The Pretender's Crown (65 page)

Indeed, Robert does, and Ana di Meo's whispered warning flashes back to him across the months and across her death:
Belinda is lonely, my lord, and almost nothing else matters
. Belinda was lonely, and Sacha Asselin was a friend to Beatrice Irvine. That, then, explains it all, and gives Robert a measure of horror: Belinda has become soft, if that young lord's death drew her up that badly. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he says aloud, and Javier smirks, ugly expression on his thin features.

“As are we all. My lord Drake, we have captured your holy avatar, and we are inclined to keep her as our guest until Aulun surrenders. We are,” the young king says, and manages to sound as dry as Lorraine, “willing to accept that surrender now, and save ourselves the trouble of riding back and forth under truce.”

“Perhaps your majesty would be willing to consider a ransom instead,” Robert says, but his heart isn't in the negotiation. In fact, he has no real idea of what he's just said, because the king's vocal inflections have opened a window in Robert's mind. He stares at Javier de Castille and sees in him the young Aulunian queen, her titian hair long and loose over her shoulders and her thin grey eyes full of pride and wit. Javier hasn't the widow's peak that graces Lorraine's hairline, or Robert might have seen it immediately, but the
truth is, Lorraine's features sit better on a man's face than on her own: he's a more handsome boy than she ever was a woman.

If it were within Robert Drake's power, he would retrieve Dmitri Leontyev from the grave so he might take the pleasure of killing him again. Heat stains his face, and Robert doesn't remember the last time he blushed. His hands are cold on the warhorse's reins, and it's only a lifetime's worth of habit that keeps him calm and solid in his seat. He can
—-just
—forgive himself for not seeing it, because he's only met Javier once, and that under unfortuitous circumstances. But he should have known. He should have known, and he did not, and that means Robert Drake has been out-played.

Javier has dismissed the idea of a ransom and is waiting for Robert to name an outrageous ransom fee that Javier will take under consideration and ride back to the Ecumenic camp with. Right now, though, Robert can't name a price he wouldn't pay just for the chance to face Belinda and learn how much of this game she was aware of when she came to war. For a rash moment he actually considers surrendering just to achieve that end.

But no, Lorraine would stare incredulously if he did capitulate, and it would in no way serve his queen beyond the stars, and so what he says is ill-considered, but at least it's not a surrender: “I think my Primrose knows, but do you, or has she kept that secret from you, king of Gallin?”

The skin around Javier's eyes tightens, so fine a wrinkling that if Robert had not spent thirty years and more bedding the queen of Aulun he might not have seen or recognised it at all. These mortals learn much from their surroundings, but can do nothing about the form they're given. Though it's stretched across an unknown mind, this face is so familiar it cannot lie: Javier knows that he's Robert's son and Belinda's brother, and if Javier knows, Belinda's the one who's told him.

And that, Robert should think, means they've built an alliance in the shadows, and her capture is not a capture at all, but a deliberate retreat on her part. Only one reason carries enough weight: the child Belinda's carrying, which she has not yet confided in her father about.

Oh, yes, he's been out-played, and to his surprise, he's delighted.

He's known Belinda is clever, but he never imagined she might be a worthy opponent. She was meant to be a tool, not to put pieces on the board herself and set them into action.

Javier has expressed some sort of polite incomprehension, but Robert's no longer listening. Lorraine gave Belinda a cryptic order before sending the girl away, to take care of the matter they discussed. The Titian queen—the Red Bitch, Robert thinks both ruefully and lovingly—would have meant the pregnancy, would not have accepted a daughter with an illegitimate child. This, then, is Belinda's way of protecting the babe, and moreover, she intends on giving it over to Javier de Castille and his new bride, whom Robert would now wager is not pregnant and indeed can never be so.

It's a brilliantly insidious plan to gain the Gallic throne, and Robert is astonished Javier agreed to it. The child isn't
his:
that much Robert's sure of; Belinda's not round enough to be carrying Javier's child. The king must love her, Robert thinks, and the idea takes him aback. The Gallic king must love the girl he's married, if he's willing to go to this length to get a child with her and keep his throne.

He will have to send Seolfor, Robert decides; will have to put Seolfor into play at the Gallic court, so the witchpower child will be under some vestige of control. His other choice is to snatch Belinda back and keep her hidden from Lorraine until the baby's born, but in truth, Belinda's done a fine job of manipulating events herself. He'd applaud her for it if she were here, but he doubts he'll see his daughter again until the new year, when some kind of truce in the war will be negotiated in exchange for her return. That will do, even if he might personally want to face Belinda down; he needs the war to go on, and personal wishes must be subsumed beneath the greater plan.

His mouth is running without his thoughts behind it; he and Javier are snipping over surrenders and ransom, neither of them with any intention of giving in to the other. Robert raises his hand suddenly, cutting off the discussion. “Our beloved daughter remains safe in Alunaer,” he says coldly. “Keep this avatar if you wish. All of Aulun has faith that the queen of Heaven rides with us, and if one girl is captured by the damnable Cordulan forces, then when Belinda
is called to host the holy spirit again, another woman shall become her avatar here in Brittany.”

He wheels his horse, leaving a gaping Javier behind, and gallops back to the Aulunian camp grinning with delight.

Javier has gone to make treatise over a prisoner of war, and Tomas has turned to God for guidance. War has undone him in every way: the sound, the death, the rushing sand of time, all of it hissing forward with no chance to sleep, no chance to think. Hours and hours ago Javier sent him away with an order to never again think or speak on Eliza Beaulieu's unworthiness as a king's bride, and in all that time he's thought of nothing else. Rodrigo spent half the night rattling the camp with his new guns, and instead of studying them and exulting in their coming victory, Tomas's thoughts have strayed again to Eliza and Javier. Indeed, even now he should be praying for Sacha Asselin's soul, and instead he's on his knees begging God to let him be happy for Javier, to let him be happy that the young king has gotten himself an heir, a confidante, a wife, in the midst of war. God, it seems, isn't listening, because all Tomas is left with are heartbeats of envy mixed with pulses of sorrow.

