The Pretender's Crown (28 page)

Footsteps finally sounded in the vault, light and long-expected. Javier left his eyes closed, his head back, too weary to care whether it was priest or assassin who came to find the king in mourning. With his eyes closed the world beyond them might not exist; he might go undisturbed if he refused to acknowledge another's presence.

Fingers brushed his hair, an intimacy Eliza and no other would use, but the touch was not Eliza's. Javier opened his eyes, wishing their tearful itch away, and found Tomas standing above him, terrible gentleness in his gaze.

“I've brought cool water, cloth to wash your face with, and new clothes to greet the morning in,” Tomas murmured when Javier remained silent. “They are waiting for you, king of Gallin.”

“Who?” Javier's voice broke more hoarsely than he expected, still tight from sobs and too dry for words.

“Your people.” Tomas knelt, slipping a satchel from his shoulder and withdrawing soft cloth and a wineskin. “Drink a little, my lord. Loosen your throat.” He put the wineskin down at Javier's side and took out a second skin, spilling water onto the cloth with it. Javier closed his eyes again, letting the priest press the damp cloth against his face; felt Tomas take one of his hands and clean it, too.

“Would you wash my feet as well, priest? And nail me to a cross when this is done?”

“Drink,” Tomas said again, steadily. “Wash away some bitterness with the wine, and if it rises again spill it on me if you must, but not your people. They gather in the street, Javier. All of Gallin knows you entered these halls last night to bid Sandalia farewell. They wait to see if you will exit a king or a broken man. You must be a king.”

Javier made a broken sound, pretence at a laugh, and took up the wine to drain a long draught. “I thought I had my privacy.”

“Royalty never does. A new shirt, Javier.”

“No.” Javier knocked the offering away not hard. “Let them see me as I am, if they must see me.”

Tomas echoed, “No,” more firmly, and put his hand to Javier's collar. “In mourning, yes; in despair, no. I'll not let them see that. You made a fine figure on the ship yesterday, king of Gallin, as a pirate and a prince. In the evening you showed them the king. Today you will be the warrior, whether you wish to or not. Strip off the doublet and wear the tunic and your unsheathed blade.” He unfurled the former with a snap, drawing Javier's unwilling eyes to it.

The Gallic fleur-de-lis coat of arms shone in gold thread against a background of blue. “For another man black might have suited,” Tomas muttered, “but you're too pale. This will make the most of your eyes without washing out your skin. I didn't bring chain mail. I wonder now if I ought to have done.”

“Why are you here, Tomas?” Javier knotted a fist over Tomas's hand, wrinkling the tunic. “Why are you not Sacha, or Marius, or even Eliza? Did your kiss offer forgiveness? I need the words, priest. For all my power I know not what's in your heart.”

Tomas went still, but not with the wariness Javier'd grown accustomed to seeing in him. He looked at Javier's hand on his own, then gently shook it off, smoothing the tunic. “You're in the bowels of the church, majesty. The bishop preferred a man of the cloth to come after you than one of your vagabond friends.” He made a small impatient gesture and Javier, resigned, sat up to strip his doublet off and take the tunic. “And because they're your lay support, and as such belong in the public's eye, even now. I'm the church at your right hand, and to remind all of Echon of that, should always walk there. A sword on one side, Javier, and God on the other.”

“So now you're God.” Javier found a faint smile and reached out, clapping his hand at Tomas's jaw and neck. “No wonder you have such a beautiful face.” He pulled Tomas closer, butting foreheads with him, and held the priest there for a few long moments. “I am stronger than the witchpower, Tomas. Your faith, if not in me, at least in God, helps me remember that. I am glad you stand at my side. I haven't fallen yet. Don't let me.”

“My faith is in you, my lord king.” Tomas sounded strained. “I
beg God's mercy on my soul, but my faith is in you. Keep me at your side always and I will not let you fall.”

Javier tightened his hand, then released Tomas and took up the tunic, the wineskin, and, at the end, his sword. The wine he drained and set aside, then let Tomas tug the tunic over his head and belt his sword into place. “I will be king of Aulun if we win this war,” Javier said quietly. “Our coat of arms for that crown will be the sword and the cross over a penitent man, Tomas. Our coat of arms will be for what you have given us.”

“My lord.” Tomas bowed deeply and fell into place beside Javier as they left the catacombs for a cathedral brilliant with colour, sunlight saturating stained-glass windows. Javier knelt at the altar and made the sign of God across his chest, then strode out massive doors into a dazzling spring morning.

Into a roar of welcome that belittled the fracas from the day before; into a city of men rattling their swords, firing pistols, smashing together shield and blade, all to make greeting to their warrior king. Eliza and the two men, his best friends, stood at the front edges of the cathedral steps, their presence and Tomas's all the support he needed; their presence seeming to hold back the gathering through their will alone. Javier walked forward to join them, agog at the mass of humanity and refusing to let his awe show on his face.

Yesterday on shore they were a mob; last night in the boulevards, a crowd. Now, as he stands on the cathedral steps and looks out at the faces awaiting his command, Javier de Castille knows them for what they are.

They are an army, and war is coming to Echon.

16 April 1588
†
Khazan, capital of Khazar

War is coming to Echon.

It is coming in the form of the Khazarian army, seventy thousand strong and guided by big-bearded generals who, in her youth, bounced Ivanova on their knee and gave her model horses and soldiers from their campaign tables as toys.

