The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  BELINDA WALTER

  Witchpower, heavy as thunder in the air, rubbed Belinda's skin as, confident in her invisibility, she slipped through the last few guards and pup tents that made up the body of the Ecumenic army The royal tents, the strategy centres, and the accommodations for high-ranking military lay beyond the common area. Of all of them, one was largest and cleanest, and that was the one she made her way to. She would have known it as her quarry had she been blind, such was the power building there, and she tightened the stillness around her before entering, making certain she would remain unseen until she had well and truly studied and understood the situation within.

  She pushed aside the tent door in time to watch Sacha Asselin draw blade and fling himself toward Javier de Castille.

  Love, in the end, tells all.

  Belinda Primrose ought not be in this room at this moment, but she is, and every part of her that is thinking and rational knows she should let this game play out. But that's not the part of her that acts: that part is, perhaps, Beatrice Irvine, who is divorced from the truths Belinda's come to know, and whose heart still beats too fast at the thought of a ginger-haired prince coming to her bed. Belinda has fallen, fallen further than she knew, because the queen's bastard would let Javier die, but the woman she is now slams a witchpower shield around the young king, and throws all her strength behind it, so there's nothing left for herself.

  And realises, less than a breath later, how very badly she's chosen.

  Marius is there, suddenly, terribly: a physical shield far more visible than the one she's offered. Marius is there, between king and killer, and Belinda's scream isn't the only one to fill the war tent. The sound Marius himself makes is dreadful, a gasp of pain and surprise so soft Belinda shouldn't be able to hear it, especially under her own scream; especially under the bull's bellow of horror and rage that Sacha Asselin shouts out. His back's to Belinda, blocking his hands, blocking Marius's belly, but she knows there's blood there, draining the colour from Marius's face.

  Guardsmen are there now, between Belinda and the others, swords raised to strike at Sacha, and Belinda is reminded of Ilyana's death, six months ago in a Gallic courtroom. Sacha will die the same way, skewered by long blades, and the only sorrow she has is that she doesn't wield them herself. Her heart has stopped: stopped, she thinks, the moment she entered the tent, and it may never beat again.

  But she's wrong, and the contraction that comes next is the most painful thing she's ever known, gutting her, cutting her own throat, weakening whatever strength she had.

  Because another scream belongs to Eliza Beaulieu, who has somehow got herself between Sacha and the guards. She staggers now, white-faced, under the plunge of their swords. One man struck from on high, cutting down from her shoulder at such an angle that it can barely have missed her heart; the other has struck through her gut, the same kind of blow that Marius has taken for his king.

  The three of them, two men and a woman, fall to their knees, so slowly as to be a dance. There's grace inherent in this death, but only for a moment. Marius, perhaps, knows what Eliza's done; Sacha does not, and his howls are for the man he holds in his arms, his dying friend. One of the guards, horrified, yanks his sword back, and Eliza screams again, folding herself over the blade that's left, the one thrust into her belly. That guard has let his sword go, has fallen to his knees himself in apologetic supplication, and Belinda has the momentary clear thought that he pulled the strength of his blow, else he'd have driven through Eliza and pinned her to Sacha, taking both their lives. She wants to commend his swiftness in doing so, but even if she could draw breath beyond the icy cut of horror in her own throat, she knows he's killed the beautiful Gallic woman. There is nothing to commend.

  All of this, all of it, has taken almost three seconds.

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE

  It was inconceivable that Sacha could lift a blade against him. If Javier had any clear thought, it was that: Sacha could not raise a blade against him, and therefore must mean it for someone else.

  Tomas, who stood at his right hand. Tomas, whose faith strengthened his; Tomas, toward whom Sacha's shoulders were squared. It was the smallest thing in the world, and yet it was everything: those few inches in difference between where Tomas stood and where Javier did. No one else could possibly see it; their stances were wrong. They would see a friend displaced by a priest, outraged at his fall in status, determined to take vengeance on the man who had belittled him. They would see a king in danger, and think nothing of those around him.

