The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  Dmitri intends a coup.

  The idea has flamed in his mind since taking this new shape. Robert follows staid old plans that they've used since the beginning of time: war to drive innovation, to keep populations off-balance; technological leaps great enough, over short enough times, to leave the infiltrated people numb with the shock of change. Time has proven these tactics create strong slave races: ill-educated and stupefied, a people don't need to understand how or what they're doing in order to provide goods to what may as well be their gods. But Dmitri believes a unified, thinking populace is of even greater use to his queen, that a people raised to fully understand their technology are more likely to be inventive, and to offer new choices and greater potential to a space-faring race that has spent millennia at slow war with other resource-hungry peoples.

  It is, he's willing to concede, likely to be a slower path than Robert's brutal means to an end. But if he can guide this small planet away from the war-ridden industrial future Robert intends, give them a freer hand in their own development, and in doing so provide new resources to his queen, then the time will be well spent.

  The gamble is enormous, but if it succeeds, Dmitri, not Robert, will father the next generations, and his innovations, not the old ways, will inspire his children.

  Yes, Dmitri understands Seolfor better than ever before, and a part of him disdains the so-called rebel of their society, for he's seen nothing of Seolfor's hand in changing the shape of this world's future. He himself may fail, but if so, he'll do so gloriously—and that's a very human thought indeed. He's seen Robert succumbing to those same kinds of human weaknesses; seen it in his failure to recognise Belinda's burgeoning witchpower, as she calls it, when she was a child; seen it in Robert's loss of control in Khazar; and sees it in Robert's fondness for Lorraine, who's replaced their alien queen in his mind. Dmitri likes to imagine he has no such failings himself and, knowing that's unlikely, tries to guard against them. He knows Ivanova is coming into her own witchpower, and has trained her if not in the actual magic, at least in the thought patterns that will help her develop it. He is far less enamoured of Irina than Robert is of Lorraine, though the few brief months he spent at Sandalia's side, playing the part of her priest and her lover, still waken a hunger in him, all these years later. It's as well that she, like Lorraine, set murderers on his trail after he delivered Javier; both queens thought him dead, and while it meant a long time before he dared rejoin either court, even in such a disguise as the witchpower now lends him, it's still better by far to be dead than a dangling question in their minds. He might have grown soft on Sandalia, had he stayed near her, and he prefers the sweet memories of a lifetime ago.

  Lorraine, finally, is turning her attention to the damned letter. Dmitri has not been watching, not blatantly; that would be too obvious, and the longer he watched the less likely she was to read the thing. She opens it with a frothy indifference that would be charming in a woman a third her age, and which looks absurd in her. Seeing that he watches, she allows her attention to drift elsewhere, but her eyes come back to the letter with surprising alacrity. She caught a few words, then, before beginning her game again, and what's written there is more interesting than any playful foolishness.

  She reads it through once, gives him a sharp glance, then reads it again before letting it roll closed so she can tap its column against her cheek. She says “Very well” petulantly, like a child whose playtime is spoilt, and gestures her doting courtiers away. “If we must to work, then we suppose we must. Our dear friend from Khazar has brought us news, and we must speak with him.”

  This tells the court of the letter's importance: Lorraine stands and leaves the throne dais to greet Dmitri herself, to raise him up and make all the false apologies he predicted she would. Then she laces her arm through his and demands, prettily, that he walk with her; at least, it would be pretty if she were thirty-five, and her breath not wretched with sweets.

  “You've read the letter,” she says the moment they're beyond reasonable earshot. There are no doubt listening-holes all over the palace, even in the broad corridor down which they walk, but Lorraine's boxy footsteps and the echo of the uncarpeted hall will help to disguise some of what they say, and as for the rest, it needs not be kept secret.

  “Of course, your majesty.” Dmitri rather likes the heavy Khazarian accent, but would keep it in place even if he didn't: it hides any familiarity the titian queen might have with his voice. It's been twenty years and more since the priest he was took away the son she'd borne, but the time was a momentous one: she might well recall the voice as well as the face.

  “We find it… unexpected.”

  It would be entirely wrong for Dmitri to grin, and so he doesn't, but it's a near thing. “Her Imperial majesty thought you might, majesty. And yet she feels she ought not compound a mistake already made.”

  “Few of us, queens or not, accept such truths with grace,” Lorraine murmurs. “Our sister in Khazar is to be admired. We have been … concerned,” she says, again with the pause that speaks volumes in understatement. “We had thought ourselves to hold a special place in our sister-queen's heart, given that we are so alone in holding our thrones as we do, and the Essandian alliance has brought us distress for that reason.”