She was seven, and playing at a game of cannons with those toys
and a bread roll, when a General Chekov took note of her. He sat down on the floor as though she was one of his own grandchildren, and a boy at that, and with plates and boards and other foodstuff, taught her how to best use height and landscape to a cannon's advantage. Taught her, too, how a small group of soldiers, disguised to blend in, might successfully ambush a whole supply train. He told her then what she had already heard repeated in Irina's war chambers, and what she hears still today:
an army marches on its stomach. Destroy its food source and you weaken, perhaps cripple, your soldiers.

It made an impression on Ivanova, always hungry as a child. Chekov, sitting on the floor, taught her the danger and the necessity of pillaging the land her armies marched through in order to feed its ravenous stomach, and taught her the wisdom of keeping her men under control. There were two choices, he said: kill everyone in the army's path, or control the men, take only what they need, and do what can be done to make reparations to those whose lands have been sacked.

Ivanova, arrogant with youth, tossed her black hair and said, “But I will be imperatrix. I can take what I like.”

When she returned to her room that afternoon, everything but a thin straw mattress was missing. Incensed, she flew to her mother, who looked bemused and told her to solve it herself. It took two days to realise Chekov had stolen her things, and when, insulted and haughty, she demanded them back, he said no.

It took another full day to recover from the shock, and to think to demand why not.

“Because I'm the commanding officer of the Khazarian army,” Chekov said. “I can take what I like.”

Ivanova still remembers with uncomfortable clarity the rage she flew into. She also remembers the moment in which she understood Chekov's point, and the general's indulgent chuckle when he saw she'd learned the lesson.

He never did return her things, and Irina, most unreasonably, refused to countermand his orders and have them returned. Half the summer passed while Ivanova plotted his downfall and stole back what bits of her belongings she could find, but she was seven and eventually lost interest in both recovery and revenge. That, too, was
a lesson, because as she's aged, she's realised that she has lived a life of luxury, and could afford to forget about the dolls and pillows that were taken from her. Had it been her food, her fields, her only livelihood, she could not have forgiven or forgotten so easily, and this is what Chekov wanted her to understand. An army is a dangerous thing, but so, too, are the people it passes by. She has learned that when she is imperatrix her duty will be to be generous when it seems she can least afford it, for the price of stinginess is high.

Chekov endured the ridicule of his fellow officers to sit on the floor with her, and when she was a little older, to lean over war tables with her, teaching battlefield manoeuvres and troop movements. She learned quickly, fascinated by the abstract while Chekov repeated the adage that no battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy. Under his tutelage she learned recovery tactics, sneak attacks, direct strikes, and from his comrades understood that, as a woman, she would never be in a position to command men in the strategies she was taught. They indulged her studies only because she was still a girl, too young to be of any concern or danger.

Irina and she decided, when she turned twelve, that she would lose all interest in battles and war preparations, and a sigh of relief went through the officers' ranks. But Chekov continued to teach her in private, and today he finds her leaning over a map of Khazar and Echon, studying mountain ranges and rivers as she amasses her army of toy soldiers outside Khazan's gates.

“How many will we lose in the march?” She is a girl, she is not supposed to care, but she does care, intensely. She will marry someday, and the generals believe her husband will control all matters warlike, but Ivanova has no intention of marrying a man with that much ambition. Javier de Castille would have done, but that plan has been set askew by Akilina Pankejeff's recent good fortune. Ivanova is content with that; she would like to find someone with wits in his head so he might be a worthy companion, but if she must she'll marry a handsome fool and let him imagine he rules both imperatrix and empire.

“Perhaps as many as six or ten thousand. It's a hard time of year to make a journey of fifteen hundred miles.”

“There's no good time of year. High summer, maybe, but the war will be met by then. Winter gives the advantage of frozen rivers to travel on, but the mountain passes are too snowy. And spring means rotten snow, rotten ice, avalanches, no young crops to replenish supplies with …”

“But it's in spring we'll travel.” There's approval in Chekov's voice; Ivanova has listened and learned, and he is rightfully proud. “The army marches within the week.”

“If I were a boy, I would ride with them.” This is almost a question: Ivanova knows it's true, or that it would be, at least, if they did not march across western Khazar and the entirety of Echon to meet their war. Even a son might be kept in reserve on such a long tour of duty, and sent to skirmishes within Khazar for his blooding.

“The imperatrix has never ridden to war. Don't count yourself a failure for not doing so yourself. You have as fine a grasp of battlefield tactics as any I've ever taught, and will be the better ruler for it,” Chekov says with such conviction she can't doubt him, but she does make one argument.

“As any you've ever taught who hasn't seen battle.”

Chekov tips his head, acknowledgment that her point is a valid one. Ivanova touches a fingertip to the head of one of her toy soldiers, and asks a serious question: “Do I need to?”

The old general's silence is answer enough, though he fills it with words after a moment. “Not in this war. There will be enough battles closer to home for you to fight.”

“And will you let me fight them?” Neither of them mean
fight
in the way of expecting the imperator's female heir to be on the battlefield with a sword and shield. Ivanova knows which end of a sword to hold, and has been taught the rudimentaries of defending herself with a knife, but she isn't a warrior and doesn't fancy herself to be.

Chekov's silence once more says what words needn't, but again he does her the honour of honesty. “I would. My fellow officers will be more reluctant.” A smile ghosts over his grey-bearded face, and he adds, “But you'll be imperatrix someday, and they won't be able to refuse you.”

“Because I'll be able to do as I like.” Ivanova grins back, then impulsively
steps around the war table to give the old man a hug. “Live for me, General. You've guided me through childhood better than my father might have. I'll need your guidance when I'm grown, too.”

Chekov folds a hand at her head and presses his mouth to her hair, the small gesture all she needs of a promise from him. And she, safe and warm in his arms, hopes that what she plans to do will not break the old general's heart.