The Pretender's Crown

TOMAS DEL'ABBATE, AN ECUMENICAL PRIEST

Tomas del'Abbate knows his God to be a kind one. God is kind, for He has offered Tomas, the bastard son of a Primo, a true calling in the church. God has also granted their father enough interest in his offspring to have kept their mother in a proud style; this is far more than other children of the church's princes have been given, and Tomas supposes that it is his father's dedication and piety that makes the Almighty Father wish to watch over his family in particular. Tomas, the only boy, has been educated in fine schools, taught doctrine and faith by his father, and has in truth never wanted for anything.

God is kind in that He has made fine matches for Tomas's three sisters, most especially Paola, the youngest and by far the most lovely. Her eyes are astonishing: the usual earthy brown seen in Parnan faces has been drained away, leaving gold in its place, so that her gaze is always bright with sunrise.

Tomas, like Paola, is a youth of what he is told is considerable beauty. He is torn on that flattery: false modesty is unbecoming, and vanity a sin. He's a child of wealth, and as such has been lent the opportunity to stand long hours before unblemished mirrors, not in womanly and weak self-admiration, but seeking truth in the lines of his face. Yes: he is handsome, or perhaps even more than handsome, but he takes pride only in his sister's comeliness, and not in his own. God has seen fit to touch him with it, and it is unseemly to revel or take advantage of a heavenly gift.

But it is in part because of that beauty that he has been sent to Isidro. Rodrigo, prince of Essandia, is not too old to father children, and the Pappas of the Ecumenic church hopes that a youth such as Tomas will remind the prince of his duty to the throne and to the church. Rodrigo must wed and father an heir to ensure Cordula will never lose its grip on the warm westerly country. The Pappas does not consider Javier de Castille, prince of Gallin and Rodrigo's nephew, a safe enough contender. One country is enough for any king to manage.

Unless, of course, that king is the King of Heaven, who speaks to His flock through the Pappas, who must therefore exert control over the Echonian continent in God's name, and in any way he can.

So Tomas, guided by the Pappas and by God's will, has left Cordula, his sisters, and his studies, and has come to Isidro to stand before a prince as both confessor and reminder of that prince's duties.

He has, these past few months, argued scripture and has heard royal confessions; has prostrated himself on marble floors and worshipped with a passion that burns through him so brightly that he wonders how he does not come alight with it, and set all the world on fire.

He has also, now that he is beyond Cordula, come to recognise that the admiring gazes that fall his way are not only for his knowledge. While he has no desire to pursue those gazes into satisfying carnal needs, he is shyly (if not secretly, for God knows all of his thoughts) delighted by them. His ambitions have ever only been to serve his church and his God. To be granted the chance to do so in such a wondrous and worldly way is a gift beyond his imagination. Yes, God is kind, and his beautiful son is humbled and grateful from the depths of his heart.

God, though, has not prepared him for the surging presence that is the young prince of Gallin.

There are terrible rumours afoot, rumours barely more than alluded to by Marius Poulin, friend to Javier de Castille and bearer of tragic tidings. Javier flees Gallin and his mother is dead within a day: the two things sit poorly beside each other, even to Tomas's unsophisticated eyes. Javier, after all, is young and meant to be a king, and Sandalia is-was-still in her prime, unlikely to abdicate. Unlikely in the extreme, for even schooled in church learnings and not in the ways of politics or queens, Tomas knows that there is an old and bitter rivalry between the female monarchs of Aulun and Gallin. All of Echon understands that, though the words are never spoken aloud or set down on paper, Sandalia has never intended to rest until Lorraine has lost her throne.

And yet Javier has come into this room-burst into it in a manner more literal and frightening than Tomas has ever seen-clearly expecting to see his royal uncle lying dead, which is against all sense if his hand guided Sandalia toward death. Perhaps the prince is a consummate actor, for his next thoughts, as played on the stage an astonished Tomas watches, are full of terrible apology for frightening others over the status of his own life. It might be play-acted, yes, but to embrace such reversal of emotion so desperately does not smack of lies to the quiet Cordulan priest.

There is something in the air around the prince, a presence more palpable than anything Tomas has felt from Rodrigo, and Rodrigo is not a man to be taken lightly. Javier takes up more space than his slender frame allows; more than Rodrigo; more, even, than the Pap-pas. The Pappas bears God with him at all times, and yet even without Javier's gaze on him, without Javier's awareness of him at all, Tomas is more awed by the young prince's strength than he has ever been by the Pappas.

It comes to him very clearly, the thought: either Javier has been touched by God Himself, or he is the devil's child.

And then Marius speaks, shares dreadful news, and Javier turns from his uncle with a tide of rage rising in his eyes. Silver rage, silver eyes, making the ginger-haired, pale-skinned prince Tomas's opposite in all ways.

Another clear thought comes to him in the instant before furious, inexplicable power blasts him. I am lost, he thinks, and everything he knows beyond that is pain and breathlessness and blackness.