  He had so very little witchpower left at his disposal, but it was enough to throw a shield around Tomas del'Abbate. It was easy, in fact, guarding a single man after days of protecting an army. Nothing, not even the largest cannon Aulun might bring against them, could shatter that shield; Tomas, standing at Javier's side, was utterly safe.

  By the time Javier understood that he should have wrapped everyone in witchpower, shielded them all from one another, refused them the ability to move, it was much too late.

  Marius had been no more than a few feet away; Javier knew that in the same way he knew where his right hand was. It was a mark of his own shock that he didn't know Marius would lurch forward until it was already done; clear thought might have told him he would do such a thing. It was a graceless act, desperation leaving beauty far behind, and it seemed impossible that the merchant man could move as fast as he had, or that the end result of such quickness would be a soft wet sound and a point changing the shape of his shirt in the back.

  Metal rasped around the room, promise that someone would die as the price of an attempt on another life.

  Sacha would die for the attempt of taking another life.

  A woman had screamed in that first moment, when Sacha had thrown himself into action. Eliza, the only woman there, and out of all his old friends, she's the one Javier might have imagined could move so quickly and so smoothly. She was a guttersnipe and a thief, and needed all the grace and speed at her disposal.

  Her second scream was full of pain, a wholly different sound than the first one, and it made no sense. Not until Sacha, horror stricken across his face, crashed to his knees with Marius in his arms, and Eliza, behind him, fell just a little more slowly. Two guards stood beyond her, one with a bloody blade lifted in his hand and shock greying his skin, and the other empty-handed and staring at the sword stuck through Eliza's gut as if he didn't understand how it got there.

  Javier's heart went cold and still in his chest, a weight of iron bent on killing him, and soundlessness rushed through his ears. The world was nothing more than those five figures: Marius, dying. Sacha, a murderer. Eliza, dying. Two guards, bewildered, who in doing their duty in protecting their king, had surely written themselves a death sentence.

  All of it, all of it, had taken perhaps three seconds, and no more.

  Tomas fell to his knees as though he, too, had been gutted, but his attentions were for Marius, whom Sacha would not release. “Give him to me, give him to me,” the priest demanded, “give them both here, their last rites must be given before God takes them home.”

  Javier said, “No,” and Sacha said, “Both?,” each of them in the same numb tone, and under it, Marius whispered, “Eliza,” to Sacha, pain aging his voice. He coughed blood and drew a ragged breath before whispering, “How strange, that. The two of you in rivalry over her so long, and yet it's me she'll go with at the end. Liz, oh, Liza, our sister.”

  There were guards in the way, men trying to pull Sacha off Marius, trying to make order from the chaos in the room. Somewhere outside of Javier's immediate awareness he knew people still shouted, still screamed; that soldiers were flooding the tent and shoving people aside, trying to protect their king. He pushed them all away with a gentleness born from incomprehension and disbelief: witchpower rolled out of him and extended the shield he'd built for Tomas, until it encompassed king and priest and three people whose friendship lay bleeding out onto thirsty ground. Tumultuous noise faded, and, as though t
he sound itself had kept him on his feet, Javier knelt, far more slowly than had any of the others who had fallen.

  Sacha twisted, tears tracking clean white lines through dust and mud staining his face, and gave a cry like a dying stag when he saw Eliza crumpled over a sword. He reached for her and Marius slipped in his arms, begetting another cry, and Javier, full of cool horror, put a hand on Sacha's shoulder to keep him still. Eliza seemed not to breathe, but Marius still took short, pained gasps. Tears stained his temples, too, falling back into his hair and making his eyes so bright they seemed full of life, not death. Javier bent over him, struggling for words as hot water dripped from his eyes. He ached from his very core, agony radiating out, and could only loathe the weakness that thought himself in pain when Marius lay dying.

  “You have deserved so much better than what I've given you,” he managed to whisper. “I'm sorry, Marius. I'm sorry.” And then, out of weakness, because he should be looking to Marius's hurts, not salving his own, he asked, “Why?” and wondered if he wanted to know the answer.

