The Pretender's Crown

AKILINA PANKEJEFF, DVORYANIN

1 March 1588 † Lutetia, capital city of Gallin

Nothing, not one thing in the past eight weeks, has gone as Akilina Pankejeff intended it to, not in its entirety. For others this is a matter of course, simply the way of the world, but she is dvoryanin, a grand duchess of Khazar, and she is accustomed to having things her own way She has the men she wants, when she wants, at least, until untimely death takes them. That's happened often enough in her thirty-three years of life that behind her back the servants and even some of the courtiers call her Baba Yaga, the black witch.

There are worse fates than being a witch, as Akilina sees it.

There is, for example, boredom. She is too high-ranking to be thrown in a dungeon cell, and so instead she sits in a tower with a single window, thirty feet above the ground, her only chance of escape. She has been six weeks in this room, and looks on the long drop with more favour every day, but not that much. Never that much.

Six weeks since she shared a cup with Sandalia, queen of Gallin, both women grimly determined to drown the tensions of a stolen treaty in the aroma and flavour of an old and fine vintage. Sandalia sipped first, then asked a question; Akilina waited on drinking to reply, and before her words were finished, the petite Gallic queen lay writhing and dying on the floor.

Akilina, naturally, screamed. Flung the betraying cup away and dropped to her knees, uselessly grabbing at Sandalia's shoulders, trying to hold the woman down, trying to comfort her. That was how the guards had found her, and since then she has been locked in a tower room, pacing its small area and, she is certain, slowly losing her mind.

She has money and power enough-and perhaps beauty enough, though hers is a sharp beauty, challenging, and not all men are eager to face it-to have bribed guards to let her send carrier pigeons back to Khazar bearing news of Sandalia's death and, by proxy, news of the treaty's failure. Whether she'll be rescued from her tower by a missive from the Khazarian imperatrix or whether she'll be left to rot, an apology in body if not in words, she does not yet know, and so Akilina is trying to earn enough favours that she might obtain release on her own.

Favours, she is finding, are in short supply these days.

The worst of it-worse even than the boredom-is how clearly she can see the fall she's taken. She was very nearly outplayed on Sandalia's courtroom floor, in the matter of Belinda Primrose. Bitchy little Ilyana paid for Belinda's secrets with her life; rough-hewn handsome Viktor had faltered in the face of his onetime lover's pleas. Akilina had counted on neither of those things happening, and yet had held a secret back, waiting for the right moment to expose him.

Capturing Robert Drake, Lorraine's longtime lover and once Akilina's, had been a triumph. It had, indeed, been the very last thing that had gone right, and so Akilina savoured it more fulsomely than she might have otherwise.

She had seized him through a woman, of course. A striking courtesan whose dramatic colouring let her wear outrageous hues to great effect. Akilina's tracker had learned the courtesan's name, and had found a trail bringing her to Lutetia; it had not, after that, been difficult to locate the woman calling herself Ana Marot, who was known to Robert Drake as Ana di Meo, and who was his spy and his whore.

Like anyone, Ana di Meo had a price, and hers was finery: an easy life, a duchy from a grateful crown, enough cash to see her to the end of her days. For these things she was willing to write a letter to Robert Drake, calling him to Gallin and into Akilina's grasp. For that, and not her occupation, Akilina thought Ana di Meo a whore, and the whore had betrayed him in court. She had named Robert Drake her lover and named “Beatrice Irvine,” whom she knew as Belinda Primrose, his daughter. That, that, at least, had gone as it was meant to.

Ana di Meo was not supposed to die two nights later, in all likelihood at Robert Drake's hands. No, the courtesan was meant to live, and Robert had been meant to rescue copies of the Khazarian-Gallic treaty before Sandalia moved so hastily as to destroy them. Akilina wanted that leverage, wanted it most particularly because Sandalia had offered hospitality that amounted to arrest. Until all matters international were settled, Akilina would be Sandalia's guest. The queen insisted, and such insistence could not be refused.

Nothing, Akilina thinks for the ten thousandth time, has gone right, and she has nothing but her own thoughts going in circles around it to keep her company. She is therefore both startled and grateful when the heavy locks on her door are undone, hours away from any meal time. Like any woman would, she rushes to her window seat, snatches up the mindless embroidery that's all she has to occupy her time with aside from her thoughts-and the latter are preferable, in her opinion-and looks the picture of a settled and calm woman when the door opens to reveal the prince's confidant and lifelong friend Sacha Asselin.

Somehow, he is not who she expected. Akilina lowers the embroidery into her lap and looks across her prison at the stocky young lord, and wonders not so much what he is doing there, as how his presence can be turned to her advantage.

Then she's on her feet, curtseying, and sees through her eyelashes that he sweeps a bow deeper in proportion than her curtsey. She's pleased, as he is by far the inferior in rank, and indeed she need not make knee to him in any fashion. But she is the prisoner here, and will accord him any slight honour that might help her to walk through the door behind him as a free woman. In fact, she'll gladly accord him a great deal more than that, and regrets she had no warning of his arrival so she might have enhanced her charms.

“My lord Asselin,” she murmurs from her curtsey. “You give a poor woman gladness by visiting her lonely cell.”

Sacha snaps his fingers at the guard, who closes the door without interest, leaving them alone together. Akilina straightens, not bothering to play at demurity any longer; Asselin likes women who bite, that he may bite back all the harder. She says, lightly, “I thought you had abandoned me,” and he barks laughter, as rough a sound as his bite is hard.

