The Pretender's Crown

JAVIER DE CASTILLE, KING OF GALLIN

22 June 1588 † The Brittanic battlefields

Javier had hardly believed Rodrigo would arrive in time. In time, as though the Essandian prince's fragment of an army could break the Khazarians' backs, as though there was some terrible and wonderful difference another eight thousand men could make to their cause. Javier had let almost all of his magic go when Rodrigo's troops did finally come over the hill, not because they deserved less of his protection, but because he was only barely on his feet, and permitting someone else to take the brunt of the allied attack was the only way to retain consciousness for the night's remainder.

Rodrigo himself rode up the hill with the last rays of sunset behind him, making a tall beautiful slim line of masculinity against golden shadows. Javier saw Belinda's power in that colour, then bared his teeth and shoved the thought away: she was out there, but not to make Rodrigo of Essandia look heroic as he gave the Cor-dulan armies a modicum of hope.

Akilina rode with him, evidently free, until Rodrigo dismounted and strode to his wife, lifting her from her horse. There was stiffness in his movements, speaking of an injury, but he was gentle with Akilina, and as he set her on the ground Javier saw the ropes that bound her wrists. Red scrapes said she'd been wearing them a while now.

“Surely,” Javier said with all the steadiness at his command, “this is unnecessary, uncle.”

Anger flashed in Rodrigo's eyes, and with it Javier's intuition leapt: the anger was for binding his wife, not for Javier's question. “The generals will have it no other way. It seems they doubt an army's ability to keep one single woman under watch without subjecting her to such indignities.” He put an arm around Akilina's waist, steadying her as they went into Javier's tent, where more of those generals waited to argue strategy and tactics and to make accusations of betrayal and perfidy. Javier stood where he was, swaying with the wind as it wrapped him, and gave half an ear to the arguments already rising in the tent.

There was nothing new to them-there would be nothing new. They were old women gnawing at old bones, trying to find marrow that had long since been sucked away. Blame was flung about as though it were a cannonball itself, its weight crushing where it couldn't be deflected. Low anger, tainted with silver, rumbled in Javier's belly, and he stood waiting for the inevitable phrase that would push him into action. He would wait until then, would wait until emotion ran so high that the witchpower could simply seize it and direct it as he wished, and if that was a sin against God, so be it.

Javier closed his eyes and listened to the mounting debate in the tent, and repeated those words to himself: so be it. He was king, he was God's chosen, he was blessed-or cursed; it no longer mattered which-with the witchpower, and between Tomas's faith and his own need, Javier de Castille no longer gave much concern to whether God approved of his decisions. Better to be damned trying to save souls than in not acting.

A bitter laugh coughed up from his chest, a thick wet sound. Sacha would be proud. Finally, Sacha would get the ambitious liege-lord he had always wanted.

Someone inside the tent snapped, “Rumour from Lutetia is that Akilina herself poisoned Sandalia's cup.”

Javier lifted his chin, opened his eyes to watch the fading horizon, and waited a little longer. Not much longer now. Anticipation strengthened and excited the witchpower, though it seemed that all such emotion belonged to the magic, not to himself. There was only the nausea of dreaded necessity in his own thoughts, the discomfort of determination. It would be better to revel in the witch-power's enthusiasm, and perhaps later he could. Too much lay at stake now to enjoy his choices.

Rodrigo, so softly, said, “I would not say such things if I were you,” to the offending general, but another voice took up the first officer's cry.

“First Sandalia dead and now the Khazarian army our betrayers, and Akilina Pankejeff a very common link, your majesty.” The honorific was a tag weighted with sarcasm, questioning Rodrigo's worthiness to bear it. Javier closed one hand into a slow fist, waiting, still waiting. Witchpower anger began seeping through him, heating resolution into passion.

A third took up the call. All of them were voices Javier knew, men he could put names to without seeing their faces. Men who ought to have been more unquestioningly loyal, and who ought not dream of saying what this one did: “The woman's well-known in Khazar as a witch, Rodrigo, and she's naught but bad luck to all of us here. There's a sure answer to this problem in the sharp of my sword.”

There: there were the words Javier had waited on. He heard breath catch in every throat in the cloth-walled room, and demanded, without speaking himself, that no word be said. Half a beat later he threw open the tent doors and stalked inside, all of it so quick he might not have needed witchpower to stay their voices. Might not have, and yet he flexed it, uncaring of the right or wrong in using magic to silence objections. “We will hear no threats of a queen's neck on a cutting block. We have lost enough royal blood already and are not eager to lose more. Akilina is not the problem here.”

