The Pretender's Crown

BELINDA WALTER

Given that she was in essence a prisoner of war, Belinda spent the night in surprising comfort. Better by far than the last time she'd been a guest of the Castille family: then she'd huddled in the darkness of an oubliette, stripped naked and awaiting a dawn that would surely see her dead. By comparison the small guarded tent and bedroll she'd been given were luxury, and she made no attempt to escape or slip away from her tent to listen and learn what she could of the Cordulan camps. War rarely offered the chance for uninterrupted rest, and yet she slept soundly as a child while in the heart of an enemy camp.

She awakened to the sunrise cutting through a gap in the tent walls. Cannon roared in the distance: her army was wasting none of the long summer day in making war. A boyish voice, familiar but displaced, spoke outside the tent, his Gallic broken yet full of confidence. A moment later the tent door flew open and a child walked in, slim and strong and haloed by the sunrise, making him unearthly and beautiful.

Then her jaw dropped and her eyes goggled, an expression Belinda felt mirrored on his own face as the boy blurted “Fine lady?” in Parnan, and then repeated the words in a gleeful crow: “Fine lady! You have come all the way from the city of canals to see me! See how brave and handsome I am, and my banner that I carry for Cordula!”

He whipped a length of fabric from his waist, unmaking a belt and turning it into a long flag marked with Cordula's red cross of war. He draped it across his shoulders and struck a pose, chin lifted and gaze distant with pride before excitement caught him again. “The king tells me to fetch the woman to visit the grave, but he has never said the woman is my friend! I told the man nothing,” he said, eyes still wide but now serious. “The blade-faced man who came to look for you, lady; I told him nothing of you. I am very brave, no? And you will walk with me now so all of this strange dry country can see that I have the love of a fine lady for my handsomeness and my bravery.”

“But what are you doing here?” Belinda asked beneath his rush of words, and despite everything, despite the deaths, despite the lies, despite the truths she'd learned, despite all of it, she laughed, and sat up from her bedroll to haul the gondola boy into a rough hug. Oh, she didn't know herself, didn't know the woman who would let herself do such a thing, but for a moment within the madness of the world she clung to a momentary gift of joy. “You shouldn't be here,” she whispered into his hair. “There's a war on, and a boy so handsome and brave as yourself should be far away, safe in his boat on the canals. Your father will be missing you, my friend. Or will your eight brothers and sisters be enough to keep him from noticing you're gone?”

“Fourteen,” the boy said into her bosom, happily.

Belinda laughed as she set him back, countering with, “Twelve,” and he shrugged with all the good nature in the world.

“What is one boy out of so many? He will miss the coin I bring in, but there is one less mouth to feed, and when I go home I will have tales of making friends with the king of Gallin, and many other beautiful people, too.” Some of his mirth fell away, leaving brown eyes large and sad. “But one of them is dead, fine lady. Marius, who was kind to me, is dead.”

“Yes.” Tightness caught Belinda's throat and she coughed, trying to clear it. “Yes. He was kind to me, too. Javi-the pri-the king…” She trailed off, the boy's tumble of words finally coming home to her. “The blade-faced man?”

Worry spasmed across the child's face. “He came in the coldest month, just after the new year. He looked for you, told me your face and your dress and your manner, but I said nothing to him except lies, fine lady.” He faltered, then looked away, guilt as clear as the worry of seconds earlier.

“What did he want?” Belinda's heart had become a hammer in her chest, determined to break through bone and fall to the floor a betraying, beating thing.

“To know who paid me to meet you,” the boy whispered. “To know the name you went by, and to know who you met when in my beautiful city. I lied to him, fine lady. I told him nothing.”

Just after the new year. Belinda closed her eyes, thoughts flying ahead of words, making leaps that had little to do with what the child had said and everything to do with what he kept from her.

Secrets learned in Aria Magli just after the new year could come by pigeon within a week to Lutetia. A pigeon could carry word of Belinda Primrose, called Rosa, and of Robert Drake, who had paid this boy to find Belinda and ferry her through the canals. A bird could carry all those stories and more to Akilina Pankejeff, who had stripped Beatrice Irvine away and left Belinda Primrose naked on the Lutetian palace's courtroom floor eleven days after the new year began.

