The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA PRIMROSE

4 June 1588 † The Aulunian Straits

With the storm's passing, Belinda drew what vestiges of magic she had left around herself and let the witchpower hide her from sight. She didn't move beyond that, other than to sit on the soggy ground and draw her knees to her chest as she stared across the straits. Her heartbeat, a constant low thud in her ears, told her she was alive, but everything beyond that passed her by. She could see that wind stirred grass and dirt, that seagulls rose and fell on it along the cliffs' edges. The birds opened their beaks to cry, but no piercing sound reached her ears. Exhaustion numbed her until she couldn't say if her fingers and toes were cold, or whether her skin itched where drying hair lay plastered to it.

She believed that she could, if she must, draw shreds of composure around herself and become the primrose assassin she'd always been. Her will would stretch that far: she had made a life of insisting that it did.

That, though, was if she must, and only Lorraine's direct order might command a must. Witchpower didn't so much as hunger for sex, as it had done the only other time she'd emptied her reserves so far. That stirred faint astonishment: the power had been bound to sex, had fed from it and been replenished by it, since the moment Belinda had broken through the barrier in her mind. To find it unlinked now, to have no hunger in her body demanding renewal through passion, opened a lock within her, and her next breath came more easily. Dmitri had said sex and power were not one and the same: to have them uncoupled could only become a strength.

One to explore later, though. It was enough to sit and not feel the cold, not feel the damp, and to watch as the navy, unexpectedly triumphant, returned to port. The first ships brought a smile to her face, cracking the mask of weariness that had settled over it.

Thumps of satisfied relief broke her facade further as the whole of the fleet came into sight, their joy at victory a palpable thing, even over the distance. Belinda watched until their nearness was eaten by the cliffs' height, and then, smiling, put her head against her knees to gather warmth and savour her triumph.

That was how Robert Drake found her, a full two days later.

His hand was shockingly warm on her shoulder. Belinda hadn't known she was cold until his touch told her otherwise; she hadn't, indeed, known anything until that moment. She lifted her head to see an afternoon like the one she'd closed her eyes against, only with greater heat in the air, and no lingering weight of a storm on the horizon. Other things were different, too: a stiffness in her body like that of sleeping on hard ground, though she had no recollection of doing so. Witchpower was replenished in her mind, golden, strong, and calm, demanding nothing. The fleet anchored offshore was whole and bright and proud: when last she'd seen it, sails had needed mending and the men on deck had needed rest. Now ships had full sails and were littered with soldiers in their bright red coats, awaiting the tide so they might make war on Gallin.

“The queen is waiting for you, Primrose.” Robert sounded oddly gentle, a voice she hadn't heard from him since she was a child. Not since before she began the game of stillness; since before Lorraine had visited Robert's country estates and Belinda had been denied seeing her. That he should use such a voice now seemed both strange and worrying, though worry itself lay too far outside of where she still was to take much root. It took a while for her to put words together: speech had become remote and unimportant as she'd sat on the cliffs.

Finding it again told her she needed water: her throat was parched and sticky, and her voice was that of a querulous old woman's. “The queen has given me orders to ride with the army.”

“Things have changed, Primrose. Things are different now. Here.” Robert crouched beside her and offered a wineskin.

Belinda took it and sucked the liquid down greedily. It was watered to the point of having almost no flavour, but it moistened the membranes of her throat and tasted as sweet as anything she'd ever known. Remoteness faded as the wine washed down, bringing her back to the world and rooting her in it again. “Different how?”

“Come back to the city,” Robert said. “You'll see.”

There were horses a little way from the cliff-top, both with saddles meant for riding astride; only as she mounted did Belinda notice her clothes were shredded and torn. Robert tossed a cloak her way and she pulled it on, glad that it was lightweight under the summer sun.

They came on the gathered army outside the city walls. Robert rode through them with easy confidence, but Belinda reined in, following more slowly as she took in the men around her, and their icons of faith.

The Madonna was everywhere, bathed in blue, her face not unlike Lorraine's, though her hair was dark. Her sign graced their armbands and their banners, and Belinda rode by artists making sketches as quickly as they could. Soldiers walked away a ha'penny the poorer and stuffing the queen of Heaven's likeness into their shirts and coats. More finished pieces of art littered shields and tent-sides, the haloed Madonna standing at a cliff's edge, hands raised to the heavens and holy power streaming from her. Some of these did dare to make Her as titian as the Aulunian queen, nearly a blasphemy in the Reformation church. Indeed, for a faith intended to strip away the Ecumenic pomposity and worship of idols, to see so many men clinging to the Madonna bordered on heresy.

It would be worse still should someone somehow recognise the young woman who had proven the inspiration for those drawings. Belinda, half horrified and all astonished, tightened her cloak and drew up its hood despite the warmth of the day. She kicked her horse to speed and caught up with Robert, who said nothing, and said it loudly. Chastened, she fell back a length and rode into the city with him in silence. Everywhere it was the same: an uprising of faith in Aulun's rightness, in the Madonna, in Lorraine, the virgin queen so clearly beloved by God. Belinda wondered what they would say to learning of her existence, and how she gave lie to the pure and untouched image Lorraine had worked so hard to create.

Robert brought her to the palace, but through the servants' entrance, and held his tongue until they reached chambers that Belinda knew were his own, a gift from a doting queen. They were sumptuous, more so than Belinda would expect from her father, but then, it would have been Lorraine's decree that had decorated them. Not even Robert would dare to refinish the room against Lorraine's tastes. Belinda's gaze went to heavy tapestries and old paintings that could easily cover spy-holes, and, half mocking, murmured, “We are unobserved?”

Thickness filled the air, turning it to a kind of hiss: the same off-kilter feeling and sound she might have gotten from stuffing bits of cloth into her ears. Robert, drily, said, “We are now,” and Belinda was surprised to hear him. He said, “Sit, Primrose,” and gestured her to a chair before a low-banked fire. Belinda threw off her cloak and did so, looking for wine; Robert poured a glass and brought it to her before sitting as well.

“Do you know that Belinda Primrose is dead?” he asked after a sip. “Beheaded by Sandalia, while Robert Drake was ransomed?”

“I had heard.” Belinda stilled her fingers, not allowing them to touch her throat. She had imagined more than once that her life might end on a headman's block, and for a few brief hours in a Lutetian prison, had thought it would be sooner rather than later. But some other unfortunate girl with similar colouring had met Belinda's fate that day, and she could find no guilt within her for surviving. “I envy your escape.”

“As well you might, but the whole of it may give us an opportunity.” Robert tapped a finger against his wineglass, then set the glass aside and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands folded together. “Heed me well, Primrose, for this is how it shall go.”