duty.
Now the Essandian prince stepped up beside him, no longer pretending the diffidence that had kept him behind Javier and out of sight. “The woman, then?” He sounded unexpectedly calm, while fear and fury rose in Javier's breast.
“Yes, the woman. Belinda. Witchbreed bitch. That storm was hers to command.”
“Had you meant it to be yours?” Genuine curiosity coloured Rodrigo's voice, no censure and no concern. “I hadn't known it was in your power.”
Black rage burnt a line behind Javier's breastbone, filling his breath with bitterness. “Nor had I. It had not been my intent.” He spat the admission, hating it. “I-”
“Then our enemy has a weapon for which we were not prepared,” Rodrigo murmured. “This is war, Javier. This is the way of war. Your own attacks, were they effective?”
“No.” Bile in the answer, loathing so deep Javier couldn't say whether it was for Belinda Primrose or for himself. “She shielded against them. She ought not have been able!”
Rodrigo's silence drew out long enough for Javier to know it was measured, that the Essandian prince was choosing his words carefully. Useless anger beat inside him, that Rodrigo should have to, and yet had his uncle spoken carelessly he would have struck at him, his own impotence so vast as to need an outlet.
“You've spent these last months extending your gift's aspects. So, it seems, has she. We shouldn't be surprised.”
Javier whispered “But her strength” with more despair than he wanted to own to. “I was stronger than she, in Lutetia, uncle. She fell easily then. She is only a woman.”
“Words your mother would slap you for,” Rodrigo said drily. “You taught her. She was still new to her magic, but it's been almost a year, has it not? Since you began with her?”
Javier nodded, a sullen jerk of motion, then lifted a hand to his face. His fingers were still cold and swollen with water; warmth, if it ever returned, seemed a long time coming. “She sees her power-saw it-as internal, a thing that benefits a woman. I had not imagined it might… expand.”
A flush heated his face, making his hand feel colder still. His own magic had changed in the past months, giving him hints of the emotions in those around him. Clarity deepened his blush: such a development could all too easily be considered a womanly thing, appropriate to the fairer sex. If he could learn that, then he ought to have anticipated Belinda might better herself in active uses of the witchpower. He mumbled, “I'm a fool,” and to his irritation and surprise, Rodrigo chuckled.
“War and women make fools of all men, nephew.”
Javier's embarrassment fled, replaced by a more righteous anger. “How can you laugh? We've taken devastating losses.”
“I'm old,” Rodrigo said, droll once again. Then, less so, he added, “And laughter diffuses the rage that makes clarity difficult to achieve. Aulun will come for us, Javier. We must ready the army, and move them.”
“Move them?” Javier snapped a hand toward the straits. “They'll come across the water. We can meet them here on the shore, and burn their ships with fire-arrows and cannon. We'll slaughter them before they're past the beaches.” Silver certainty rose in his mind, making him loosen his sword as though the Aulunian army already approached.
“They know we have an army gathered here, Javier.” Rodrigo found a stick and drew in the sand, idle sketches that became the shape of the two countries' coastlines. A mark slashed their location before Rodrigo stabbed holes in the earth, one to the north, where the straits were narrowest, and one to the south, where another sharp jut of land brought the two countries close together before the straits ended and turned to open sea. “They'll come there or there, and make for Lutetia as we would have made for Alunaer.”
Javier kicked sand over the lower point, scoffing. “It's ten days' journey from Brittany into the capital if you're feeding an army. They'll want to ride their victory directly into battle, not waste time marching.”
“They'll want to win. They're outnumbered and know it, so chasing us here is a tactical disaster. You were taught tactics, were you not?” Rodrigo might have been born of desert sands, so dry was his voice. Insult coloured Javier's cheeks again, but he made himself scowl at the rough map in the sand.
“It's a losing tactic for them regardless of what they choose. We could split our forces and still meet them with even odds at either of those places. Or we could wait here until we know where they're coming from, and meet them in battle outside Lutetia.” Javier sucked his cheeks in, still sullen. “That would be to our tactical advantage.”
“So you were paying attention. The army rides under Cordula's banner, but they're yours to command. What's your will?”
Guilt surged through Javier, burning away insult and sourness alike. Rodrigo's expression gave no hint that his words were meant to be loaded, and Javier wished, briefly, that the small skill he'd developed in sensing emotion might burgeon, so he wouldn't have to grasp his uncle's shoulder to see if that innocence was real. Asking him his will, after months of struggling to leave men their own, seemed a purposeful cruelty. Javier made a fist, and his voice, when he spoke, was rough and tight. “I'll hear the mass for the dead before I decide.”
Hear the mass for the dead, and bend a penitent knee to Tomas so he might hear the priest's advice. He was king, and his will meant to be law, and yet the thought of it stated so directly sent hummingbird wings of fear fluttering in his chest. His will must be that, and nothing more: his, without bending others to it, not even if the Pappas had graced him with God's blessing. It was a test, as every moment of his life had been a test. He had failed a few bitter times, but not again. Tomas would guide him. Tomas would tell him what to do.
SACHA ASSELIN
It is not only Rodrigo who notices that, rather than go to his lifelong friends, Javier de Castille turns to the beautiful Cordulan priest after the mass. Sacha Asselin, still bundled against sickness and grateful for the warm blankets, sees it, too. He's been longer separated from his prince, now his king, than the other two, and when Javier hurries after Tomas rather than so much as glance their way, Sacha turns to Marius and Eliza with confusion written across his features.
Marius is the one who makes a gesture of acceptance. “It's been this way for months, Sacha. Since he arrived in Isidro.”
“Javier's changed,” Eliza says quietly. “More than the crown on his head, it's…”
“The witchpower.” Sacha grates the words out. Watching his king these last few days, it seems to him a gift that Javier told him about the witchpower himself, rather than let Eliza and Marius do it. It shouldn't be a gift: it should be something so matter of course as to be utterly unquestionable; there should be no relief or surprise that Javier took the trouble to unfold his secrets to his oldest friend.
That it feels like a favour knots a black rope around Sacha's heart, and draws it tight.
Marius sighs, but before he can make an excuse for Javier, Sacha cuts him off. “He's always been reluctant to stand tall. Now he's hiding behind the priest's robes rather than-”
“Rather than what?” Eliza's bold enough to interrupt; Eliza never has had as much sense of propriety as Marius is burdened with. “He's afraid, Sacha. He can do things no man should be able to.” A hint of pink washes along her cheekbones, though the way she continues speaking gives no hint that she knows, or cares. Sacha, though, notices, and jealousy indistinguishable from anger scores him. Eliza doesn't notice that, either, as she says, “The Pappas has blessed him now, but he's spent his whole life fighting this power of his-”
“Instead of embracing it and becoming the power in Echon that he could be!”
Eliza stares. “He's leading the combined might of the Cordulan armies in a fight for the abandoned souls in Reformation Aulun, and he's only just past his third and twentieth birthday. What else would you have him do?”
“He should have moved for Sandalia's throne years ago, when he reached his majority. Then he'd be a respected and known quantity amongst the crowned heads-” Sacha has always been frustrated with Javier's unwillingness to put himself ahead of his petite mother. Now, knowing that Javier refused not only that, but his own astonishing power, sends flashes of rage through Sacha's vision, even when he speaks with Eliza.
“Oh, aye,” Eliza says dourly, “because as an untried youth he's had such difficulty in convincing Cordula's
