The Pretender's Crown

ROBERT, LORD DRAKE

Javier will have to run out of bullets sooner or later. Sooner is more likely: even aided by witchpower, even given years or decades in which to work, Seolfor could only have made so many without some form of automation. Robert has been blindsided repeatedly these past few months, but he doubts he could have missed a factory in the Alanian mountains. So when the Ecumenic machine guns are rolled forward on the distant hills, Robert feels a surge of satisfaction: Javier is squandering his advantage, and Robert will soon be able to ride men of equal numbers into Javier's front lines.

What's unexpected is that for the first time in days, Javier calls witchpower at a level Robert hasn't felt since Aria Magli. The first volleys of power are so quick and so strong it takes Robert a few seconds to recover, and to throw up the same kind of shields that Belinda and Ivanova both kept in place during some of the war.

Ivanova: there's a distraction, and one Robert doesn't need now. The girl retreated to the heart of the Khazarian camp after Belinda's capture, suddenly afraid for her own life. It's preposterous: if Ivanova Durova is afraid of anything, Robert has yet to put a name to it. He would dearly love to know the truth of what sent her back to her big-bearded generals, and at the same time is boyishly glad he doesn't. He ought not take glee in being played and out-played, manoeuvred, and out-thought, but this isn't an aspect of conquering that's mentioned in his people's history. Certainly other worlds must have brought cleverness to the fore and done battle against their manipulators, but Robert's people care only for the end result, not the details of arriving there. Other races' ingenuity has been lost, as human ingenuity will be, but discovering and facing it makes for a far more interesting mission than Robert expected to participate in.

Even as he pulls his thoughts back in line, the tone of the witch-power volleys changes. Javier gathers himself and turns his magic against Robert himself. Silver smashes down, searching for weaknesses, searching for a way in; searching, in essence, for paths that will let him into Robert's mind, where he can tear his power apart from the inside out. Robert doubts Javier knows quite what he's trying to do; there's no finesse to his attack, no sense of understanding how he might capture and command another witchlord's magic.

Robert, grinning, lets the boy try.