She had thought herself betrayed by a kiss shared with a courtesan, but heartbreak had not moved Ana di Meo against her. No, the cards had fallen another way, and now, unasked for, she learned the truth of the pattern they'd made. It shouldn't take her so hard; the how hardly mattered now. Yet she couldn't help but look through the glass that warped the life she knew from the one that might have been. Had she silenced the boy when she left his gondola, the world she now walked through might have been a very different one.

“He came back,” Belinda said quietly. All her delight had drained away, leaving her to feel untethered, as though she floated on a slow and inexorable river of fate. “This blade-faced man came back, and because you are brave, very brave, but not stupid, when he came back you told him what he wanted to know. I'm surprised he let you live.” She shouldn't let him live: should wrap her slim fingers around his throat and crush the life from him, rectifying a mistake made months ago.

“My friend was there,” the boy said miserably. “He is a gypsy man and clever and quick, and the blade-faced man looked at him and decided no, that I was too small a thing to matter. I'm sorry, fine lady. I'm sorry.”

Belinda touched the boy's hair, numb with a grief that came from somewhere deeper even than Marius's death. “So am I.”

“Will you kill me now?” He straightened his shoulders, made himself look unafraid and accepting, and an ache took Belinda's breath from her.

“No.” Once she would have: perhaps even so recently as a day earlier, she would have. But she could see no reason for it now; the boy had owed her nothing, and had done more to protect her than reason dictated. In the end, he'd done what he'd had to survive, and she was too familiar with the weight of such decisions. “No,” she said again, and swallowed against a tight throat. “You've answered questions for me, told me how the blade-faced man's mistress found me so she could work against me. I'm to be queen of Aulun someday, did you know that?”

The boy's jaw dropped again and he shook his head, making what Belinda had thought of as rhetoric into a weighty confession of its own. “Queens and kings,” he whispered. “And I only a gondola boy. How did I come to this place, fine lady? How am I part of it all? How can that be?”

Belinda laughed again, a tiny fractured sound. “So you can be impressed after all. I thought such a fine brave handsome boy as yourself thought all of this only natural. I don't know,” she added far more quietly. “I don't know, only that this world is smaller than it once was, and perhaps even queens and kings need a forthright and sensible gondola boy to see the world with. I'll be queen,” she breathed, “and a queen can grant a pardon. Please.” She got up and put her hand out to the boy, calling witchpower to hide them both from prying eyes. She had hidden an army: to shield one small boy took almost no more thought than secreting herself in the stillness and silence. “Take me to Marius's grave,” she whispered into the quiet that surrounded them. “Take me there, and all will be forgiven.”

He left her there, kneeling in fresh dirt with the sound of cannons shattering in the distance. Men screamed and died, faint distractions under the warming morning sun. Belinda curled her hand in the earth, wondering at the emptiness inside her. An innocent boy had broken open the secrets that had led to Beatrice's destruction, that had led to Marius's death. The boy wasn't at fault: this was a chain of events that stretched back to before his birth, one that came, perhaps, to this inevitable end, with Belinda bowing her head over a lover's grave and questioning whether she had any tears to shed. She doubted it: tears were an indulgence that only left her weaker, and she had had enough of weakness.

Nothing more esoteric than Javier's footsteps told her of his eventual arrival. Ordinary humanity, and nothing else: it seemed a lifetime since she'd relied on something so simple. It made her spine itch, made her aware of the small dagger she wore there as she was rarely aware of it anymore. Moreover, it whispered of her vulnerability, and that woke witchpower inside her. She knotted it down, and gave herself over to trust.

The king of Gallin stayed behind her a long while, weight of his regard heavy enough to make her want to squirm. Stillness wrapped her out of habit, tamping the urge to twist around and meet his gaze, proving herself, as always, to be stronger than the things around her. She thought he waited on her use of witch-power, waiting, hoping, that her fear or discomfort would shatter and make her reach for him in some manner. It would be all the excuse he needed; if she stood where he did now, it would be the weakness she would seize on. But there was no magic in the stillness, and she could wait forever in its grasp.

