The Pretender's Crown (52 page)

“He died protecting—”

“Me,” the priest said thickly. “He died protecting me.”

“And I—” Only then did the fact of her well-being raise confusion in Eliza's voice. She made a fist at her belly, fingers clutching her bloody shirt as she searched for the injuries that should have taken her life. “Javier?” Confusion edged her voice toward panic. Emotion ran raw and red over all of them until Belinda wanted to weep with it, but her eyes were dry and hot, refusing tears. One hand dropped back to the earth, scraping dirt away, as though she might dig herself a grave to lie in and let the world's misery pass her by. Marius should not be dead; it was a cruelty not even she wanted to face.

“Belinda saved you.” Javier spoke with a terrible neutrality, so calm that Belinda knew he, too, could bear no more crushing emotion and only retained the edges of sanity by refusing to look at or believe what was going on around him. She could share his pain if she wanted to, reach out with witchpower and know what he felt, but instead pulled magic into herself and held it in as small and tight a knot as she could. Her own heart felt of nails driven into flesh each time it beat; she had no need to experience that same feeling in those around her.

Eliza's delicate beauty fell to pieces beneath tears reddening her eyes and streaking her face. The expression she turned on Belinda was mystified, so confused as to forget anger; that, Belinda had no doubt, would come soon enough.

She heard herself say, “Marius was too far away,” as though it would explain everything, and opened a hand in a plea for forgiveness. That was a betraying action, a weakness, and she ought not have permitted it. But the world had been turned awry, and it was months now since she'd hidden all the things she was meant to hide. Dull with grief, she turned her gaze on Javier. “I need to speak with you, king of Gallin, soon and in private.”

“Are you mad?” Eliza's despair turned to anger inside a heartbeat, so swift Belinda felt envy: she would give much to have a target to lash out at, a target such as she herself provided for Eliza and no doubt would for Javier. “You come here,
here
, after what you've done, and you think any of us will let you be alone with Javier? Why not cut his throat ourselves?” Her lovely face blotched as her eyes swelled with tears born as much from rage as sorrow. “Why not just let Sacha—” She broke then, sobs hiccuping through her speech.

Belinda lowered her gaze, acknowledging Eliza's rightness, then looked back at Javier. They were all still kneeling in the mud, kings and royal heirs and street rats alike, all of them brought low and made level by the one constant companion Belinda had known since her twelfth year. Death gave no quarter and no care, coming for all of them in its own time.

“Please,” she said, and wondered when the last time she'd said that word outside of playing a role had been. Not within easy
memory, and that may well have meant never at all. “You know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be, Javier.”

Javier whispered, “That name is not yours to call me by,” but there was no conviction in his anger, sorrow still too heavy upon him. “You will be my prisoner,” he said, and then, bitterly, “Can I keep you?” which, not long ago and asked another way, might have spasmed hope through Belinda's heart.

Now, though, she only shrugged and shook her head. “Perhaps, if it's all you were given over to doing, but I haven't come to offer you that kind of challenge. Put me in chains if you wish. The only thing I won't let you do is take my life.”

She looked to Marius and closed her eyes against his death, as though doing so might wipe away her knowledge of it. “I would …” It took a second try, a wetting of her lips and a rough hurtful clearing of her throat, to whisper, “I would stand at his grave while he's buried, if you'd let me. I … cared for him, Javier. I would not have seen this done.”

“No.” Javier's harsh reply lanced misery through Belinda's belly. He had every right, every reason, to turn her away from Marius's grave, and yet somehow she'd imagined he would show her that small compassion.

It was a mercy she'd in no way earned. Sandalia's petite form swam behind Belinda's eyelids, vivacious and full of life; she would have been stricken and blue with pain, fingers clawed at her throat and eyes bulged with poison, when she died. No, Belinda deserved no quarter and no kindness, not in any way that Javier could take from her. She was lucky to still be living, lucky that no overeager guard had stricken her down in the moments of chaos after she arrived, or had taken her head from her shoulders when she'd knelt by Eliza's dying form.

Lucky, in fact, that no one did so now, out of misbegotten or honest duty to their king. Belinda looked up slowly, aware of the noise surrounding them but also, finally, aware that it was heard at a remove, as if all the people pressing so close were in truth a hundred feet away.

Only then, with the searching for it, did she see the silver sheen of witchpower that kept everyone away from the foursome huddled
on the floor. It had been there all along, had to have been, in order to keep their conversation and actions untroubled by those around them, and a discordant note shimmered through Belinda's own power. After days of being trapped at the army's leading edge, she'd crossed Javier's witchpower boundary without a whisper of trouble when she'd moved to save Eliza's life. If intent informed Javier of what he would and would not let pass, it seemed strange that she, who had had no plans to cause harm, had been forbidden to come closer to the Cordulan camps.

Javier said “No” again, shaking her from her thoughts, and making her meet his eyes. “I think you wouldn't have seen this done. I think if you had no abhorrence of what's happened here that Eliza would lie dead now, too. For that,” he grated, “for that you have your stay of execution, and for Marius's sake you may come to his grave and say your good-byes when the rest of us are done. He would like that, and so for him, I'll give you a last few minutes at his side. And then we'll talk, Belinda Walter. Then we shall have words.”

He got to his feet with all the stiffness of an old man. His clothes were ruined, black and red with blood, and he put a hand out for Eliza, whose rise was tremulous and relied on his support. “Take her away from here,” he said softly, and no one doubted he spoke of Belinda, not Eliza. “Don't bother binding her. Just take her away, and give her somewhere decent to rest.” His mouth curled against the words, as though they were unsavoury but he too much the gentleman to say otherwise. “If you give me cause to regret this…”

Belinda bowed her head and let herself be hauled to her feet by two guards, who jostled her roughly, perhaps trying to make up for having failed Javier already today. Pins and needles stung her feet as she was taken away, and the last she heard from the king of Gallin was a weary, miserable question: “Where has Sacha gone?”

