigo's voice, no censure and no concern. “I hadn't known it was in your power.”

  Black rage burnt a line behind Javier's breastbone, filling his breath with bitterness. “Nor had I. It had not been my intent.” He spat the admission, hating it. “I—”

  “Then our enemy has a weapon for which we were not prepared,” Rodrigo murmured. “This is war, Javier. This is the way of war. Your own attacks, were they effective?”

  “No.” Bile in the answer, loathing so deep Javier couldn't say whether it was for Belinda Primrose or for himself. “She shielded against them. She ought not have been able!”

  Rodrigo's silence drew out long enough for Javier to know it was measured, that the Essandian prince was choosing his words carefully. Useless anger beat inside him, that Rodrigo should have to, and yet had his uncle spoken carelessly he would have struck at him, his own impotence so vast as to need an outlet.

  “You've spent these last months extending your gift's aspects. So, it seems, has she. We shouldn't be surprised.”

  Javier whispered “But her strength” with more despair than he wanted to own to. “I was stronger than she, in Lutetia, uncle. She fell easily then. She is only a woman.”

  “Words your mother would slap you for,” Rodrigo said drily. “You taught her. She was still new to her magic, but it's been almost a year, has it not? Since you began with her?”

  Javier nodded, a sullen jerk of motion, then lifted a hand to his face. His fingers were still cold and swollen with water; warmth, if it ever returned, seemed a long time coming. “She sees her power—saw it—as internal, a thing that benefits a woman. I had not imagined it might … expand.”

  A flush heated his face, making his hand feel colder still. His own magic had changed in the past months, giving him hints of the emotions in those around him. Clarity deepened his blush: such a development could all too easily be considered a womanly thing, appropriate to the fairer sex. If he could learn that, then he ought to have anticipated Belinda might better herself in active uses of the witchpower. He mumbled, “I'm a fool,” and to his irritation and surprise, Rodrigo chuckled.

  “War and women make fools of all men, nephew.”

  Javier's embarrassment fled, replaced by a more righteous anger. “How can you laugh? We've taken devastating losses.”

  “I'm old,” Rodrigo said, droll once again. Then, less so, he added, “And laughter diffuses the rage that makes clarity difficult to achieve. Aulun will come for us, Javier. We must ready the army, and move them.”

  “Move them?” Javier snapped a hand toward the straits. “They'll come across the water. We can meet them here on the shore, and burn their ships with fire-arrows and cannon. We'll slaughter them before they're past the beaches.” Silver certainty rose in his mind, making him loosen his sword as though the Aulunian army already approached.

  “They know we have an army gathered here, Javier.” Rodrigo found a stick and drew in the sand, idle sketches that became the shape of the two countries' coastlines. A mark slashed their location before Rodrigo stabbed holes in the earth, one to the north, where the straits were narrowest, and one to the south, where another sharp jut of land brought the two countries close together before the straits ended and turned to open sea. “They'll come there or there, and make for Lutetia as we would have made for Alunaer.”

  Javier kicked sand over the lower point, scoffing. “It's ten days' journey from Brittany into the capital if you're feeding an army. They'll want to ride their victory directly into battle, not waste time marching.”

  “They'll want to win. They're outnumbered and know it, so chasing us here is a tactical disaster. You were taught tactics, were you not?” Rodrigo might have been born of desert sands, so dry was his voice. Insult coloured Javier's cheeks again, but he made himself scowl at the rough map in the sand.

  “It's a losing tactic for them regardless of what they choose. We could split our forces and still meet them with even odds at either of those places. Or we could wait here until we know where they're coming from, and meet them in battle outside Lutetia.” Javier sucked his cheeks in, still sullen. “That would be to our tactical advantage.”

  “So you were paying attention. The army rides under Cordula's banner, but they're yours to command. What's your will?”

  Guilt surged through Javier, burning away insult and sourness alike. Rodrigo's expression gave no hint that his words were meant to be loaded, and Javier wished, briefly, that the small skill he'd developed in sensing emotion might burgeon, so he wouldn't have to grasp his uncle's shoulder to see if that innocence was real. Asking him his will, after months of struggling to leave men their own, seemed a purposeful cruelty. Javier made a fist, and his voice, when he spoke, was rough and tight. “I'll hear the mass for the dead before I decide.”

