The Pretender's Crown (10 page)

As suddenly, a third point made a line. The night Dmitri visited Robert at his Aulunian estates had been the first and only time in her youth that Belinda had called the witchpower to life. With his nearness, she had awakened to the ability to draw shadows around herself, and had stood boldly before two grown men, eavesdropping and unseen.

Witchpower ambition flared, kindled desire, and spilled through her as golden fire. Abandoning caution, Belinda stalked forward, pressing herself close to Dmitri and lacing her fingers in his hair. “You.”

The low command in her own voice was unfamiliar. Wantonness, subservience, yes; those things she could call on at any moment, and use them to manipulate and guide the men around her. She
could
command; she had proven that to herself with sweet biddable Marius and with the less tractable Viktor, but even so, she didn't expect to hear demand in her words, particularly when she spoke to a man of Dmitri's easy, arrogant self-confidence.

Even less did she expect the way his eyes widened and his chin lifted, giving her a show of throat that seemed as against his grain as issuing orders lay against hers. Incongruity struck him as obviously as it did her, and he froze, expression caught between consternation and acquiescence. She had won: certainty thrilled within her, tightening her belly and nipples and making a pool of heat between her thighs. He might struggle with it, fight against her, offering up delicious challenge, but she had already won, by being nothing more than what she was. That knowledge settled over her like a cloak, foreign and strange and unexpectedly comfortable.

“Dark prince.” Belinda spoke against his throat, her lips finding his pulse. “I know you, Dmitri. I have known you since I was a girl, and I am weary of playing the part of the unschooled child. You will teach me what my father has not. You must. Your presence awakens power in me, dark prince. I have been waiting for you.”

Ambition flared in him, not the clarity of language she'd learned to steal from Javier and Marius, but profoundly recogniseable regardless. Emotion wasn't bound to weak words: it ran deeper than that, and whatever witchpower talents Dmitri had, they were not enough to mask his thirst for conquest. She was a dichotomy to
him, a creature caught between being worthy of veneration, and simply being desired as any woman might be. Not for the first time, with his body pressed against hers, she thought that a man's own weapons were the best to use against him, and so when she spoke again it was with more sexual hunger, and less burning command.

“You wanted me, in Khazar. Had you time, you said. I was almost naked then, ready for taking. Do you like that more, Dmitri, or do you like me as I am, trussed in a sister's robes, innocent and unworldly? I like this, I think.” She touched her tongue to his earlobe, then bit hard, and knotted her hand at his nape when he jerked violently.

“I like this,” she murmured again. “Then, I might have welcomed you, spread my legs and cried in pleasure, but here my abbess stands just beyond the door, waiting to see if her daughter needs her strength or guidance to face a man. Perhaps I'll scramble, naked, for that door, full of silent sobs for my shame and fear, and you'll pull me back and have me like a dog. You will put your hand over my mouth to keep me from crying out, and I, struggling for breath, will fold and bend to your will… ah!” She caught his wrist as he brought his hand up, denying him the leverage to tear her novice's robes. “I'll play at your game, but we must not give the abbess cause to think me abused at your hands,
Father.
And if that's a game you like we'll play it, too, darling papa, but the part of me that is not your innocent sister knows men, and I will have my pleasure before you are given yours.”

He was taller than she, much taller, but went to his knees with surprising willingness when her fingertips on his shoulders directed him there. She stepped back, aware of an edge of cruelty at leaving him to follow, but the witchpower that rode her both exulted at the freedom of making a man come to her, and whispered that it was no more than his due: God knew she'd crawled to enough men in her life. And besides, when she found the table's edge to lean against, and dropped her robes around her ankles, follow he did, and ended with his tongue and fingers in her cleft and little hint, even with her witchpower-laced awareness, of resentment. Too aware of the ancient nun outside the door, Belinda bit her hand to keep silent as deft skill and willingness brought her to come with more
speed than she had often known. Power broke in her with climax, silent golden tide overwhelming her senses for long seconds. It had been mere weeks, and still too long, with hungry magic in her veins. When she shivered herself to full consciousness again Dmitri still knelt, watching her now; it was not the action she might have expected from the man. He might have thought their bargain met, and flipped her on her belly to have her on the table before she made thoughts or words again.