“I've been waiting for word from Javier. For anything,” he says, and there's bitterness there. Bitterness is a tool Akilina can use, and she makes note of it, though there's only interest and a hint of sympathy in her gaze. “Anything that might be worth bringing to you.”

“And waiting long enough that no one wonders at why you come running to my poor prison door.” That he's waited shows more wisdom than she might have assigned him, even if it's meant week upon week of drudgery for her. She retreats to her window seat and pats it, inviting. “Come. Our plans have gone awry and I have faith you've found a way in which to fix them.”

“Our plans. Your plans.” But Sacha comes to sit beside her, and Akilina clucks her tongue.

“I'm only a woman, Sacha. A woman with ambitions, perhaps, but you're Javier's right hand, not I. All I am is Irina's ambassador to Gallin.” That had not been her plan, not after Gregori Kapnist's death. She'd intended on retreating a while to Aria Magli, taking herself away from Khazarian politics until whispers of her witchcraft had faded a little, but instead a host of riders had come after her, and she had found herself an emissary where she'd never looked for such a duty at all. It is Irina's way of controlling her, but Akilina has no objections. It has offered the opportunity to approach Javier's closest friend, and through him begin a scheme to wed a throne. It's a little thing, truly, the desire for safety. That's a wish she made early in life, with her father's death and her mother's remarriage. Those lessons and others have long since taught Akilina that the safest position is one of power.

And Sacha Asselin's ambitions make him an easy mark. She puts her hand on his thigh and leans in, trying for a winsomeness that isn't natural to her. If he were wise he would move from under her touch; instead strong muscles relax, invitation for her hand to go where it will. “All. All, and yet you're one of the few, man or woman, whom I've seen move boldly. For years I've watched Echonian politics creep and crawl along, a chessboard full of mild players afraid to take a risk.”

“But I'm Khazarian,” Akilina murmurs. She's guessed some of this, but this is the first time the ambitious young lord has spoken so freely. It's the venue: locked in the tower there can be no spies, no one who might overhear his intentions and report them back to a wary king. Only the guard is beyond her door, and that door is made of heavy oak: words will not pass through it.

“Khazar borders Echon's eastern states, and is an empire to be reckoned with. Gregori Kapnist had an eye for the empty throne that sits beside Irina Durova.” Sacha gets out from under Akilina's touch after all and strides a few steps away before turning on a heel to stare down at her.

She tips her head, invitation for him to continue, and something not unlike a snarl pulls his features out of line. He's not handsome, his features a little too puggish and his hair too sandy with curls. Nor is he ugly, not by any means: indeed, he's appealing to look on, somewhere between cherubic and impish. Now, though, he's got the devil in him, and his easy charm lies hidden.

“Kapnist had his eye on the throne, and you had your eye on him. More than your eye. Had he lived, you'd be the voice breathing in his ear when he sat beneath the imperator's crown.”

Akilina lifts a shoulder, lets it fall. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you give me too much credit, my lord.” He doesn't: he gives her precisely the right amount, or possibly not enough. Irina kept Akilina close out of caution, not friendship, but in doing so was obliged to make at least an appearance of taking the dvoryanin's advice. With her ear and Gregori's both, Akilina would have held tremendous power in her homeland. Gregori's death put paid to that plot.

In that light, she realises things go her way less often than she likes to think. She considers that, then puts it away again; it doesn't matter. What matters is the attempt, and her own confidence that she'll win herself a throne or the power behind one as she advances through Echon and Khazar's societies.

“The Khazarian alliance is a good one for Gallin,” Sacha says aggrievedly as though it's Akilina he must convince. “With Gallin on Echon's western border and Khazar on the east, the combined armies and navies could crush the land between until an empire is made of it all. If Beatrice hadn't been in the way-”

“Belinda,” Akilina murmurs, but it's of no import. “His mother never intended for Javier to marry her anyway. The treaty you had such high hopes for bedded him down with young Ivanova. Hardly the throne I hoped for, my lord.”

Sacha waves a dismissive hand. “She's a child, and treaties can be altered. You would have no trouble replacing her in his affections and gaining yourself that coveted crown.”

“And you, my lord, from all of this you get nothing more than the satisfaction of seeing your prince elevated to emperor? Is that your dream?” Here, Akilina is genuinely curious. The motivations of others rarely concern her, but with nothing much to think on in the past weeks, it's a question that's danced through her mind. “Or are you like me, willing to be kingmaker if you cannot be king?”

“I want power, not a crown. I've been Javier's friend our whole lives. I can see the constraints on him. Give me a seat at the head of his council table and I'm more than happy. Give me that and a bonny lass or two for pleasure and I'm happier than a king might ever be. Besides, Jav's got no ambition of his own. Someone's got to have it for him, or he'd sit quietly waiting for the world to take notice.”

He falls quiet, still standing in the middle of her cell, and Akilina waits in silence until curiosity wins over a second time. “You didn't come to share stymied plans with me, my lord.”

“Ah.” Asselin regards her a long moment. “What price would you pay to leave this place? Whose cock would you suck, dvoryanin? Whose prick would you lift your skirts for, if it meant leaving your prison?”

“You are here” is her reply, a hint of humour in it. If he means to shock her with crudity, he will have to try harder than that: sex is a game she rarely loses at, and she is in most ways surprised that she has not taken Asselin to bed yet.

It's only later, when he's used her thoroughly, and the heat of his seed is still throbbing in her womb, that he leans over her and breathes, “I have a letter from Rodrigo of Essandia asking to take you to wife,” and Akilina Pankejeff realises that this game, she has lost.