The Pretender's Crown (5 page)

Rodrigo the prince sat beside a low-banked fire, swathed in black, his dark head lifted from a curved hand as though surprise had taken him from grief. Very much as though: water, silver as Javier's power, shone on his cheeks and glinted in his beard, and astonishment made sorrow all the more haggard.

Bewilderment sparked under Javier's skin, the witchpower feeling as though it would burn through him. He and Rodrigo stared at each other, both speechless, until sense leapt through Javier's mind and reversed the story, giving him understanding where none had been before. The ship: he would have been seen, despite his efforts,
at the docks in Lutetia, and storms had brought his ship to port many days late. It was not Rodrigo the city mourned, but the only heir to its throne. Relief turned itself to a kind of tight laugh in Javier's throat, and he flew the last few steps across the room to bury his head against his uncle's thigh.

“I've come,” he whispered. “I'm well. All is well, uncle. The ocean did not take the ship. My God, I thought it was you they flew the banners for, my lord. I feared the worst.”

Rodrigo's hand stirred his hair, but it was another voice, one with a lifetime's familiarity, one that did not at all belong in Isidro, one that was laden with pain, that spoke. “I'm sorry, Jav,” said Marius Poulin. “I'm so sorry.”

The silver rage inside him went dull with incomprehension, so flat and wet it seemed to Javier a pool of molten fear, waiting to be poured into the shape that it would hold for the rest of his life. He raised his head, feeling Rodrigo's fingers fall away, and turned his gaze, by increments, toward the tousle-haired youth who had been his friend since childhood. Marius, who had all unknowing introduced a viper to their nest, but to whom the blame could not be given, for it was Javier who had accepted Belinda Primrose into their midst, and who had then stolen her from Marius. Stolen her and her golden witchpower, and gentle Marius had forgiven his prince for it, as he had forgiven all trespasses against him in all their years of friendship.

Marius, who could not be there but who stood in a corner some feet away from the door, well out of Javier's line of sight as he'd made his extravagant entrance. Another man stood beside him, a handsome one, but Marius's presence needed explanation beyond any questions Javier had about the stranger.

“It's the queen,” Marius whispered miserably. “It's your mother, Jav. It's Sandalia. She's dead ten days since, poisoned from a cup she thought safe. I'm sorry, my king. I am so sorry.”

Tomas del'Abbate knows his God to be a kind one. God is kind, for He has offered Tomas, the bastard son of a Primo, a true calling in
the church. God has also granted their father enough interest in his offspring to have kept their mother in a proud style; this is far more than other children of the church's princes have been given, and Tomas supposes that it is his father's dedication and piety that makes the Almighty Father wish to watch over his family in particular. Tomas, the only boy, has been educated in fine schools, taught doctrine and faith by his father, and has in truth never wanted for anything.

God is kind in that He has made fine matches for Tomas's three sisters, most especially Paola, the youngest and by far the most lovely. Her eyes are astonishing: the usual earthy brown seen in Parnan faces has been drained away, leaving gold in its place, so that her gaze is always bright with sunrise.

Tomas, like Paola, is a youth of what he is told is considerable beauty. He is torn on that flattery: false modesty is unbecoming, and vanity a sin. He's a child of wealth, and as such has been lent the opportunity to stand long hours before unblemished mirrors, not in womanly and weak self-admiration, but seeking truth in the lines of his face. Yes: he is handsome, or perhaps even more than handsome, but he takes pride only in his sister's comeliness, and not in his own. God has seen fit to touch him with it, and it is unseemly to revel or take advantage of a heavenly gift.

But it is in part because of that beauty that he has been sent to Isidro. Rodrigo, prince of Essandia, is not too old to father children, and the Pappas of the Ecumenic church hopes that a youth such as Tomas will remind the prince of his duty to the throne and to the church. Rodrigo must wed and father an heir to ensure Cordula will never lose its grip on the warm westerly country. The Pappas does not consider Javier de Castille, prince of Gallin and Rodrigo's nephew, a safe enough contender. One country is enough for any king to manage.

Unless, of course, that king is the King of Heaven, who speaks to His flock through the Pappas, who must therefore exert control over the Echonian continent in God's name, and in any way he can.