“Stay.” Her fingers were still in his hair, as though she would put him where she wanted him, but even she heard the plea in the throaty word, no more command or witchpower riding it. “My dark prince, stay a while and be tender and give me more. My need is not yet met.” Trembles shook her from the core, a cry for pleasure to continue unabated.

“I have more to teach you than to squirm and cry out beneath my tongue.” He had not, she realised, spoken since she'd recognised him, and the sardonic quality of his voice was not at all lessened by the cup he'd drunk from. “I think perhaps you'll be more eager for lessons if I leave you now,
daughter
, and do not return until I've secured safe quarters for you beyond these cold grey walls.”

Shock coursed over her, tightening her belly and breasts all over again. “You can't.”

“Can't what?” Dmitri stood, gaze suddenly bright with amusement and the awareness that such humour was callous. “Can't take you beyond the abbey? I can by daylight, most certainly, though perhaps I'll have to return you to this prison at night, as your red-haired queen has seen fit to ensconce you here, and she may have worthy reasons. No matter. Cold nights alone in your little cell should make you glad enough for morning to bring me to your side.” Challenge crept into his eyes, darkening them again, and his voice dropped lower, more sensual and more dangerous. “Or do you mean I cannot walk away from your desires? Perhaps I can't. Would you like to wield your power and see? Do you believe you can roll my will as easily as you did a foppish boy's, or a lustful guard's?”

Memory cascaded over Belinda, the inexorable line of her father's will, and the way Javier's had broken against it, sand castles
dashed against glass. And she herself had fallen beneath Javier's power, that externally focused desire, so different from the stillness she'd developed. Dmitri would be more like Robert, and she too fragile to stand against either.

Aware, very aware, that she still stood exposed, and finding a kind of strength in it, Belinda took a slow breath, and on it warned, “Someday I will be able to, dark prince.”

Dmitri's gaze slid down her body, taking in the changes made as she breathed in, then came back to her eyes with no more hint of laughter. “Aye, so you will, and on that day I'll kneel before you and be your vehicle for delight until needs you've never known you had are sated.” His eyebrows quirked upward. “Until then, I suggest you dress yourself so we might face your abbess with our happy reunion and make arrangements to spend time together outside the convent walls.”

Chagrined, Belinda did as she was told.

14 February 1588
†
A village of Alania, in northeastern Essandia

Seolfor, inexplicably, is not there.

It is unquestionably the right village, though its name is of little enough importance that Robert has never learned it. He recognises faces who were children when last he visited, faces that now have children of their own. He recognises a handful of remaining elders, and one of them, a man who must be in his nineties by now, ancient indeed by human standards, recognises Robert in return. They do not speak; they never have spoken, but this is a small village and strangers are remembered. That the old man nods a greeting is enough; even if Robert thought his own memory faulty, oddly, he trusts the elder's.

He passed through last night, in hours small enough to not yet be morning, even if the clock had struck twelve and begun anew. No farmers were up, save one he heard from a distance, tending to a cow bellowing with pain. Dawn had been a long way off, and Seolfor lived on the southern edge of the little town, far enough away that he only belonged to it by proxy, and because there was no
other village farther on to claim him. Robert had taken no time to examine the township; it was only after discovering his third to be missing that he retraced his steps to make certain the village was the right one. Now, too surprised to be angry, he stands arms akimbo and looks around the village square as though an answer, or better still, Seolfor, might appear.

“You're looking for the white one,” says the old man.

Robert turns to blink at him, hesitating in answering because he's uncertain he understood the words. They speak a different dialect in this part of the world, almost a different language, and while Robert's Essandian is flawless, he's had far less encounter with Alanian. “I am,” he says after a moment. “Do you know where he is?”