  Hear the mass for the dead, and bend a penitent knee to Tomas so he might hear the priest's advice. He was king, and his will meant to be law, and yet the thought of it stated so directly sent hummingbird wings of fear fluttering in his chest. His will must be that, and nothing more: his, without bending others to it, not even if the Pappas had graced him with God's blessing. It was a test, as every moment of his life had been a tes
t. He had failed a few bitter times, but not again. Tomas would guide him. Tomas would tell him what to do.

  SACHA ASSELIN

  It is not only Rodrigo who notices that, rather than go to his lifelong friends, Javier de Castille turns to the beautiful Cordulan priest after the mass. Sacha Asselin, still bundled against sickness and grateful for the warm blankets, sees it, too. He's been longer separated from his prince, now his king, than the other two, and when Javier hurries after Tomas rather than so much as glance their way, Sacha turns to Marius and Eliza with confusion written across his features.

  Marius is the one who makes a gesture of acceptance. “It's been this way for months, Sacha. Since he arrived in Isidro.”

  “Javier's changed,” Eliza says quietly. “More than the crown on his head, it's…”

  “The witchpower.” Sacha grates the words out. Watching his king these last few days, it seems to him a gift that Javier told him about the witchpower himself, rather than let Eliza and Marius do it. It shouldn't be a gift: it should be something so matter of course as to be utterly unquestionable; there should be no relief or surprise that Javier took the trouble to unfold his secrets to his oldest friend.

  That it feels like a favour knots a black rope around Sacha's heart, and draws it tight.

  Marius sighs, but before he can make an excuse for Javier, Sacha cuts him off. “He's always been reluctant to stand tall. Now he's hiding behind the priest's robes rather than—”

  “Rather than what?” Eliza's bold enough to interrupt; Eliza never has had as much sense of propriety as Marius is burdened with. “He's afraid, Sacha. He can do things no man should be able to.” A hint of pink washes along her cheekbones, though the way she continues speaking gives no hint that she knows, or cares. Sacha, though, notices, and jealousy indistinguishable from anger scores him. Eliza doesn't notice that, either, as she says, “The Pappas has blessed him now, but he's spent his whole life fighting this power of his—”

  “Instead of embracing it and becoming the power in Echon that he could be!”

  Eliza stares. “He's leading the combined might of the Cordulan armies in a fight for the abandoned souls in Reformation Aulun, and he's only just past his third and twentieth birthday. What else would you have him do?”

  “He should have moved for Sandalia's throne years ago, when he reached his majority. Then he'd be a respected and known quantity amongst the crowned heads—” Sacha has always been frustrated with Javier's unwillingness to put himself ahead of his petite mother. Now, knowing that Javier refused not only that, but his own astonishing power, sends flashes of rage through Sacha's vision, even when he speaks with Eliza.

  “Oh, aye,” Eliza says dourly, “because as an untried youth he's had such difficulty in convincing Cordula's crowned kings to support him. If he needs Tomas's faith to shore his up—”

  “It's more than that,” Marius murmurs, surprising the other two into silence. “Tomas can resist the witchpower, at least for a little while. Like Bea—Belinda—could. It draws Javier, moth to flame. He's spent a lifetime not bending others to his will, though we all know well enough that we couldn't say no to him.”

  “He's royalty,” Eliza says with a sniff. “He doesn't need magic to be irresistible.” There's the briefest pause, one in which the corner of her mouth turns up as if she has a secret, and she adds, “At least, I never thought so.”

  Marius glances between Eliza and Sacha, then drops his gaze again before Sacha can read the merchant man's thoughts in his eyes. “That's true. So resistance of any kind is appealing. He finds in Tomas something he's never found in any of us.”

  “And so we're to be replaced?” Acid spills through Sacha's question, and Marius shakes his head.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. We might have feared the same from Beatrice's arrival, but in the end she wasn't …”

  “She wasn't what she said she was,” Eliza says flatly. “She wasn't what he needed. She wasn't us.”

  “Neither is Tomas.” Marius sounds calm, utterly certain of himself. “Tomas is a thing Javier needs, but he can't replace us. Not even Javier's witchpower can fit Tomas into his life the way we're a part of it. Let him take the time he needs to build confidence in himself, Sacha. The witchpower is…” He crooks a smile. “Alarming, and he's spent his whole life fearing it was the devil's gift. He'll come back to us, as much as he can. He's a king now. Things change.”

  Anger blooms in Sacha's breast. “We shouldn't change this much. He needed us on the Cordoglio as it came into Lutetia. He needs us still. He should be able to see that, and come to us.”

