The Pretender's Crown

TOMAS DEL'ABBATE

15 June 1588 † Brittany, north of Gallin

Tomas knows that he's watched as he goes to Javier's tent. Most of the gazes on him are friendly, seeing him as God's guiding hand on the young king's shoulder. It's what he'd like to imagine he is, though what hastens his footsteps isn't an interest in theological teachings, but a hunger for the fire that is Javier de Castille. He has not, he thinks, kept Javier on a righteous path, but has rather fallen from it himself; he has no other answer as to his eagerness to spend time in the king's burning presence.

Other eyes are more judging and less kind. Sacha Asselin, who brought word that Javier bid him come; Marius Poulin, whose gentle heart has brought him to working the hospital tents rather than doing battle on the fields. Marius straightens from someone's sickbed to watch Tomas go, and if Sacha watched him with resentment, it seems Marius's gaze is full of sympathy and regret. He's the quiet one of their foursome, the one whose faith in Javier seems strongest, and he's lost his place at Javier's side to Tomas. He knows it, and so, too, does Tomas, who also knows he should relinquish that place to Marius again.

It is the better, not the greater, part of him that knows that. He looks away, not wanting to meet Marius's eyes, and hurries past the field hospital to enter Javier's tent.

The king is half-dressed and sprawled across a chair, blood seeping from a thin cut on one shoulder. Always pale, the blue undertones of his skin make him look hollowed now, as though whatever life once animated him has fled and left a still-breathing corpse behind. Tomas hesitates at the tent's open front, and glances back to where Sacha Asselin delivered a message with daggers in his voice.

It's a moment before Tomas realises what the young lord has done. “You didn't ask for me.”

“No. Sacha condemned you to me, or the other way around.” Javier lifts a hand, twirls his fingers against the setting sun, and Tomas, as though he were a servant boy, releases one of the ropes that holds the tent flaps open. Shadow falls across most of Javier's body, making him even paler, but the darker light is more flattering to him than sun: he looks less unwell, and the colour in his hair becomes richer. “He's growing to hate me, Tomas. Are they all?”

“Not Eliza.” Tomas moves to let the second flap fall, then thinks again and leaves it as is: there's no need to spend candlelight while the sun can still brighten a room. Javier shifts until he's entirely free of sunlight. He seems healthier, taken out of direct light, and Tomas wonders how the sun was so kind to Javier when he sailed into Lutetia. All light is God's light, of course, but when one walks in God's light one walks in sunshine. It's curious to him that Javier seems so drained by it. But then, they're all drained by days of battle, even those who don't take up swords themselves, as Tomas does not, as Marius does not, as Eliza does not.

“No, nor Marius,” he adds, because Javier seems to take neither hope nor extrapolation from what he's said, and for all his jealous dislike of sharing the king, Tomas also doesn't like to see him in despair. “They only worry for you,” he says in a rush, and wonders at his own pettiness, and what he imagines he'll gain if he steals all of Javier's time for himself. Whatever wish he might hang on a star, it will not come true: there are too many duties a king must see to, and Tomas's knowledge of the world too small to be a good counsellor in all matters secular. He wants Javier for himself, but not at the expense of the king's reputation.

A blush curdles his cheeks at that thought, thick discomfort that he doesn't dare let himself follow through on. He's grateful the sun is at his back, so Javier won't see how his face has heated, if even he should care.

“I threatened Sacha,” Javier says dully. “Threatened to make us what we'd been, to force my will on him so he remembered only what I wanted him to.”

Tomas opens his mouth to condemn the idea, and instead says, “Can you do that? You only forbade my tongue from speaking that which you didn't want said, not took away my memories of your talent entirely.”

Javier shrugs one shoulder. He might be a sculpture, so pale is he in the half-light, but his movements are fluid, and Tomas can see blue veins and a pulse in his wrist when Javier passes a hand in front of himself. “I've never tried, but yes, I think so. Shall I?” An eyebrow quirks up, small expression somehow made of cruelty. “Try resist me, priest, and I shall bend your will until it breaks, take secrets of you, and leave you with no memory of the violation.” He shudders, for which Tomas is grateful. Strengthened by that small show of revulsion, he pours Javier wine, and then a cup for himself before settling beside a blood-and-grime-stained tub of water.