“Forty years.” The old man swings his head from side to side, almost a scold. “It has been forty years, or nearly, since you've come, and you think oh, the old man, he'll know where the white one's gone. Forty years is a long time, queen's man. In forty years your friend might be dead.”

Robert says “No,” because the other thing he might say is too tongue-tangled, too astonished. It's only a moment before he does say it, of course, because Robert Drake is unaccustomed to being genuinely surprised, and toothless nonagenarian village peasants are among the last he would think could surprise him. “Queen's man?”

The old man does that head-swing again, and for the second time Robert feels scolded. Robert can't remember the last time he was scolded, even by Lorraine. She has a knack for putting him in his place, yes, but that has a different aura to it. He finds a smile fighting for exposure at the corner of his mouth, perversely pleased by the old man's audacity.

“They're rheumy, you think, the old man's eyes are rheumy, filmed with blue and thick with age, but eyes aren't the only way to see. I saw it when you came here the first time, and the second, and the mark is stronger on you now. You serve no king.”

“It's true.” Intrigued now, Robert comes to crouch before the old fellow. He's sitting on a stump in the morning light, his village spread around him as though he's a king himself. A staff weights one hand, and his knuckles are gnarled and heavy around it. He was a big man once, near to Robert's size, and though the years have
taken as much breadth as hair from him, there's still a hint of muscle in arms lined with flab. “Does it matter who I serve?”

“Pah.” The old man turns his head and spits. “We in the mountains bow our heads to no one. What do I care if you choose a king or a queen, when what matters is you honour a crown.” His gaze, rheumy indeed, narrows. “But a queen's man here means war's on the way.”

“Does it?” Robert is accustomed to the people of this world unfolding their thoughts to him all unknowing. A few do not: royalty, largely; people who have learned to protect themselves in every aspect, for betrayal is so easy to invite. Children hurt very young: he has met a handful of those who are walled up and whose thoughts are not his to sip. They have perfect counterparts, others hurt in just the same ways, who bleed all their thoughts and hopes and fears over everything, emotionally exhausting. Most, though, most humans, are easy to steal a thought from here and there. Even Belinda, unexpectedly, has learned that trick.

This village elder is one who cannot be easily read. It's age that's done it in him, age and practise and guile, Robert would say; this is an old man who has learned charm and cleverness and can still flirt with the young girls without making them cringe, for what he's after is a bit of cheese or some fresh cream, and he's willing to barter it with a story or a pretty word. He's the sort of man Robert thinks he'd like, if he were given to the luxury of liking people. Mostly, though, he doesn't allow himself that indulgence, because human lives are brief, and his purpose much longer and greater than any of their transient appearances on this world.

And when he fails, when he learns to like and to love, it is almost always a woman who is his weakness. The titian queen of Aulun is one such, but in this moment it's Ana di Meo's dark eyes and rich colouring that comes to mind. There was a too-dear price paid for that fondness, too dear for all involved. Robert is not a man made for regrets, but a deep cut lies across his heart in that matter.

He puts the thought away deliberately, bringing his full attention back to the elder, whose head is now bobbling as he produces a toothless grin and waits on Robert's mindfulness. “It does,” he says when he's sure he's got it. “You carry war on your wide shoulders
and in your heart.” He leans forward and taps Robert on the chest, confirming Robert's thought that there's strength in him yet. “I can
see
it,” the old man proclaims, then cants a suspicious eye. “Do you think I'm mad?”

“I think when the eyes cloud the mind learns other ways to see,” Robert says with utter honesty. When the eyes cloud, or when the body is weak, needs must, and while the people of this world rarely have such need, Robert believes in those few who have the second sight and avoids them. He places a hand on the old man's shoulder, a comrade's touch, then straightens so that his shadow falls and blocks sunlight from the man's eyes. “You're too old for war, grandfather. It'll be your grandson's children who go to fight. Let its thought pass you by.”

Acerbically the old man says, “Said like a man with no grandchildren. Leave our village, and take your war with you. Your white friend left before the winter. Went west and south, he said, to go north and east. Follow him, and leave us be.”