  “My love for him won't change,” Marius says steadily, quietly. “He knows that. If we can go through all that we have gone through, if we can find forgiveness over bitter matters—”

  “Belinda,” Sacha spits, and Marius exhales, then nods.

  “Belinda, and …” A thought seems to come to him, and he pushes it away, changing his mind about speaking aloud. Sacha draws breath to pursue it, but Marius shakes his head and murmurs, “It doesn't matter. Belinda can be named the sum total of the deepest cuts between Javier and myself. The rest are details, and I will not be bled dry by them. He's certain of us, Sacha. That's what he needs, to never have to doubt that we stand beside him, loyal and loving. Let the priest guide him through difficult times, and perhaps we ourselves can learn something of standing against our king from Tomas. It seems he wants that as much as he needs faith.”

  Silence takes them after that, and it's a long while before, by unspoken agreement, three old friends rise and go in search of a drink. To avail themselves, without asking, of the king's finest wine, and to wonder if Marius is right, or if their fourth is already lost to them.

  BELINDA PRIMROSE

  4 June 1588 † The Aulunian Straits

  With the storm's passing, Belinda drew what vestiges of magic she had left around herself and let the witchpower hide her from sight. She didn't move beyond that, other than to sit on the soggy ground and draw her knees to her chest as she stared across the straits. Her heartbeat, a constant low thud in her ears, told her she was alive, but everything beyond that passed her by. She could see that wind stirred grass and dirt, that seagulls rose and fell on it along the cliffs' edges. The birds opened their beaks to cry, but no piercing sound reached her ears. Exhaustion numbed her until she couldn't say if her fingers and toes were cold, or whether her skin itched where drying hair lay plastered to it.

  She believed that she could, if she must, draw shreds of composure around herself and become the primrose assassin she'd always been. Her will would stretch that far: she had made a life of insisting that it did.

  That, though, was if she must, and only Lorraine's direct order might command a must. Witchpower didn't so much as hunger for sex, as it had done the only other time she'd emptied her reserves so far. That stirred faint astonishment: the power had been bound to sex, had fed from it and been replenished by it, since the moment Belinda had broken through the barrier in her mind. To find it unlinked now, to have no hunger in her body demanding renewal through passion, opened a lock within her, and her next breath came more easily. Dmitri had said sex and power were not one and the same: to have them uncoupled could only become a strength.

  One to explore later, though. It was enough to sit and not feel the cold, not feel the damp, and to watch as the navy, unexpectedly triumphant, returned to port. The first ships brought a smile to her face, cracking the mask of weariness that had settled over it.

  Thumps of satisfied relief broke her facade further as the whole of the fleet came into sight, their joy at victory a palpable thing, even over the distance. Belinda watched until their nearness was eaten by the cliffs' height, and then, smiling, put her head against her knees to gather warmth and savour her triumph.

  That was how Robert Drake found her, a full two days later.

  His hand was shockingly warm on her shoulder. Belinda hadn't known she was cold until his touch told her otherwise; she hadn't, indeed, known
anything until that moment. She lifted her head to see an afternoon like the one she'd closed her eyes against, only with greater heat in the air, and no lingering weight of a storm on the horizon. Other things were different, too: a stiffness in her body like that of sleeping on hard ground, though she had no recollection of doing so. Witchpower was replenished in her mind, golden, strong, and calm, demanding nothing. The fleet anchored offshore was whole and bright and proud: when last she'd seen it, sails had needed mending and the men on deck had needed rest. Now ships had full sails and were littered with soldiers in their bright red coats, awaiting the tide so they might make war on Gallin.

  “The queen is waiting for you, Primrose.” Robert sounded oddly gentle, a voice she hadn't heard from him since she was a child. Not since before she began the game of stillness; since before Lorraine had visited Robert's country estates and Belinda had been denied seeing her. That he should use such a voice now seemed both strange and worrying, though worry itself lay too far outside of where she still was to take much root. It took a while for her to put words together: speech had become remote and unimportant as she'd sat on the cliffs.

  Finding it again told her she needed water: her throat was parched and sticky, and her voice was that of a querulous old woman's. “The queen has given me orders to ride with the army.”

  “Things have changed, Primrose. Things are different now. Here.” Robert crouched beside her and offered a wineskin.

  Belinda took it and sucked the liquid down greedily. It was watered to the point of having almost no flavour, but it moistened the membranes of her throat and tasted as sweet as anything she'd ever known. Remoteness faded as the wine washed down, bringing her back to the world and rooting her in it again. “Different how?”