  “My king.” Marius shuddered. “My brother. My friend. Always, Jav Always. You need … Tomas's faith. Couldn't let him die.”

  Javier closed his hand on Marius's so hard it hurt even him, but Marius gave no sign of new pain, only turned his head a little toward Tomas, who whispered ancient rites even as tears spilled down his own face. “Take care of him, priest. Take …”

  “Marius. Marius! Eliza!” Words turned to insensible shouts as Javier bent over Marius's still form, then in a panic released him and scrambled toward Eliza, sick with anticipation and despair. Tomas let go a hoarse cry and reached after him as though to pull him back from an even-greater blow, but his fingers slid off Javier's shirt, and Javier came, on hands and knees, to Eliza's side.

  Came to find the sword taken from his lover's belly, and to find, impossibly, Belinda Primrose on her knees beside Eliza's body, her wrists bloody and forearms strained over hands hidden in Eliza's gut. She withdrew one hand from Eliza's wounds and seized his wrist with bloody fingers, rage and determination turning her hazel eyes to fiery green as she whispered, “I can save her. I can save her, Javier. Lend me your power.”

  BELINDA WALTER

  Something screamed inside Belinda, white-hot and bloody, scoring her innards and rendering them blazing streaks of pain, nothing more and nothing less. Marius Poulin should not be dead, not in any world that had any kindness to it at all, and that she, she, of all people, should think the world owed anyone a bit of kindness, said how deeply her fury ran. Not since childhood had she dreamt there were such things as fairness and unfairness, not since Lorraine the queen had ridden away from Robert's household leaving Belinda still a secret, forbidden the chance to meet the icon of the Aulunian throne. It was neither fair nor unfair: it only was, and each day of every man's existence passed in such simplicity.

  But it was not fair that Marius Poulin, whose greatest sin was loving those who were unworthy of it, was dead, and Belinda Primrose would not, would not, let another confidant die from the jealousies born of an unfair world.

  God, it would be better, it would be easier, with Dmitri there; with his ineffable understanding of the smallest components of human flesh, with his rich black power hers to command. She was brutish in healing; Dmitri'd told her that, and she had no reason to doubt it. Even now the ghosts of his understanding teased at the edges of her mind, incomprehensible and tantalising. He'd thought in terms of delicacy, layering one level of healing over another until the whole became whole again, and there in the dirt and blood in Javier's tent, Belinda struggled for the same light touch.

  And failed. She knew little enough of failure, really: to do so now reminded her of her youth, when she'd begun the game of stillness. She'd failed more often than not in the beginning, flinching when she cut herself with her tiny dagger, crying out when fire raised a blister on her hand. Success had come over months and years of practise, but Eliza had seconds, minutes at most, and Belinda would never become the healing artist that Dmitri was, not in that time; perhaps not ever.

  Stopping the flow of blood was easy, no more than capping witchpower in broken places, just another use of a shield. But then the blood backed up, mixed with things it shouldn't, and even with her hands buried in Eliza's belly Belinda couldn't imagine the fine level of detail that Dmitri had used to heal and excite her. She used great sloppy stitches instead, forcing things together and melding them, melting them, with the heat of witchpower. It would work; it had to work. She could command a storm; she had to be able to heal a single woman.

  Through blood, through sweat and dirt and viscera, a familiar scent caught her attention, and, enraged, Belinda lifted her eyes to meet Javier de Castille's shocked silver gaze.

  Time turned to nothing, a bolt of understanding outlining Belinda's thoughts so sharply she thought the tent might come alight with it. She was the creature of stillness, of internally focused power, and Javier the one whose lifetime of witchpower practise had taught him to overrun the will of those around him.

  But she had commanded the storm, a vast and violent and profoundly external thing, and it was Javier who had learnt the subtlety of influencing people in such a way that they didn't so much as recognise what he'd done; it was Javier who had changed his own shields so they were wide and strong enough to guard an army. It was delicacy on an enormous scale, shaped in a way that even she'd been unable to break through.

