The Pretender's Crown

JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

3 July 1588 † Brittany; the Gallic camp

“She's betrayed us.” Javier spoke to the sound of footsteps, not bothering to turn his head and see who approached. A week on since Belinda had slipped away, a week in which Aulun had steadily moved forward, crushing the Ecumenic army. Only his magic kept them from wholesale slaughter, and it seemed inevitable that that, too, would fail. He'd stopped sleeping, not from a lack of weariness, but from the gnawing hole in his gut that said too pointedly that God was not, after all, his benefactor or his blesser: Belinda's stories were the stuff of nightmares, and still somehow carried the inexorable weight of truth. He'd tried not to think on it, had made no confession; not to Eliza, not to Tomas, not, most certainly, to Sacha, whom he hadn't seen since the morning they buried Marius.

That was where he sat now, by Marius's grave under the thin light of a new moon. Marius knew all his secrets now, if anyone did, and Javier took small comfort in sitting with his friend in silence, no pretensions or lies between them.

“Who has, my king? Eliza?” Tomas's confused voice startled Javier, who looked sharp after all, then settled into a sigh.

“Oh, it's you, priest. I expected Liz coming to ask me why I wasn't yet abed.”

“And the answer is betrayal? By whom?” Tomas sat down without Javier's leave, but then, until lately Javier would have thought nothing of it. He'd drawn away from Tomas in the past week and knew it: saw his need for the priest as what had cost Marius his life, and so retreated from what might have been solace offered in the friendship that remained.

There was Marius; and then there were Belinda's stories of foreign lords, too uncomfortably real when witchpower burnt away his fears. God hadn't graced him with magic: something far more incomprehensible had, and knowing that made meeting Tomas's eyes all the harder. It left Javier alone, with neither priest to confide in nor God to trust in, but better that than to find new prices to pay.

“The Holy Mother,” he said, trying to stop his thoughts with words spoken aloud. The witchpower came from a source entirely other than God, so perhaps laying blame at the queen of Heaven's feet wasn't the blasphemy that it might be. “Aulun thinks she walks amongst them, and with their numbers and their victories, perhaps they're not wrong. Perhaps she's abandoned us despite our faith, and perhaps God looks to her lead.”

“You can't believe such things, Javier.” Admonishment and concern filled Tomas's tone, as though he knew the lines he was meant to say and the emotion he was meant to fill them with, but his own uncertainty crept through and made what he said truer than he'd intended. “God will not abandon his favoured son.” Determination slipped into that statement, and Javier wondered if Tomas's conviction could sway God's mind.

“Of course not.” There was nothing else to say, nothing Tomas would find acceptable, but sarcasm weighted the words and gave too much evidence of Javier's failing belief.

“Javier…” Tomas shifted, lifting a hand to touch Javier's shoulder, but it fell again and he settled himself. “You've not come to confession in a week, my lord. I thought perhaps it should come to you.”

“To what end? Marius is dead at Sacha's hand and I have no stomach for any horror beyond that. My sins are so compleat as to beg no forgiveness.” Belinda's face-and more-flashed in his vision, soft warmth and witchpower and the devil's own damnation. Oh, he had loved: how could he not, when met with a creature so much like himself. Disgustingly like himself, and done without wilful intent or no, God couldn't forgive that sin. Lust: he ought to have known not to fall for that most deadly of temptations, as Sacha ought not have fallen to green-eyed envy. Eliza, thus far, seemed unscarred by any of those terrible seven; if he could keep her clear, that, perhaps, might be a small salve to his soul.

“There is nothing God cannot forgive if you come to him truly penitent,” Tomas whispered, but without the serene confidence he'd once had. Javier looked to him, curiosity piqued over self-doubt and flagellation, and more welcome.

“What have you learnt of unforgiveable sin, priest?”

“I've learnt that even man can forgive that which we might call unthinkable. My intellect tells me time and again that I should revile and fear a man who's stolen my will from me, and yet my heart harbours no resentment. If I, who am weak with mortality, can forgive, how can God, in His infinite compassion, see any darkness which He can't forgive?”