In time-a long time; the sun marked a noticeable distance in the sky as they waited on each other's resolve-in time, Javier came to stand on the grave's far side, putting the sun behind him so a thin streak of shadow fell across where Marius lay and splashed on Belinda's kneeling form. “For Eliza's life,” he said very softly. “For Eliza's life I'll listen.”

Belinda inclined her head, one more moment of solitude and gathering herself before saying, “This is not a frivolous question, and I don't ask it to test your patience. Do you remember your birth, Javier?”

Even without witchpower senses extended, she felt his anger flare, and heard his sharp inhalation before his teeth snapped together. “No one remembers their birth.”

“I do.” Silence, more silence; this was harder than she thought it would be, and she hadn't imagined it might be easy. “I had a glimpse of Lorraine, just one, before my father took me away. It didn't mean anything to me until I met her just before my twelfth birthday. I recognised her, knew her, and I've known since then that I was the queen's bastard.”

“The marriage wasn't legitimate?” Javier seized on that, as she knew he would, but Belinda shook her head, pushing it away.

“I didn't know about the marriage until a few weeks ago. I've always thought of myself as a bastard.”

Javier, against all likelihood, lifted his gaze and shot her a look so dry she almost smiled. But humour faded even more quickly than it was born, and she took another steadying breath. Bad enough to speak those words aloud, admit to anyone that she was Lorraine's daughter, when she'd kept that secret so close for so long. But she'd managed that; it was the next part that made her mouth dry and her hands icy cold. “The same day Lorraine announced she and Robert were wed and I was her heir, I learnt she'd borne a second child that night. A boy, whom the attending priest was told to drown.”

Shocked anticipation flooded her, Javier's emotion riding too high to be ignored, even with her magic tied down. “He wasn't drowned? There's a male heir to the Aulunian throne? That-”

“Changes everything? Gives you a worthy rival to make war against, instead of simple and infuriating women?” Belinda caught herself, bit her tongue and reined in her temper. “Did you know I was born here? In Brittany? At one of my grandfather Henry's estates, where Lorraine had retired to mourn the anniversary of his death. And her priest, when he took the boy, had only to ride a week to the east to bring the child to Lutetia, and to a queen who'd lost her babe when word came of her husband's death in the Reussland border skirmishes.”

She waited then, waited for the inevitable incomprehension, then the necessary leap of Javier's thoughts, and then for the response she knew he'd make, his voice sharp: “You lie.”

Belinda lowered her gaze, waiting. That denial was the easy one, the simple disbelief that he could be other than his mother's son. There was more to come as he faced the possibility of truth and what it meant that they had lain together.

She ought to have expected the colossal witchpower blow that knocked her aside, flung her a dozen feet from the graveside and made her head ring with agony. She did expect Javier's furiously repeated “You lie!,” and when his second witchlight attack came, she did nothing but curl on herself and keep the assault from landing. Through his outrage, through the pummel of power, she heard him shout, “Fight me! You must fight me!” and a crack of misery within her chest made her feel as though she might shatter into a thousand pieces. She knew his horror too clearly, and it was inevitable that the only person she could share it with would want her destroyed.

“I remember hearing her say ‘It cannot be found out,’” Belinda whispered. Whispered, and for all that there was no way Javier could hear her under the rain of magic he threw down on her, she had every confidence that he would. “Before I even knew what words were, I heard her saying that, and they've been a part of me all my life. I said them to you once, Javier.” Flawless memory was a gift and a curse. “It was snowing, and I stood on your balcony and you pulled me back. Warned me of discretion, and I said It cannot be found out. Do you remember what you did, Javier? Do you remember how you felt?” She remembered, too clearly: discomfort had flared in him, and he'd moved away, leaving a sense of unhappy and inexplicable recognition as his legacy jostled awake in those words.

“Like a clarion bell had been struck under my skin.” The witch-fire had lessened as she spoke, and faded into a faint prickling in the air when Javier answered. “Like I'd heard them before, like they were familiar, but I couldn't remember why.”

“She said them again when you were born. When she gave you to the priest. Javier, we're secrets, you and I. Not even Lorraine knows you survived.” Belinda lifted her head a little, unwilling to make herself much larger, but witchpower pushed at her skin from the inside. It whispered of uncomfortable truths, making every word she spoke too clear and too real; pushed by it as she was, she doubted she could speak a lie to Javier and make him believe. “You have her look about you. I… saw it, once I knew.”

