The Pretender's Crown

by C. E. Murphy

  Belinda lowered her wine cup and stared at the handsome bearded lord across from her. “Father.” The word was spoken with acidic incredulity. “Half the Aulunian army believes me to be here, in spirit if not in physical form. I'm praying for them, remember? And God Himself graced me with the light and the power of Heaven so I might save the fleet from sure defeat against the armada. So when a woman bursting with God's light stands battling a man filled with black spite at the heart of the Aulunian camp, who else could she be?”

  Robert pursed his lips, then shrugged his eyebrows and took a long draught of wine. “A fair point, I suppose. You're meant to be safe at home in a convent in Alunaer, Primrose. How am I to explain your presence here when you've been seen there?”

  “My spirit has flown to war,” Belinda said airily. “My physical form kneels in dutiful prayer and God gives my soul wings that I might lift the hearts of my soldiers to His command, and inspire a conversion to the Reformation church in all those who fall before our army.” She smiled, and, clearly despite himself, Robert laughed.

  “Ah, and damn the nurse who taught you cleverness, girl, for certainly I'd have instilled a civil tongue in your head.”

  Belinda all but dipped a curtsey where she sat, a smile still curving her mouth. “Of course, papa.”

  Robert's voice softened. “You haven't called me that in a long time.”

  “We haven't played at games of family for a long time. I've been too long a tool, and not at all a daughter. Perhaps things are changing now.” She glanced toward Ivanova and then back to Robert, eyebrows lifted. “Things are unquestionably changing. I know you think it's unnecessary, but I need to understand. War brings innovation—that I can appreciate. But to make ships that sail through the sky, to dig pits in the earth so vast whole seas could disappear into them … these things are so far beyond us. How can we few shape a world that's worthy for our queen?”

  “Our,” Robert echoed, thoughtfully, curiously.

  Belinda spread her hands. “Is she not? Is serving Aulun, and through Aulun, your queen, not what I have been made for?” She fell silent, looking away from Robert as she worked her way toward the right things to say. A lifetime of training had taught her to find them, had taught her to play silences and speech as instruments, carrying them each to the breaking point before shoring them up with the other.

  “I understand so little,” she eventually murmured. “Yet what I do know is that when I see the things that drive you, I see loyalty most of all. In my life I have been loyal and held faith and trust in you.” She shook her head, almost dismissing her own fancies. “‘Heed me well, Primrose, for this is how it shall go.’ Those words have always been true. Each time you've said them, the things you've named have played out as you've said they would, and Lorraine's throne has remained safe. You love her,” Belinda said, so clearly it might have been an accusation. “I think you didn't mean to, but you love her, and I think that if your foreign queen's needs should damage Lorraine's own that even you might hesitate in fulfilling them.”

  “I'm fortunate,” Robert said, “that the two have never run counter to each other. Nor will they ever; even if Lorraine should live to the greatest span of mortal years, her world won't change so much in that time that I'll find myself standing against her. I have been fortunate,” he said again, and a note of sorrow deepened the words, proving him too aware that fortune was a fool's friend.

  “So even if I look only to the things I understand, if I bend my head to my mother's crown and play the part she's given me, then I serve where and how I should. That's comfortable to me, Robert.” The truth there made her heart hurt, even when filtered through witchpower ambition. Aspirations born of magic ran down certain channels, willing to serve one far-off and mighty figurehead so long as her own supremacy went unchallenged by the greater populace. Bending knee to Lorraine felt right, even still; bowing to a foreign queen was not anathema to one such as Belinda, who was made to serve. It was this other thing she'd become, with awakening and breaking free from the rigours she'd been shaped to, that fit poorly, and yet even as she spun her web for Robert, she knew she would follow the lines she cast out for herself, rather than be drawn into his intrigues. He and Dmitri had demanded too much, had pushed too far, and in doing so had unintentionally set her on her own path.