Screams from the near distance drive Akilina from the tent she shares with Rodrigo, and good sense kept her from plunging headlong into the chaos erupting in Javier's tent. She is alone, then, as
alone as a woman can be in a camp full of soldiers, when Sacha, weeping with blood, staggers from Javier's tent and breaks into a shuffling run, taking himself away from the noise and terror within that tent.

Akilina snaps “Stay here” to her guards, and because one of them is Viktor, they'll listen; Viktor has done nothing but obey the most direct and simple of orders the last six months, and will permit no one within an arm's reach to do otherwise themselves. Her second guard, an Essandian, inhales to protest, looks at the big Khazarian, and, with a sigh, lets Akilina go.

She's already gathered her skirts and begun to run, moving more lithely and quickly than Sacha. Still, they're well beyond the boundaries of the camp when she catches him; the royal tents are set up on the back edge of the line, at the greatest height, so generals and kings alike can watch the battles as they go on below. Forest backs them up, and if it were not for the thin moon in the sky, Akilina might lose Sacha entirely.

But she comes on him in a clearing, fallen to his knees and muttering in words so broken that even her excellent grasp of Gallic is frustrated by them. She breathes, “Sacha?” and touches a hand to his shoulder, as if he's a horse in need of gentling.

He flinches, and she comes around him, kneeling a few feet away, where he can't fall forward and smear blood over her. “Tell me, Sacha,” she whispers. “Tell me what's happened.”

“It was supposed to be the priest.” Sacha's words come clear, and send a sick thrill of worry into Akilina's belly. There are two people it cannot be: it cannot be Javier, and it cannot be Rodrigo. News of their deaths would have flown to her ears even while the screams still went on. The blood is beginning to dry on Sacha's sleeves and chest, and so it is neither king of Gallin nor prince of Essandia. Her heart hangs between beats, unwilling to contract again for fear the sound of doing so will overwhelm Sacha's whispers. “It was supposed to be the priest,” he says again, and impatience slams through Akilina.

Her hands claw in front of his chest as though she could pull the words from him, but she tries to keep her voice soothing and soft. “Who is it?”

“Marius,” Sacha whispers, and crumbles on himself, sobs wracking his body.

Relief sags Akilina. Marius is no one, except a king's friend. His death means nothing to her. All she needs is a certainty that Sacha won't compromise her when he confesses to the reasons behind attacking the priest.

More's the pity that she's unarmed. She might easily have made a story of how she saw Javier's oldest friend running from the chaos and out of concern followed him, only to face his killing rage and be forced to defend herself. But she reminds herself that it's better that the Essandian queen should have no blood on her hands, and instead takes another tactic in silencing his tongue. “Sacha. Sacha, listen to me. My heart aches for your loss, Sacha. I wish it had gone as we meant. But you must run or you must be prepared to face their wrath.”

“I.”
Sacha spits the word through his tears. “Why not
we
, lady? Why should I not condemn you when I face Javier? Had you not whispered treachery against the priest in my ear—”

Akilina whispers, “Because the babe is yours, Sacha, and condemning me means your son won't sit on the Essandian throne.”

Sacha Asselin's every movement stops: he doesn't breathe, he doesn't blink, he doesn't sway where he kneels in the soft earth. He only stares at Akilina, utterly arrested, and for a moment she wonders if apoplexy will take him and he'll collapse.

Then the pulse in his throat flutters, so hard that she can see it even in the moonlight, and he draws a breath that sounds sharp as knives. “How do I know this isn't a trick to save your own neck?” Despair's gone from his voice, replaced with something so harsh that Akilina thinks her skin might disintegrate under the sound.

“You don't,” she says, trusting a raw show of truth to score him more deeply than charm or dissembling. “You don't, but you've suspected since the beginning, and the chance that I'm telling the truth is too high for you to risk damning me. You're Javier's oldest friend, and you drew on a priest, not on him. He won't have you put to death, not even if Cordula demands it. You may lose stature, but in the worst of all worlds you can become an ambassador to Essandia, and play uncle to your son. He'll love you,” she whispers,
“and he'll be born to a throne. Is my denunciation worth that price?”

Sacha's shoulders slump and his expression turns dull with hatred for a moment. “Are you a witch, Akilina? Does the devil guide your steps and leave you unscathed in the worst of moments? Sandalia dead at your feet, and a crown to wear for it. Marius dead by my hand, and an heir to pay for him. Javier's power makes him weak and needy of a priest, but I wonder now if that's not a safer bargain to make than dealing with you.”

Akilina gathers her skirts and stands, wishing Sacha were not covered in blood. She would have him, otherwise, let him bury himself in her in despair and shame and desperation, and with that passion bind him to her ever more strongly. She is not a witch, not in the way of folklore, but she's a woman of strength and ambition, and that, in the end, may be the same thing. “Plead a madness of jealousy,” she says, rather than answer his questions. “You've been Javier's friend all his life, and many will sympathise with a displacement that drove you wild. Javier's guilt will hold him more closely to your side, and the priest will lose some of his hold. In the end you'll guide Javier and in time you'll guide your son, and hold power behind two Echonian thrones. Come back to the camp before dawn, Sacha. I'm sure they'll bury your friend at sunrise, and he deserves for you to be there. But tell no one I found you tonight; what we have, you and I, must be kept a secret.”

She turns and walks back through the forest, leaving Sacha Asselin alone with his thoughts.