“Once you knew. Does your heathen church even care?”

“Yes!” Heat curdled in her face and she struggled to bring her voice down, words tight in her throat. “The Reformation church is not so different as that. And I-I cannot get clean enough since I have learned the truth. I…” A shudder crawled over her, revulsion revisited before she exercised command over her body and her thoughts. “You believe me.”

Javier laughed, hoarse angry sound, and sat down, the grave mound half hiding him from Belinda's view. “I wanted Rodrigo to have the witchpower. When I went to Isidro, knowing your power came from Robert, knowing it ran in the blood… but Rodrigo is only a man. This cannot be!”

“It cannot be found out,” Belinda agreed wearily. She pushed herself up, got to her feet, and came around the grave to kneel a few feet away from the Gallic king. “Three of us know this secret, Javier. We two, and the priest who made this happen. He lives, and he didn't stop me from coming to Gallin and to your bed. There's vengeance, if you want it.”

“He can't live,” Javier whispered. “No queen would let him live, not when he carried such secrets as these.”

“They would if his witchpower led them to believe him dead.”

She had him then, had him so thoroughly that for an instant she wished she played a game. Javier's gaze snapped to hers, grey turning silver with outrage and confusion. “Robert?”

“No. His name is Dmitri, and he's of Irina's court, and probably Ivanova's father. He and Robert…” Belinda thinned her lips. “They serve a foreign queen, so strange I barely understand. And they're harbingers of war, not just between Gallin and Aulun, but between… between continents,” she finally said, faltering. “A war for the world, Javier. I've snatched thoughts from them, just enough to see-”

“You've always been able to do that, haven't you?” Javier threw away the rest of what she'd said with a gesture, focusing on the witchpower use she'd named. “I've only just begun to read emotion in others, but you've been able to since the beginning. You used it to convince me to release you in Lutetia.”

Belinda's jaw clenched, but she nodded. Javier stared at her as though she'd become a foreign thing herself, then slumped, arms around his drawn-up shins and forehead touched to his knees. “I should say you're doing it now, but I think you can't anymore. Not to me. I'd know it now. The world can't go to war, Belinda. It's too big.”

“Look to your battlefields,” Belinda murmured, “and tell me that again. All of Echon fights there today; all of Echon and so many Khazarians. The world's already at war, Javier, and my father's worked to orchestrate it.”

“So have you,” Javier said sharply, bitterly.

Knots tied in Belinda's belly, admission of guilt that made her nod. “He wants us fighting each other. War drives us to advance in technologies.” She spoke the unfamiliar word slowly, struggling to latch concepts stolen from Robert's mind and ideas half-explained by Dmitri to solidity and sense. She felt as though she tried to grasp water: it looked to be a whole, united object, but when she plunged her hands in it to take it up, it slipped apart into droplets and spilled through her fingers. Such was her comprehension of what Robert was, what Dmitri was, what she and Javier were, though to perhaps a lesser degree. “He wants us fractured but dangerous, so when his queen comes to us we'll make good soldiers but not good generals. We're being used, Javier.” That much, at least, she was sure of, and desperation deepened her voice.

“Dmitri sent me to Gallin knowing our heritage and knowing I would find my way into your bed, and he didn't care. He did it so this war would come about, and if those are his means then I'll do everything I can to destroy his ends. I've spent a lifetime unquestioning and loyal, but this is too much. This is further than I can bend. They want a war, Javier. They want our guns and science to advance while we fight one another, so that when their queen comes we have weapons she can use, so she can make us her soldiers without losing any of her own.”

Three weeks; three weeks and longer, it seemed, the idea had been burning in her mind as an answer, a vengeance, a plan, all to seize back a far-flung destiny. “Bastard or heir, I am the daughter of a queen, and I will not let men who have sent me to lie with my brother turn my country into a breeding place for foot soldiers for a monarch from foreign lands. I cannot break them without you, Javier. I can't take the shaping of our futures from them on my own. It needs both of us, and it needs Ivanova if we can get her, and it needs Dmitri Leontyev dead.”