Emotion so strong it might have been his own rose up in all the men and the solitary woman in the room. It was sweltering inside the canvas walls, torches thickening the air as they offered light, and the night was already warm. Coupled with outrage, with disbelief, with insult, and with a soprano relief over all that masculine fury, the heat poured sickness into Javier. It sprang out as cold sweat on his lip and clogged his throat. For a terrible moment he thought he would lose all control and become a fool in front of half-rebellious generals. He could not let that happen.

Witchpower answered that need, all of its anger turning cool and soothing. It coated his insides and spilled outward, lending him strength and a confidence bordering on eroticism. He would have his way, and the thought gave him the same comfort and delight he'd felt in raining blood on his enemies.

“Akilina is a charm, nothing more, a thing dangled in front of Essandia in order to give the Khazarian alliance a pretty face. She hasn't the power to reforge that alliance, and if you made use of your minds instead of retreating into childish fears of witches you would know that. Only Irina could have made the decision to ally Khazar with Aulun at this late hour. Our navy is crushed and now Khazar stands with Aulun on Echon's western border. Irina could not have foreseen the armada's defeat.” That much, at least, Javier was certain of: none of them had foreseen it, and even if he'd known Belinda's powers were increasing, he'd never have fathomed they'd grown to such devastating effect. Irina Durova couldn't have known the Cordulan navy would suffer such a loss.

He left a silence, both to gather his thoughts and to lend weight to what he'd said, and no one broke it. Silver magic told him no one could, that witchpower held the generals' tongues even as they fought for speech. Hands planted on the map table, Javier levelled his gaze toward men resentful but unable to stop listening. “She couldn't foresee it, but I think we face a tactician more talented than any of us had realised. There was always a chance, however small, that the navy might fall. Irina didn't send a man to strike a bargain with Aulun after the armada. He would have been there, waiting for word to offer the Red Bitch the alliance she's always wanted.

“Sixty thousand of Irina's army are already here, and as many again remain in Khazar. She has Echon in the palm of her clawed hand, and Aulun at her side. These two queens need only break our back here in Brittany and then they'll move across Echon in their own names and for their own heathen gods. Gentlemen, we have been outplayed by women, and I will not have it.

“In the morning we will bring our army back together, regardless of the cost. God has offered me a blessing and I'll turn what small talent I have toward easing our reunion pangs, but it will be your skill, generals, that will win the day. The combined Cordulan armies are a formidable force, even in the face of the Khazarian alliance. Reuniting our men will give them heart, which I deem more valuable than any flanking tactics we might manage to manoeuvre out of our current positions. Our armies will be one, and then with our strength united and God's mandate driving us on, we will defeat Aulun and drive Khazar back to her frozen northlands, and Echon will for once and all bend knee to Cordula's church!”

The uproarious agreement came so quickly and with such pleasure that it might have been born of honest emotion, rather than relief at finally being able to speak, rather than Javier's implacable willpower directing them toward cooperation. This was an easier battle than with Tomas, if it was a battle at all: these were men who wanted a fight, though they might not have chosen it in the manner Javier did. There were objections, but they came in the form of how best to implement his plans, not inherent opposition to what he demanded. Javier sat down, fingers steepled, and watched old men bicker over strategy as they rushed to do his will.

Out of them, Rodrigo remained silent, watching Javier. His opinion was a note in the crowd, a sentiment that stood out more clearly than the others. There was pride in the Essandian prince, but more, there was curiosity, and Javier didn't need clearer thoughts to know his uncle wondered if the generals acted of their own accord or his. In time Javier met his eyes and shrugged a shoulder; it didn't, in the end, matter, and Rodrigo pursed his lips before giving an acknowledging shrug. Only then did he get to his feet and go to Akilina, taking a blade to cut apart the ropes that bound her wrists.

Though her hands must have been numb, she gathered her skirts as she stood and made a curtsey toward Javier: thanks, he knew, for distracting the generals and sparing her life-as much thanks as he was likely to get from a woman unaccustomed to subservience. He tipped his head toward the door. The Essandian queen was better off out of sight, and Rodrigo quietly offered her an elbow. They left together under the cover of arguments, a royal pair too unimportant to notice.