The Pretender's Crown

MARIUS POULIN

Marius Poulin is not a soldier.

He is not a coward, either, which is why he is there, but he is not a soldier and has never wanted to be one. He has wanted to serve his king and brother, Javier de Castille, that is all.

That is why he is now meeting blades with a wicked-looking, scarred Aulunian soldier whose confident swordwork says he's killed before and has no compunction against doing so again.

The ship lurches, a trough found in the water, and Marius, almost by accident, gains the upper hand and shoves his sword into the Aulunian's chest. They're both astounded, but it's Marius's surprise that will last, because the Aulunian slides off the blade and into the ocean, never to rise again.

If he had time, Marius would be sick. Every part of his body feels in rebellion, his steps clumsy and his bladework ponderous. Men come at him with blinding speed and a few fall to his sword, many others to the soldiers around him. He thinks he lost his bladder when the Aulunian ship slammed into his, but he is so wet it makes no difference, not even in his opinion of himself. A braver man-Sacha, perhaps-would have held his water, would have died rather than humiliate himself in fear.

Sacha is a thought that helps keep Marius moving forward; Sacha and Eliza, and Javier. If he fights for them, he may do them proud, and that thought gives him some little heart. Not enough: he seems likely to die on this slippery ship deck, tripping over dead men and sliding in blood, and he would rather do them proud by living.

What Marius Poulin cannot see is himself from the outside. He was taught swordwork by the king's own swordmaster, and from the outside he's a whirlwind, leaping bodies and skewering men, using a blood-and-water-slick deck to slip behind enemy guard and come up again a savage-eyed beast standing over the dead.

He's flung to the side when something smashes into his ship. Through a daze of stars, he feels a wracking born from the bottom of the sea, and throws a panicked look around, afraid he'll see a kraken's tentacles capturing and crushing them.

Instead he sees another Gallic vessel has broadsided his. Eliza swings from the other ship's crow's nest, a knife held in her teeth and the gondola boy held in her arm. She is, for an instant, a wild thing, as unearthly as the kraken. Her eyes are bright with glee, and the gondola boy is laughing madly.

The mast comes crashing down behind them with a rip and shriek of wood, lying crosswise across Marius's deck. It barely misses their own mast, and for a moment everyone from both ships is arrested, staring, impressed, at the broad beam that has interrupted their fight.

Then the gondola boy screams and jumps on an Aulunian sailor, his slight weight enough to bring the man down on the wet decks.

Before the sailor can recover, before anyone else moves, the gondola boy slams two knives into the sailor's back: once, twice, thrice, before he leaps away, a demonic grin splashed over his young features.

Battle comes again. Eliza has Marius's back, and for a moment they're children again, fighting under Javier's disgruntled sword-master's tutelage. He had been willing to teach Sacha, and reluctantly agreeable to teaching the merchant son Marius, but Eliza he had taught only under high-handed and arrogant orders from a nine-year-old prince.

Eliza, of necessity, became the best of them.

Not in strength, no, though her lighter sword and lither body gave her an advantage in speed. It was her ruthlessness that set her apart, and their swordmaster had grown ever more bitter and ever more drawn-in as the little girl learnt, extrapolated, and defeated her playmates.

She stopped fighting when her family made her grow her hair again, and it became an encumbrance, long enough to grab. Marius has always supposed she gave up the blade for good at that time, an easy decade ago now.

With her at his back, with the flash of her blades in the rain, with the blood that sprays as they fight, he knows she has never stopped practising, and that until death claims her, she never will.

The gondola boy flings a dagger and it sticks in someone's eye. He shrieks delight and Eliza's approving shout echoes it.

The Gallic ship from whence Eliza and the boy came takes another cannonball, its shudder knocking their ship askew, and then it slides into the boiling sea, leaving them with a double-contingent of crew all thirsty for blood. The Aulunians retreat, slicing their grappling ropes as they go, and Marius hears an order bellowed from belowdecks. The Aulunian ship is barely thirty feet off their starboard when cannons send it to join Eliza's ship in sinking. The crew rush to the rail, drawing wet pistols to shoot the survivors and scream victory.

Marius, alone in blood and water, watches them, and knows he is not like these people.