“You've forgiven what I can't,” Javier said harshly. “Leave me alone with my sins, priest.”

“Your sins and your betrayals? Are you certain you spoke of the Holy Mother, and not one closer to you?”

“What?”

“Eliza caught quickly,” Tomas murmured. “Are you certain you've married a woman who's bearing your child, Javier, and not one who's taking advantage of some by-blow of a Maglian lover?”

Laughter seemed the wrong response, but it was the one that burst from Javier, wholly derisive. “If only you knew how certain I am.”

“How can you be? Came she a virgin to your bed? A woman of such beauty, living in a city of whores?”

Javier slammed his hand out and caught a fistful of Tomas's robes, all of his laughter gone. “If you value the tongue in your head, priest, you will silence yourself now and no such further words will ever pass your lips. The time to voice your doubts was before we were wed, and I will have your respect now.” Witch-power boiled, hoping for argument, for any excuse to overwhelm the priest and use him as it would. For once Javier had no urge to temper it, as eager himself to embrace furious insult as his magic was. It would be a release unlike anything on the battlefield, all intimacy and personal need. He fought for his troops out of duty, but Tomas would serve his pleasure.

“Forgive me.” Tomas's voice came low, no hint of resistance in it. Frustration twisted in Javier, witchpower thwarted by acquiescence. “I should have spoken earlier,” Tomas went on, still soft, still light; a lover's voice, all wrong in the thin moonlight. “I should have, but in the chaos of the day did not. Forgive me, my king.”

Javier released him with a curse, turning futile witchpowered anger toward the distant hills, where it could unfurl itself without harm. “What choice have I, when you plead so prettily? But don't test me, Tomas. Don't let your thoughts or your tongue wander down those roads again.”

“My lord.” Tomas sat silent a moment or two, then got to his feet. “I'll leave you, my king. I hope your thoughts turn to happier things.”

“Aye,” Javier muttered to his departing steps. “So do I.”

“Would it make you happier to know the Aulunian heir hasn't betrayed you?” A woman's voice, marked with a Khazarian accent, came out of the air, and for the second time Javier startled, this time jolting to his feet.

“Forgive me,” the voice went on, and with it a girl's form came clear, only a few feet away. Witchpower tainted the air around her, a cold iron weight more implacable than Belinda's, or even Javier's own. Her magic had a feeling of certainty to it, like Robert Drake's: like she'd spent a lifetime ensconsed in it, practising with no fear for her soul. “Forgive me,” she said again, cheerfully, and without a hint of the repentance Tomas had voiced when he'd said those words. “I'd intended to show myself earlier, but your lovely priest arrived. I'm meant to go virgin to my wedding bed, but for a face such as that…”

A fist clenched around Javier's heart and pulled it askew in his chest, knocking breath away into dull sickness. For an instant his mind flew to the impossible, that witchbreed men and women were all around, and that not a soul in Echon was safe from their interferences. A cry knotted itself in his chest at the relief and despair borne with that idea, but it was another thing entirely that he said aloud: “You would be Ivanova. There is rumour in the camps that you are with the Aulunians, and Akilina has had a letter from your mother. She's worried about you, princess.”

The artfully carefree expression on the girl's face spasmed into guilt. “My mother wouldn't have allowed me to ride to war.”

“With good reason, and yet it seems she couldn't stop you.” Javier made a short gesture at the night she'd faded out of. “I must learn to do that, to hide in the shadows. It seems a knack the witch-women around me have learned. What are you doing here?” His heart's beat had steadied, though shock still swam through him. Belinda had said she couldn't shape their future alone. It needs both of us, she had said, and it needs Ivanova if we can get her, and it needs Dmitri Leontyev dead.

All the armies knew Leontyev was dead, and now Ivanova Durova stood at the heart of his own camp, as if conjured by Belinda's will. It was not possible: the Aulunian heir had only said those words a week ago, and she could not have brought Ivanova here in that time. The girl had to have moved on her own in order to be in this place now, and Javier de Castille suddenly wondered if God's hand was in this after all. Men could orchestrate war across a continent-that, he believed. But for the scant handful of children who might stand against that war to gather through their own will and no other guidance-that smacked of destiny. Javier turned a slow astonished look on the girl before him, and she, standing under flattering moonlight that gave hint of the legendary woman she would become, answered him with a shrug.