  “If I look beyond those comfortable places then I see what I've seen all my life. My papa, guiding me toward something he understands more clearly than I do. I want to understand,” she whispered, suddenly harsh. “I want these goals and intentions to be shared, I want you to think me worthy of that trust. But even if you won't give me that, I'll serve Lorraine with all my soul, and until the day I die, and in doing so, think I must give myself over to serving your queen. So yes, Robert. Our queen, whether she sits on a throne in Alunaer or in a ship amongst the stars.” Her confidence wavered on the last words, but she brought her chin up, defiant of her poor comprehension.

  A wave of pride broke over her, flooding from Robert with no evident care as to what he exposed. He offered a hand and Belinda took it, wincing at the strength he crushed her fingers with, and bemused at the witchpower wall that kept her from tasting anything of his thoughts. He'd learned, then, had learned to be wary of her, and that was as it should be, though she made no attempt to rob him of his secrets as she'd done half a year earlier in Sandalia's private chambers.

  “This war will carry on a while yet, and in its time you'll come to see how we'll shape this world for our foreign queen. You're right: we're too far away from it now for its form to be seen, but in another year, in another ten, you'll begin to understand. Lend me a little patience, Primrose. I don't ask from a wish to keep you unschooled, but because you lack the experience to cast your imagination as far forward as I would have it reach. It is asking a child who's only seen a rain puddle to imagine the ocean, or asking the blind to describe the stars. You'll learn to see the ocean, Belinda. You'll learn to describe the stars. But give me a little more time in which to open your eyes, so that you're not staggered under the weight of vision.”

  She had professed her trust in him and had made much of being willing to serve, so she bowed her head in agreement, and for a moment held tight to Robert's hand. “Will we win this war?”

  “It doesn't matter,” Robert said, ruthless with honesty. “Whether Cordula's combined might wins or Aulun's Khazarian alliance takes the day, all that truly matters is that we force our hands toward advances that will help us surge forward in technology. I'll try to win it for Lorraine, of course; my loyalty goes that far, and perhaps even further. But in the end what I need from this fight are new weapons, and new ways of making them, and so I must make a need for them.”

  “You could give them to us,” Belinda said slowly. “Why the subterfuge? Why force us to the advancements you need, rather than offer them to us as though a god might?”

  “Why did I send you a dancing-master?”

  “Because the grace learned for the dance floor stands anyone, woman or man, well on a field of battle.” She reached for the stillness, wanting its cold comfort to hold her as she worked through Robert's question and its application, but she'd fractured her hold on it too badly, and found herself only able to sit and stare, unfocused, while a finger tapped her knee, visible signal of her scurrying thoughts. “A skill struggled for is more trusted than one that comes easily. The witchpower,” she added softly. “It's simply there, and its unasked-for presence makes me wonder if I can control it, at times. A new weapon given to the world without men fighting to create and understand is less trustworthy than one that's been sweated and bled over. You want us to have pride of ownership in what we've done. A queen with thinking subjects is better served than one with mindless slaves frightened by the magical machines they use.” She looked up, surprised. “Dmitri's intentions weren't so different from yours.”

  “Dmitri was eager for an egalitarian world, where everyone's education gave them room to stride for the stars and serve our queen. E
ducation is dangerous,” Robert murmured. “Less so when applied only to a certain class.”

  Laughter caught Belinda off-guard. “Educate everyone? Who would till the fields and fight the wars?”

  “Disgruntled students and angry lawyers,” Robert said, suddenly cheerful. “The latter might not be a bad idea. Do you see the trouble, then? Alliances are well and good, but it's in the heat of wartime that innovations are made, and amidst that chaos it's easier to seed fresh ideas to meet old needs and make them seem like natural progression. We can change a world in a matter of decades this way, prepare it to serve our queen, and yet not expend our own resources on conquering.”

  “Decades,” Belinda echoed. “It takes patience to plan so far ahead.” Patience he'd instilled in her, it seemed; stealing his plans out from under him, changing her world to one that could fight and defend itself, wasn't a thing to be done overnight.

  “The distances our queen has travelled are incomprehensibly vast, even to my mind. They become meaningless numbers, useless in any practical fashion. It takes time, a long time, to cross those distances, and even when our enemies pursue us at their quickest pace, we have decades and even longer to spare.”