  “I am instructed to beg forgiveness for any heartache her majesty may have caused your majesty.” This dance could go on forever, but Dmitri takes the steps, trusting that once form is met, Lorraine will become more forthright. If not, he'll grind his teeth and carry on, because protocol can't be ignored, whether in a mortal court or among his own people. There are things they have in common, his people and these; there are points all the sentient races have in common, though rarely enough to build an alliance on. That, in fact, is as alien a thought as any other: those who reach the stars conquer and infiltrate and control, but they rarely, if ever, ally themselves with one another. The known galaxies might have a very different shape if their peoples were inclined to cooperation. “As your majesty knows, the combined Cordulan armies, and the Ecumenic faith, are of a size to be concerning, even to an empire as great as Khazar's. Provided the opportunity, your majesty can surely understand why prudence dictated her majesty should build an alliance with a navy as powerful as Essandia's.”

  “Yes,” Lorraine says, and she draws the word out, because here's the crux of the matter: “But Essandia's navy is no longer master of the sea.”

  Dmitri offers a slight bow, not enough to disrupt their sedate walking pace. “And now it's my imperatrix's concern that if their mighty navy can fall so easily, so, too, might their army. An alliance that looked healthy only months ago, your majesty, seems suddenly to be a burden. Her imperial majesty sees a change in the tide, and hopes you might forgive her for the caution that guided her hand in previous undertakings.”

  Lorraine's voice changes, becoming both sharp and arch: “We will have command of the Khazarian army that now marches through Gallin?”

  “As is written in her majesty's hand,” Dmitri murmurs, and Lorraine smiles.

  “Then we forgive our sister all trespasses, and embrace our new alliance.”

  IVANOVA DUROVA, THE IMPERATOR'S HEIR

  21 June 1588 † Brittany

  Her mother is missing her by now. Will have been for weeks, indeed, because Ivanova Durova rode with her army when they left Khazar. She has watched pigeons race back from the generals' tents: pigeons carrying no-doubt frantic tales of how military men cannot find one young woman amongst the thousands of soldiers who march on Gallin. There have been inspections and spot checks; it even seemed, for a little while, that the entire army might be called back so the imperator's heir could be found. Ivanova wrote her mother a note of her own then, promising she was well and promising, equally, that she intended to go to Gallin and watch war happen whether the army continued on or not. Better, surely, to have her protected by the troops than to have her riding alone.

  Do not, she had also written, send more men to try to find me. They w
ill fail. Irina knew nothing of the power Ivanova commanded: not even the priest and counselor Dmitri, who had trained her thoughts to shape that power, realised how much she'd come in to what she privately thought of as magic. What else might it be, this influence that let her change men's minds or slip among them unseen? It was that talent that had permitted her to join the army; had even left an impression of herself behind, so her whirlwind maid and others about the palace had vague recollections of seeing her even in the days after her departure. That simulacrum had faded with the fourth day: she'd felt it, and not long after, messenger birds had begun winging their way back and forth between the capital city of Khazan and the generals leading the march.

  Ivanova knows perfectly well she oughtn't be as bold or as gleeful as she is: the price for her daring will be high. But it will also not be paid today, and in very little time her army's long journey will be over. She stands in her stirrups as the regiment she rides with crests a hill, and suddenly there's a battlefield before her.

  Aulun and Cordula clash in a broad valley between low hills: Ivanova can see glimpses of the straits beyond those hills; glimpses of the ships Aulun sailed on. They're resplendent, the Reformation soldiers, wearing their red coats as they rush in from the north. Ecumenic Cordula's soldiers are a rainbow of discord, uniformed in green and blue and mustard yellow as they ride from the east and south. There were more of them, before the armada: the Ecumenic church should have commanded enough bodies to overwhelm Lorraine's troops, but no more. They are close to evenly matched now, and for a breathless instant Ivanova sees patterns in the chaos of war, surging back and forth like a living creature. Her own army comes from the east, down the rolling hills and into the field, and Ivanova, like her brother soldiers, shouts with raw enthusiasm as they race to change the tide of war.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  21 June 1588 † Brittany's battlefields

  The Khazarian army swept through the countryside and slammed into the back of Javier's army with the force of a hammer to the anvil. Those who were meant to be reinforcements arrived as mercenaries at best, traitors at worst, and what had been planned as a ruthless crushing of Aulun's army turned into the pulverisation of Javier's own troops.

  Javier stood on a hilltop and watched it happen: watched Aulun, bewilderingly rally themselves when they knew Khazar was encroaching. Watched them attack with the confidence of a young bull, smashing into Javier's front lines, thinking, perhaps, to kill as many of the weary Cordulan soldiers as they could before facing the fresh Khazarian troops. It was an idiot's ploy: they'd be exhausted by the time the lines opened and Khazar poured forward to meet an Aulunian army that had nothing left with which to defend themselves. Javier'd saluted the brave and stupid men and sent a curse toward their generals: they might be the enemy but wasting lives in that manner was an affront to God. Tomas had begun praying for the souls of the dead, and had yet to stop.

  Khazar's army was visible from miles away tens of miles, if he'd had the height to see them, but even on nothing more than a hilltop, the distance turned brown with dust rising, and began to shake with the impact of tens of thousands of feet. They had come a terrible distance to fight this war for Javier, and they would be given no time to rest before meeting their first battle. He had saluted them as well, in honour of their determination and in thanks for the overwhelming favourites their presence would lend his victory.