So Tomas, guided by the Pappas and by God's will, has left Cordula, his sisters, and his studies, and has come to Isidro to stand before a prince as both confessor and reminder of that prince's duties.

He has, these past few months, argued scripture and has heard royal confessions; has prostrated himself on marble floors and worshipped with a passion that burns through him so brightly that he wonders how he does not come alight with it, and set all the world on fire.

He has also, now that he is beyond Cordula, come to recognise that the admiring gazes that fall his way are not only for his knowledge. While he has no desire to pursue those gazes into satisfying carnal needs, he is shyly (if not secretly, for God knows all of his thoughts) delighted by them. His ambitions have ever only been to serve his church and his God. To be granted the chance to do so in such a wondrous and worldly way is a gift beyond his imagination. Yes, God is kind, and his beautiful son is humbled and grateful from the depths of his heart.

God, though, has not prepared him for the surging presence that is the young prince of Gallin.

There are terrible rumours afoot, rumours barely more than alluded to by Marius Poulin, friend to Javier de Castille and bearer of tragic tidings. Javier flees Gallin and his mother is dead within a day: the two things sit poorly beside each other, even to Tomas's unsophisticated eyes. Javier, after all, is young and meant to be a king, and Sandalia is—was—still in her prime, unlikely to abdicate. Unlikely in the extreme, for even schooled in church learnings and not in the ways of politics or queens, Tomas knows that there is an old and bitter rivalry between the female monarchs of Aulun and Gallin. All of Echon understands that, though the words are never spoken aloud or set down on paper, Sandalia has never intended to rest until Lorraine has lost her throne.

And yet Javier has come into this room—burst into it in a manner more literal and frightening than Tomas has ever seen—clearly expecting to see his royal uncle lying dead, which is against all sense if his hand guided Sandalia toward death. Perhaps the prince is a consummate actor, for his next thoughts, as played on the stage an astonished Tomas watches, are full of terrible apology for frightening others over the status of his own life. It might be play-acted, yes, but to embrace such reversal of emotion so desperately does not smack of lies to the quiet Cordulan priest.

There is something in the air around the prince, a presence more
palpable than anything Tomas has felt from Rodrigo, and Rodrigo is not a man to be taken lightly. Javier takes up more space than his slender frame allows; more than Rodrigo; more, even, than the Pap-pas. The Pappas bears God with him at all times, and yet even without Javier's gaze on him, without Javier's awareness of him at all, Tomas is more awed by the young prince's strength than he has ever been by the Pappas.

It comes to him very clearly, the thought: either Javier has been touched by God Himself, or he is the devil's child.

And then Marius speaks, shares dreadful news, and Javier turns from his uncle with a tide of rage rising in his eyes. Silver rage, silver eyes, making the ginger-haired, pale-skinned prince Tomas's opposite in all ways.

Another clear thought comes to him in the instant before furious, inexplicable power blasts him.
I am lost
, he thinks, and everything he knows beyond that is pain and breathlessness and blackness.

Beatrice had asked if using his gifts had awakened a desire within him to dominate. Javier, standing over Marius's still form, over the slumped shape of a beautiful priest, recalled the question and his mocking, dismissive response with cold anguish.
No
, he wanted to say to her now.
No, not domination, but destruction.
Destruction came of the unchartered use of his power: two men lay at his feet to prove it, and two more lay beyond the shattered door.

But Beatrice had been Belinda, and nothing at all of what he thought she was. Nor, indeed, was Javier what he believed himself to be: a prince in control, hiding his cursed magic, a creature alone in the world. Now he was a king, and moreover a king who had shown his hand to another monarch, and shown it against his childhood friend, whose life was as dear to him as his own. Marius could be trusted; Marius had spoken of Javier's weighty will naturally, as if it was to be expected of royalty, and now he lay unmoving under that will's lashing strength.

“The priest had better not be dead.” Rodrigo's voice cut through Javier's thoughts, getting a flinch out of him.

“The priest. What about Marius?” Foolish words, pushing away the inevitable: refusing the admission of what he'd done. Javier's knees wouldn't bend, wouldn't lower him to check Marius for a pulse.