  “Will they come here? What happens if they do? Will the queen we've learned to serve protect us?”

  “Of course,” Robert said smoothly, and Belinda knew it for a lie, not through the witchpower, but for a tone of voice that harkened back to her childhood, when he'd promised that when the time was right he would call for her to meet the queen, and instead left her, for thirty days, to stand by her door in hope, waiting for an introduction that never came.

  Stillness finally settled around her, calming and comforting, the gift of a habit she'd begun the morning after Lorraine and Robert rode away without so much as glancing back. Robert would raise her people up to strip her world of its resources, to be near-slaves to his queen, and when his enemies came to them, he would abandon her world to their flying ships and terrible weapons, and, as when she was a child, he would never look back.

  Belinda tightened her fingers around his and gave him a smile born of pure relief and gladness and utter mistruths, and whispered, “Then let us serve, Papa. Let us change this world.”

  JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

  3 July 1588 † Brittany; the Gallic camp

  “She's betrayed us.” Javier spoke to the sound of footsteps, not bothering to turn his head and see who approached. A week on since Belinda had slipped away, a week in which Aulun had steadily moved forward, crushing the Ecumenic army. Only his magic kept them from wholesale slaughter, and it seemed inevitable that that, too, would fail. He'd stopped sleeping, not from a lack of weariness, but from the gnawing hole in his gut that said too pointedly that God was not, after all, his benefactor or his blesser: Belinda's stories were the stuff of nightmares, and still somehow carried the inexorable weight of truth. He'd tried not to think on it, had made no confession; not to Eliza, not to Tomas, not, most certainly, to Sacha, whom he hadn't seen since the morning they buried Marius.

  That was where he sat now, by Marius's grave under the thin light of a new moon. Marius knew all his secrets now, if anyone did, and Javier took small comfort in sitting with his friend in silence, no pretensions or lies between them.

  “Who has, my king? Eliza?” Tomas's confused voice startled Javier, who looked sharp after all, then settled into a sigh.

  “Oh, it's you, priest. I expected Liz coming to ask me why I wasn't yet abed.”

  “And the answer is betrayal? By whom?” Tomas sat down without Javier's leave, but then, until lately Javier would have thought nothing of it. He'd drawn away from Tomas in the past week and knew it: saw his need for the priest as what had cost Marius his life, and so retreated from what might have been solace offered in the friendship that remained.

  There was Marius; and then there were Belinda's stories of foreign lords, too uncomfortably real when witchpower burnt away his fears. God hadn't graced him with magic: something far more incomprehensible had, and knowing that made meeting Tomas's eyes all the harder. It left Javier alone, with neither priest to confide in nor God to trust in, but better that than to find new prices to pay.

  “The Holy Mother,” he said, trying to stop his thoughts with words spoken aloud. The witchpower came from a source entirely other than God, so perhaps laying blame at the queen of Heaven's feet wasn't the blasphemy that it might be. “Aulun thinks she walks amongst them, and with their numbers and their victories, perhaps they're not wrong. Perhaps she's abandoned us despite our faith, and perhaps God looks to her lead.”

  “You can't believe such things, Javier.” Admonishment and concern filled Tomas's tone, as though he knew the lines he was meant to say and the emotion he was meant to fill them with, but his own uncertainty crept through and made what he said truer than he'd intended. “God will not abandon his favoured son.” Determination slipped into that statement, and Javier wondered if Tomas's conviction could sway God's mind.

  “Of course not.” There was nothing else to say, nothing Tomas would find acceptable, but sarcasm weighted the words and gave too much evidence of Javier's failing belief.

  “Javier …” Tomas shifted, lifting a hand to touch Javier's shoulder, but it fell again and he settled himself. “You've not come to confession in a week, my lord. I thought perhaps it should come to you.”