  And then, screaming their queen's name and cursing Rodrigo's, the first ten thousand soldiers had crashed into the Cordulan army's unprepared flank and obliterated them.

  Even now if he closed his eyes Javier could see it, the way so many men literally overran his army, flattening what had been tents and food supplies and camp followers; bowling over soldiers who had seconds ago stood cheering their arrival.

  It shamed him how long it had taken him to react, though recounting the moments said it couldn't have been more than minutes, and perhaps not nearly that long. No, Javier was certain it had been that long, his slow thoughts reeling with incomprehension. There was no doubt they were the Khazarian army: they flew banners bearing the complex knotwork that was a symbol of Khazarian pride; they wore the black uniforms with brightly coloured epaulettes that made streaks of brilliance even through the dust and the distance. Those who rode did so as though they'd been born to the saddle, with such grace it seemed impossible that the crimson flying from their swords was blood, or that the men who fell before them did so of anything other than awe. They were all the things the endless Khazarian army was meant to be: great and terrible and strong.

  And the enemy.

  That, ah, that was what Khazar had always been: the enemy, a force too vast to be defeated, and Javier's heart went cold and sick in his chest as he stepped out of himself and saw for the first time what he and Rodrigo had done: invited an unstoppable army into Echon, all the way to its western coast. Horrifyingly, that empire could now consider Echon to be in its clawed grasp, with nothing more in its way than a few armies of smaller proportion by far than their own.

  Javier unleashed the witchpower.

  Belinda had stood on shore, on shore, the Aulunians said, and had brought down his fleet, miles away in the midst of the straits. Miles from where she could see them, and Javier could see the leading edge of the Khazarian army, could see more than that as they boiled over low hills and into the flats that had become the battleground. If she could affect what lay out of sight, he certainly could destroy what he could see.

  Silver lashed out, brighter than sunlight, and rolled into the Khazarian army with all the destructive willpower that Javier could channel behind it. He had held back for the sake of his men's morale, had listened to their fears of an invisible magic as deadly as cannonballs and had made his magic a thing less terrifying for their sake. Now, for their sake again, he let go of that gentleness and revelled in wanton slaughter. A release sweet as orgasm shuddered over him, and then again, as though the witchpower rewarded him for using it.

  Bodies turned to red mist on the battlefield below when his magic hit them, and the wind caught that fine crimson fog and sprayed it across his army and the Khazarians alike. Part of him heard screams, some of agony and others of blood-mad joy. Later he would hear stories of how men in his army smeared pale streaks across the blood drying on their faces as they'd heard the Columbian savages did, and, mad with battle lust, threw themselves into the Khazarian front.

  Threw themselves against an unstoppable force and, to a man, died, but their story became a thing of legend.

  Others, their swords and pistols lost in battle, scooped up limbs torn from bodies and literally beat their enemy to death; Javier felt that, too, riding back on the waves of power he flung toward the attacking army. His vision burned red, even the silver magic drowned in blood, and all the helpless rage he'd felt at his mother's death, at Belinda's betrayal, at the unstoppable shaping of events, poured out of him to tear the Khazarian army asunder and to lend his men the will to fight.

  It went on for almost an hour, the Khazarian masses too many, too determined, or too stupid to crumple in fear and drop their weapons. Each volley Javier sent forth felt like the one that had destroyed Rodrigo's oak doors, nothing more: there was no more horror in taking life than that. Indeed, the ongoing rush of power wracked him as might the pleasure found in a lover's body, making him feel astonishingly alive.

  If this was giving in, he had been a fool to struggle so long. He'd been wrong to argue with Rodrigo over the best use of his magic, had been wrong practising tentatively with Belinda, had not needed to hide himself all his life. Witchpower pounded through him until he thought that if he cut his skin, his blood would run silver. This was God's gift, not the devil's, for surely such pleasure could come only from the king of Heaven.

  The first sign that something was wrong troubled him no more than a tickle in the throat, a tiny cough that might stutter his voice. It stuttered his power, instead, so small it seemed meaningless. Joy still ran through him,
far too seductive to stop even if that warning had meant anything. He extended his hands, lobbing vast balls of witchlight toward his enemy, and knew himself for a god among mortals.

  Then exhaustion seized him, a cold black wall that overwhelmed silver power, and when he reached for another ball of light with which to destroy more Khazarians, there was no response from the once-boundless witchlight.

  Panic surged, a flux of new energy, and for a few more seconds there was power to fling amongst the invaders. Relieved, Javier took a step forward, proving himself strong.

  His knees buckled and he fell, hitting the earth hard enough to bite his tongue. Blood tasted unbearably bitter in the wake of seductive witchpower, and with the small part of his mind still capable of forming thoughts, he knew his gaze and eyes were blank as he turned them toward the Khazarian front.

  Released from the onslaught of his power, that army surged forward again, and his own people began to die again, in terrible numbers. Javier reached for magic, reached to save those he could, and fell into a heap in the grass.