Rodrigo came to Javier's side, scowling, not an expression of anger or fear: it was too controlled for that, too examining. Javier read nothing in his uncle's gaze, and set his jaw against giving the Essandian prince anything to read in his own.

No: he searched for one thing, after all. He sent a whisper of witchpower, of profound will, to test Rodrigo's. The magic came from somewhere, and for Belinda, it had come from her father Robert. If there was a glimmer of such power within Rodrigo, all of Javier's fears and hopes would be answered. King and prince, for Essandia called its monarch a prince, met ferocious gazes a few long seconds, and it was Javier whose shoulders slumped as he looked away.

Strength of will reigned within Rodrigo, as it must. Strength of will and of vision, as any ruler who sat on the throne as many decades as Rodrigo had done must have. His word was law and none would stand against it, but they would bow and buckle because of his position and their awareness of it, not because witch-power fueled it and made his desire impossible to refuse. Rodrigo bore no magic; no gift tied him to his nephew in ways ordinary men could ever fathom. Javier might have rolled his uncle's will and taken his country in that moment, had it been his wish. It was not; it never would be.

Not
, whispered a hateful voice of truth, not unless Rodrigo should try to cast him aside, or have him burned, or in any way threaten him. Javier had exposed his hand and now must play it. He had survived a lifetime of denying his own fears, and cool silver certainty told him that he would not now permit someone else's to damn him.

“You're not surprised,” Rodrigo said softly. “You've destroyed our Aulunian oak doors and knocked two men senseless, and yet you are not surprised.”

“Four men,” Javier said dully. “The guards outside the door. I have never done this before, but no. I am not surprised.”
We
, he
thought; he was a king now, and should use
we
when he spoke of himself. “And you are not afraid.”

Acknowledgment flickered in Rodrigo's eyes, notice that Javier had forgone any kind of honorific and called Rodrigo “you,” as though they stood on equal ground. Whether it was daring or not caring, or perhaps simply an assumption of his rights, Javier felt uncertain. The idea of his mother's death was in most ways beyond him, only a few cold pieces of meaning slipping through still-boiling silver power allowing him to make choices and move onward.

“My sister is dead. I may have no room for fear left in me.” Rodrigo's gaze shifted to the men on the floor and he muttered a curse. “Unless the priest is dead, in which case you will have far more to answer to than the simple
how
of what has happened.” He knelt, unceremoniously pushing Marius off the priest. Marius's cheek slid onto the cold stone floor and he groaned.

Relief swept Javier and he, too, knelt, pulling his brother in all but blood into his arms and mumbling an apology over him. “What does the priest matter? He's pretty, but I didn't think your tastes ran that way.” No sooner had he spoken than he regretted it, catching his tongue between his teeth.

Rodrigo gave him a look that said once, only once, and only because Sandalia was dead, would he be forgiven such crudity. “His name is Tomas del'Abbate, and he is the bastard son of Primo Ab-bate, who will in all likelihood be the next Pappas. Abbate is very fond of the boy, and we none of us want to make an enemy of the church's leadership.”

“Jav.” Marius turned his face against Javier's chest with a weary smile, then stiffened and pushed away, memory all too obviously coming back to him. Javier knotted his hands, trying not to reach out in supplication and a hope of forgiveness. The air in the room went still, not just with Marius's sudden wariness, but with Rodrigo's tense anticipation as he turned his attention from the priest to the two wakeful young men. Javier recognised the flavour of waiting: it tasted of the moments before a fencing bout was met; tasted, he thought, of what the seconds before war broke out must taste of. Danger lay all around them, a presence of its own. Shielding
magic surged, briefly illuminating the room in witchpower, and for that moment, Javier understood.

Rodrigo
was
afraid. Afraid on more than one level: afraid of Javier's inexplicable magic, afraid of the priest's death, afraid of Marius's response. Afraid, at the end, of losing a nephew as well as a sister, and so each of those fears mounted the other until the last was all-consuming. There would be a price to pay later: the narrow hard lines around his uncle's mouth told Javier that much, but for now, the Essandian prince would neither show fear nor allow harm to come to the young Gallic king.