Javier's voice is a clarion call, crisper than Robert's the single time he touched her mind with words. Help me, Javier says silently across the distance. Help me, or I am lost.
Belinda Primrose comes to the door of her tent and steps through without the guards noticing her; walks a little distance down green grassy hills to look at the front lines, where Javier de Castille is on his knees, silver magic pouring off him so thickly that it can only be a matter of time, and not much at that, before everything that he is burns out in his battle against another witchlord.
Against Robert, Lord Drake, Belinda's father and Javier's own, though at the heart of it there's almost no matter to that second part: he is Sandalia's son in every way that counts, except that one blood sin they've shared. There, in that small detail, it does matter, matters so much her skin still crawls with it, even when she's looking beyond their paternity and at the lines of battle that have been drawn.
Javier's voice is in her head, his magic drawing her to him, the sharing of an integral part of their souls. He screams of need, and a part of her still responds, perhaps will always respond, in a way she should not. With passion and desire rising to meet need and want, with thought uncoupled from body, so action is all that's worth considering.
But a part of her is given over to thought after all, and thus unwinds desire from need and leaves her with a weighty choice on her hands. There's no return from whichever path she takes: whichever man she turns away from will never forgive her, and Belinda's heart aches in her chest with the strength and pain of that knowledge.
Javier is the easier sacrifice to make. She crawled away from him once, bound to duty; that duty now makes a clear and easy road to follow. He has no love for her at all, and a great deal of righteous hate, and there's nothing in this world or any other that might change that. Not now; not with who and what she is. Eliza's life, even the child's, isn't enough to earn forgiveness, and a part of her wonders at even using the word; it's not one she's ever given a care for. In truth, she has little use for absolution, as she has no loathing or uncertainty for what she's been, any more than she might rage against the snow for being cold. So, aye, Javier de Castille is the easier sacrifice to make in all the ways that she is Robert's daughter.
But she stands on the wrong side of the front lines, in the midst of an enemy camp, and the stillness that wrapped her in safety as she grew up has failed her, because she's cold there in the summer sunshine, and her breath comes short and hard, she can't control it. The truth is, Belinda Primrose isn't the same woman she was a year ago. That woman would never be here; that woman would never debate which of the evils she faced should be grasped, because it would never occur to her that she could, much less ought, to turn against Robert, Lord Drake, her beloved papa.
Belinda lifts a hand and throws witchpower, snaking it along Javier's magic and shoring him up. He can bend a man's will, but it's she who learnt to steal Dmitri's power, and it's that same trick she turns against Robert Drake now, lancing her magic along Javier's until it crashes against the waterwheel that's her father's power. Water, though, isn't a solid at all, and she slips lines of gold light through the individual droplets to search out all the lines of weakness that make up a man's strengths. Ana di Meo: the courtesan's face flashes in her mind's eye, heavy with regret and sorrow. Lorraine Walter: queen of a realm and a heart, whose fading beauty makes no difference to the man who loves her. A silver beast in the sky, alien, repulsive, awesome, encompassing: she is everything, that monster, and yet somehow has become only part of a whole.
Her own self, from birth to childhood to womanhood, and all the moments in between: herself, dressed in a new gown awaiting a queen she was forbidden to meet; herself, in a grownup lady's dress at age three, solemnly dancing the steps of a Tinternell; herself, walking through court with Rodney du Roz; herself, using a weapon of a word, father, and never seeing how that blade struck home; herself, time and again, holding a place in her father's heart she's only dreamt she might.
Belinda closes her hand and with it takes Robert Drake's witch-power from him, and in the blackness that's left, sobs.
C.E. Murphy
The Pretender's Crown
Robert Drake wakes with what feels like a three-day drunk shrieking inside his skull. For a little while he lies in the dark, admiring the ache in his head, and then a splash of light breaks across his vision and makes him wince. “Ah,” says a voice so unfamiliar in its familiarity he can't place it. “You're awake. I was beginning to wonder. Tell me, is the magic there?”
It's such a ludicrous question Robert can't answer for a few seconds, not until recollection rises up and drowns him. He dismissed Dmitri's warnings about Belinda's power, her ability to steal magic, but he'd thought that was a knack born in sharing her bed. Of all the various sins against man Robert's committed over the decades, that particular one isn't on his list, and so he reaches for witchpower with confidence.
And finds a wall between himself and it. It shines like gold, a weight in his mind filled with a sense of justice. It's flawless in its construction, making spheres around his magic, so no matter what angle he approaches it from, he only slips off its cool strength.
Rage floods his vision, turning it red, and he slams his will at that wall, searching for a weak point. It dents; gold is soft, but it's also very heavy, and when he bounces off its weight, it flows back to fill the tiny cavity he made. Insulted, angry, a little afraid, he flings himself at it again, scrabbling and clawing into the shining surface.
Outside his mind, Seolfor begins to chuckle, and then to laugh outright. He's grinning when Robert shoves himself into a sit. “She might've left you dead,” he says without even the slightest hint of sympathy. “Dead, instead of neutered. It's what you did to her, isn't it? Ah, Robert, it's a shame you lost control. She'd have been wonderful, on our side.”
Robert snarls and turns his attention back to the wall in his mind. He has the advantage over the girl Belinda was: he knows his power's there, and it cannot possibly take so long to free it as it took her. It's a matter of determination and time, nothing more. Seolfor might help.
Might, but ah, this is Seolfor, who only continues to chortle, and after a little while gets to his feet and leaves Robert Drake in a tent somewhere in the Gallic countryside, there to try to woo his magic back, and start shaping this world anew.
A dire order comes from Khazar: Chekov is to return to Khazan with not only Irina's ill-behaved daughter in tow, but the bulk of the Khazarian army, as well. Irina has clearly misjudged the ease of expansion, when inside two months both her first allies failed utterly in their naval sweep of the war, and then her new allies fell before Ecumenic weapons as wheat might fall in a field. Oh, it's bad form for an imperatrix to change sides so many times, so quickly, but it is worse, in Irina's opinion, to leave herself vulnerable. Cordula may well look east once Aulun's been taken, and from hurried messages sent by pigeon, it seems very likely Aulun will fall. Rodrigo of Essandia has new weapons, and all Irina has are men: she wants them all at her border, protecting it. In time she may be able to repair her reputation, at least enough so that it doesn't make ruling an empire more difficult for Ivanova, but for now, Irina commands a retreat and regroup, and will let Echon fight amongst itself while she prepares for a coming war.
Javier's army drives the Aulunians back to the channel after the Khazarian desertion: back to the channel, and then to Alunaer, as Rodrigo turns his attention to the production of rapid-fire guns. He begins there on the still- bloody fields, turning soldiers into smiths.
A brilliant young man has come out of the troops to offer his services. He's young, but silver-haired, and his blue eyes are perpetually amused. He calls Rodrigo a visionary, but it's his insight that builds the first factory, machinations leaping forward to build moulds and huge forges with which to pour bullets and barrels alike.
It's he, too, who has mad ideas of engines powered by steam and combustion; engines that will power their machines from within, and take vulnerable horses from the battlefield, so the war machines can continue forward against the worst onslaughts. Rodrigo stays up long nights with this young man, working out ways in which wind and water can be used to power the factories to build their new monstrosities.
Through it all a wide-eyed gondola boy runs their errands and thinks himself at the centre of things of great importance. He's right, of course, and there are moments during innovation and argument that both prince and inventor stop to watch the boy, and imagine him to be the shape of the world to come.
Then they all put their heads down, two dark and one bright, and go back to building the future.
Alunaer falls in ten days. Lorraine Walter is too proud to leave her city, and so watches it die. It falls under