He's the newcomer to their group, the one who has replaced one of their own; the one who has lived in that one's place, through a grace Tomas believes, sacrilegiously, is wholly Marius's, and none of God's. He cannot quite make himself believe that it was the Lord's will that Marius die in his place; he can't make himself believe at all that it was God's plan that Eliza should live. That was the witchpower at work, and not just Javier's, but the Aulunian woman's as well. She and Javier cannot both be blessed with God's gift, and so if Eliza lives, it's at the devil's bidding.

Which means Javier has bound himself to Hell in wedding Eliza Beaulieu, and that Tomas has failed in every way.

He feels that madness has come on him, a grief that tears up from the bottom of his soul with the intent to strangle him. His body is by turns cold and hot, his hands shaking even as they're pressed together in prayer. He has failed Javier and failed God, and he's no longer certain which distresses him more.

There is a way out, a terrible way out, and Tomas both shies from thinking on it and pursues it with all vigour. One more death, a death where God intended no life anyway, might turn Javier back to him, and save the king's soul besides. It's a sin, specifically against one of God's great commandments, but for Javier's sake Tomas must consider it. For Echon's sake, he must consider it: Eliza is an inappropriate bride, and the Parnan Caesar has daughters a-plenty to choose from.

Dread certainty fills his heart. Tomas lowers his gaze, whispers a thanks to God for showing him a clear path, and looks up once more to gather strength from the crucifix and the image of God's only son, whom He sacrificed out of love for Man.

A shaft of light spills through the tent, quick brilliance that says another has entered. It turns the jewel-encrusted cross to fire, and the ivory Son to blinding white, and there's an instant where an unusual and clear thought stands out in Tomas's mind: he ought not have knelt with his back to the door.

Then pain sets in, pain so astonishing it might be God's own touch, reached down from the heavens to grace His beautiful son. To burn him where he kneels, immolation in a moment of piety, but instead of God's face, instead of an angel lifting him to Heaven, Tomas feels a brush of lips against his ear, and hears a woman's voice whisper, “Sacha Asselin is dead, priest, and I have no other recourse to hold Javier's ear but to force him to turn to family. A pity. You were so lovely.”

He twists, spurring agony through his back, but he can't lift a hand to pull the knife away, nor to mark his murderer in any way. The earth's pull takes him, and he's falling clumsily, toppling backward as soothing blackness begins to overcome the pain, and the last thing in this world that Tomas del'Abbate sees is Akilina Pankejeff's razor smile fading into darkness.

4 July 1588
†
Brittany; the Gallic camp

Raging witchpower woke her half a breath before Javier's hand in her hair pulled her from the cot and flung her to the floor. Her own power lashed back and she tamped it, training far older than the magic making her small and vulnerable beneath a man's wrath. Instinct made her breathless, wide-eyed, lips parted with fear and excitement as she cowered as prettily as she knew how.

It was the wrong reaction: the wiser part of her knew that, knew she was better fighting than making herself pluckable, most especially in this place, with this man. But this was a game she'd been trained in since she was a child, and for a few seconds all she could do was gaze up at Javier de Castille in half-real terror and utter supplication.

He kicked her, which was unusual for a man superior to her. Even through a red burst of pain in her ribs Belinda was grateful: it helped shake her from her instincts. She rolled back, hiding under the cot, and dug her fingers into the ground, trying to drag her thoughts into a semblance of order. Trying, most especially, to neither make herself an object of desire nor to hit back with magic: there would be a reason for Javier's attack, and fighting back would only convince him he was right in whatever matter had infuriated him. Neither seductress nor witch—that left Belinda with nothing but the woman, and the role was a strange one to her.

Javier flipped the cot away and kicked her again, and this time Belinda screamed, shock as potent as pain. “What? What have I
done?”
That, at least, was born of honesty, not seduction, and helped bring her further from that place which, should Javier's mind clear enough to see it, would very likely end in Belinda's death. She would have no forgiveness for her wiles in his position, not even under the most serene of circumstances.

She scrambled back from another kick, and finally saw that tears streaked the king's face, marks as wild as the fury he indulged in. Belinda lurched to her feet and stumbled to the thrown cot's far side, trying to put something, regardless of how insubstantial, between herself and Javier. He'd been dry-eyed over Sacha, that wound too deep to bleed; this was something else. His magic felt shattered, streaked with black despair, and below his rage, despair boiled over. Impossible loss, so bleak it left a chasm in him; Belinda's heart spasmed in sympathy above her fear and confusion. “What's happened?”

A bolt of thunderous power slammed into her, barely deflected by golden witchpower that seemed to know better than she did that an attack was coming. A gasp knocked free of Belinda's lungs, the charge of shared magic with Javier as strong as it had ever been. She clenched her teeth against desire, refuting it; the magic wasn't stronger than she was, and base needs were things to be put away. There would be other men to satisfy herself with: this man would condemn her soul to Hell.

The next blow she caught more easily, and the next more easily still, until Javier lobbed magic at her with all the finesse of a screaming child, and she only stood deflecting his power as it gradually lost strength. She would not fight; would
not
, no matter the cost. In time Javier slumped, then fell to his knees and bent forward against the earth to scream out rage and frustration. Only then did Belinda gather her nerve and approach him, crouching to hover her hands above his back, not knowing if a touch would earn her another beating. “Is it Eliza?” Genuine fear broke her voice: she was certain her own life would be forfeit if Eliza Beaulieu was dead.