  “To what end? Marius is dead at Sacha's hand and I have no stomach for any horror beyond that. My sins are so compleat as to beg no forgiveness.” Belinda's face—and more—flashed in his vision, soft warmth and witchpower and the devil's own damnation. Oh, he had loved: how could he not, when met with a creature so much like himself. Disgustingly like himself, and done without wilful intent or no, God couldn't forgive that sin. Lust: he ought to have known not to fall for that most deadly of temptations, as Sacha ought not have fallen to green-eyed envy. Eliza, thus far, seemed unscarred by any of those terrible seven; if he could keep her clear, that, perhaps, might be a small salve to his soul.

  “There is nothing God cannot forgive if you come to him truly penitent,” Tomas whispered, but without the serene confidence he'd once had. Javier looked to him, curiosity piqued over self-doubt and flagellation, and more welcome.

  “What have you learnt of unforgiveable sin, priest?”

  “I've learnt that even man can forgive that which we might call unthinkable. My intellect tells me time and again that I should revile and fear a man who's stolen my will from me, and yet my heart harbours no resentment. If I, who am weak with mortality, can forgive, how can God, in His infinite compassion, see any darkness which He can't forgive?”

  “You've forgiven what I can't,” Javier said harshly. “Leave me alone with my sins, priest.”

  “Your sins and your betrayals? Are you certain you spoke of the Holy Mother, and not one closer to you?”

  “What?”

  “Eliza caught quickly,” Tomas murmured. “Are you certain you've married a woman who's bearing your child, Javier, and not one who's taking advantage of some by-blow of a Maglian lover?”

  Laughter seemed the wrong response, but it was the one that burst from Javier, wholly derisive. “If only you knew how certain I am.”

  “How can you be? Came she a virgin to your bed? A woman of such beauty, living in a city of whores?”

  Javier slammed his hand out and caught a fistful of Tomas's robes, all of his laughter gone. “If you value the tongue in your head, priest, you will silence yourself now and no such further words will ever pass your lips. The time to voice your doubts was before we were wed, and I will have your respect now.” Witch-power boiled, hoping for argument, for any excuse to overwhelm the priest and use him as it would. For once Javier had no urge to temper it, as eager himself to embrace furious insult as his magic was. It would be a release unlike anything on the battlefield, all intimacy and personal need. He fought for his troops out of duty, but Tomas would serve his pleasure.

  “Forgive me.” Tomas
's voice came low, no hint of resistance in it. Frustration twisted in Javier, witchpower thwarted by acquiescence. “I should have spoken earlier,” Tomas went on, still soft, still light; a lover's voice, all wrong in the thin moonlight. “I should have, but in the chaos of the day did not. Forgive me, my king.”

  Javier released him with a curse, turning futile witchpowered anger toward the distant hills, where it could unfurl itself without harm. “What choice have I, when you plead so prettily? But don't test me, Tomas. Don't let your thoughts or your tongue wander down those roads again.”

  “My lord.” Tomas sat silent a moment or two, then got to his feet. “I'll leave you, my king. I hope your thoughts turn to happier things.”

  “Aye,” Javier muttered to his departing steps. “So do I.”

  “Would it make you happier to know the Aulunian heir hasn't betrayed you?” A woman's voice, marked with a Khazarian accent, came out of the air, and for the second time Javier startled, this time jolting to his feet.

  “Forgive me,” the voice went on, and with it a girl's form came clear, only a few feet away. Witchpower tainted the air around her, a cold iron weight more implacable than Belinda's, or even Javier's own. Her magic had a feeling of certainty to it, like Robert Drake's: like she'd spent a lifetime ensconsed in it, practising with no fear for her soul. “Forgive me,” she said again, cheerfully, and without a hint of the repentance Tomas had voiced when he'd said those words. “I'd intended to show myself earlier, but your lovely priest arrived. I'm meant to go virgin to my wedding bed, but for a face such as that…”

  A fist clenched around Javier's heart and pulled it askew in his chest, knocking breath away into dull sickness. For an instant his mind flew to the impossible, that witchbreed men and women were all around, and that not a soul in Echon was safe from their interferences. A cry knotted itself in his chest at the relief and despair borne with that idea, but it was another thing entirely that he said aloud: “You would be Ivanova. There is rumour in the camps that you are with the Aulunians, and Akilina has had a letter from your mother. She's worried about you, princess.”