“I've come as Belinda's voice, because Lord Drake holds her too close for her to slip away. There's no betrayal, king of Gallin, but the Ecumenic army should lose whether she intends it or not. You're too few, and we too many.” She sat abruptly, graceless as a colt and wiping away the promise of beauty her youthful form held. Javier sat more slowly as Ivanova spoke, her words measured. “We'll come to war tomorrow, Belinda and myself, but most especially Belinda. We'll ride hard on you, coming to break your army's back, and at the height of it you'll do battle with Belinda herself. And you'll win, king of Gallin. This will be your chance to take the Aulunian heir prisoner, and turn the tide to your call.”

“So easily,” Javier muttered. “Will Belinda play her part?”

Ivanova shrugged again, loose and comfortable in her body “Belinda acts out of duty, serving Aulun more faithfully than I'd have wagered possible. She sees this war and this gamble for the future as doing that. Aulun is perhaps subsumed by the needs of the world, but that's too big a thought for her, and so she serves Aulun and in so doing serves the world. She'll do what she must to those ends.” Compleat confidence filled the girl's answer, enough so that Javier's eyebrows rose.

“Dare I ask what prompts me to act?”

Challenge lit Ivanova's black eyes. “I don't know. Dare you?”

Intrigue caught him out, for all that a quiet rush of wisdom said he might be happier ignorant. Still, Javier nodded, and Ivanova flashed a pointed smile.

“You're a king afraid of his power, a boy with only a few friends who's desperately afraid of losing them. One's dead, another betrayed you, and the third's become your wife, but the duty you owe your throne will force you to put her away unless there's a child. You'll make any bargain and forgive all sins so you might not be left alone.”

Anger sharp enough to tell him the girl spoke truth shot through Javier, making his speech short. “You see very clearly.”

Ivanova lifted a shoulder and let it fall, then turned her palm up. A ball of dull iron witchlight formed and blinked away. “The magic lets us see as clearly as we choose. We have little time for prevarication and pretty lies.”

Javier stared at where her power had disappeared, then met her eyes. “And what drives you?”

She smiled, suddenly full of a child's wickedness. “I don't like being told what to do.” Both smile and smugness faded. “You know royal lives are not ours to do with as we please. I've taken this chance to see war before I'm confirmed heir, and it will likely be the last truly free act of my life. I think it was necessary, but my mother will not agree. So this is the mark I'll leave, no matter what becomes of my life: I'll do what I can to help steal this world back from those who would take it from us. I don't like that they think they can make us unknowing slaves to their intentions, and if I can play the contrary and do a part to prove them wrong, then my life's well spent, even before I take a throne.” She waited a moment, then arched an eyebrow. “Do you read me with your magic, king of Gallin? Do I speak the truth?”

Javier's mouth thinned, inadvertent admission that she did. Ivanova nodded, then leaned forward to put a hand over Javier's. Her fingers were warm, much warmer than his own, as if she burned with internal fire. The passion of youth, he thought, then smirked; he'd not reached an age himself that would be called anything but youth, and yet Ivanova seemed young to him. “Are you so certain this is a war we can win?”

Ivanova looked down her nose at him. Beakish nose, almost too sharp: it should've taken away from her beauty, but instead it added to it, giving her unexpected strength. Her smile, though, which came after that scolding look, was entirely a thing of ease and enjoyment with no worries for strength at all. “Unless you choose to fail on the battlefield tomorrow, yes. I don't know, king of Gallin. Are you content to be defeated by women?”

“Go away,” Javier said as severely as he could. The girl had made him want to laugh, and he thought laughter should no longer be his companion. Not after the last week. Not, in truth, after this past six-month. “Go away,” he said again, and got to his feet. “I'll bring you your battle come daybreak.”