“What is it you want of him?” he asks after several emboldening sips.

Javier holds his cup in long fingertips, not drinking as he stares out the open tent flap toward a battlefield he seems not to see. “Faith, I suppose. His faith in me, but in the end it's you who shows it. You, whom I used most badly.”

“Perhaps God's grace has helped me to forgive.”

“Perhaps it's easier to forgive a near-stranger his trespasses, no matter how bitter they may be, than a brother.”

“Your majesty, if you'll forgive me a certain brashness…”

Javier waves his wine cup and turns a silver-eyed glower on Tomas, contradictory answers in his body's speech, but Tomas takes the first to be permission, for he has a thing to say and, having embarked on it, is of no mind to have it turned away. “Royalty is expected to be capricious, but none of those three see you as their king, not first. You're their brother, their friend, and only then their sovereign. You may never have forgotten your royal birth, but you've allowed them to. Everything has changed, from your position to your-” Tomas hitches over the word, hating it, but it's Javier's, and not his own: “To your witchpower. Lord Asselin may have thought he was prepared for those changes, but I think he wasn't.”

“What should I do?” Javier drinks deeply of his cup and scowls when he comes to its base.

“Nothing.” Tomas finds the hardness of his reply unexpected. “The choice must be his. He'll serve you because you're his king, but to hold on to friendship in the face of all these changes may be impossible, my lord.”

“Have I asked too much of him?”

Tomas wets his lips, sips his wine for courage, and dares an answer he's uncertain Javier will like: “I haven't the years of friendship, but you've not turned your witchpower on any of them in such a…” He draws a breath, searching for a word, and Javier lurches out of his chair to catch Tomas's wrist in a heated connection.

“An intimate manner?” Grey eyes are gone entirely to silver, the weight of Javier's witchpower making the air leaden and hard to breathe. “I dream of that moment, Tomas. It disturbs and excites me, leaving me tangled in my sheets like a love-torn youth. The pleasure of your acquiescence, letting me fall into you as though I bed a woman. Do you dream of it, too?”

He lets Tomas go as quickly as he caught him, breath coming short, and he makes a fist of his hand as he looks away. “It dances on my desires, this witchpower magic. Wakens them where I had none, hungers for them when I would have them lie in quietude. Too often I fear that it controls me, and not the other way around. Tell me again.” He reaches for Tomas's wrist again, but this time takes his hand, and turns a beseeching gaze on the priest. “Tell me again that this is God's gift, and that you've found it in your heart to forgive me what I've done to you. Tell me,” he whispers, and there's no weight of compulsion in the plea, only desperation. “Tell me that I will not be abandoned by all those I love.”

Heartbeat riding in his chest too fast, heat rising in his cheeks again, Tomas whispers, “The Pappas has named your magic a gift from Heaven, Javier de Castille, and though I don't share the years of friendship you have with Sacha, you've turned your power on me more intimately than any of them. And still, I forgive you. If I can, then I dare say you haven't asked too much of him.” He crosses himself, and then Javier, and shivers when the young king kisses his knuckles.

Shivers, and wonders if it's forgiveness he's granted the king of Gallin, or simply blind worship better due to God.

“Stay,” Javier breathes. “Stay a while, and pray with me, Tomas. Help me keep to the light.”

Tomas touches Javier's hair, then, with regret, loosens the king's hand from his own, and rises to draw back the tent flap he's closed. Sunlight floods the room and takes away all the secrecy of their meeting, but makes a symbol and a sign of hope. They go together to kneel in light, and all down the hill, across the fields of tents and open fires that make up the Cordulan army, Tomas can see that the soldiers, led by their king, make a knee to God.

If Javier de Castille is truly damned, then God has a perverse sense of humour indeed, and is vastly more baffling than Tomas del' Abbate can ever hope to comprehend.