  Two halves of a whole, she thought, with furious clarity. Each of them with strengths the other lacked. Feeling afire with rage, she took a hand from Eliza's gut and seized Javier's wrist with bloody fingers. “I can save her. I can save her, Javier. Lend me your power.”

  For the shorter part of eternity, he resisted. Belinda felt the struggle, so deep and clear that under other circumstances she might have laughed. Wisdom told Javier to command her capture and her death; but then, wisdom had loosened its hold on Javier de Castille in this time and place. His friend was dead and his lover lay dying, and intellect crumbled before the terrified hope that Belinda Primrose, creature of lies that she was, might this once be telling the truth.

  Even she, manipulator and murderer, might have risked trusting herself this once, because if she failed, she'd pay for it with her life. She might well pay for success with her life, too, but with the memory of Marius's heartbreak and gentleness in her mind, she could, she would, do nothing less.

  And Javier, as though he might have in turn read those thoughts and intentions from her, capitulated in totality, and opened channels of silver power to her for the taking.

  Their familiarity snatched Belinda's breath, and she wasn't certain if she knew his power so well because she'd grown up in her own under his tutelage, or if she had known it from before birth, when they'd shared a small red room of safe rumblings and warmth. Memory didn't stretch so far back; no, she remembered that warm dark place as barely a dream, one from which she awoke into cold brightness and warnings that shaped her life, but the dream was only that, with no surety to it.

  It didn't matter. What mattered was she knew his power, and he hers, and that sharing it—aye, sharing it, rather than the thieving she'd done with Dmitri's—bloomed and opened a fineness of control that Belinda'd never known with her own talent. There was so little to Javier's power that it startled her: he was worn thin, her brother, had pushed himself to the edges of what he could do, in order to keep his people safe. Belinda admired him as much as she felt disdain: even in her worst moments she forbade herself the weakness she felt in Javier now.

  But their sharing went two ways, with her witchpower flooding to fill what Javier had lost. He drew a breath that seemed to make him larger, and because she came to this meeting with the intention of holding nothing back, the gold of her magic folded under and came up again silver, one need fed by another.

  Javier had no more learning or understanding of healing than she did, but his implacable will had a feather-light touch to it. Teeth buried in her lip, Belinda
subsumed her broad impulse beneath the delicacy of Javier's power, searching for a way to communicate what Dmitri had taught her.

  The will to offer, it seemed, became the offering: Javier grasped a concept that slipped from Belinda's mind, that small things made up even the liquid of blood, and that to heal they must be bound back together. She was out of control, heat building under her hands, silver power raging through her as blood stretched and reached and stuck to itself, and then tissue and muscle and skin on top of it. It felt like the building of a wildfire, one she couldn't pull away from, and when it erupted it was with a sharp cry torn from Eliza Beaulieu's throat.

  Eliza surged upward with the strength of a newborn foal, clumsy and desperate to be on her feet. Javier caught her, his voice a sob, and Eliza crushed her eyes shut as she held on for a few brief seconds. Belinda sagged, hands planted in the mud, head dropped, and disentangled herself from Javier's silver power. She knew she should draw the stillness close, cloak herself from the noisy, fascinated onlookers. Instead she sat where she was, head hanging, half-seeing Javier and Eliza pressed against each other, and seeing, far more clearly, Marius's still and silent body just beyond them.

  There was another man, too, young and strong-jawed, with black curling hair and eyes that had looked too long into the sun: its golden light seemed burned into his soul. He wore a priest's cassock and an expression of both love and despair as he looked on Javier de Castille and Eliza Beaulieu. A note of sympathy struck itself and became a chord within Belinda's breast, and that was absurd enough to get a tiny, harsh laugh from her. To find herself in commiseration with a Cordulan priest over the heart of a man they were forbidden to have was too rich and bitter for words.

  “Sacha?” Eliza's question, small and raw, feared the answer.