“The trouble is,” Ivanova said, “that if we ignore these bits of dreaming and they're true, then we are wholly and terribly unprepared for what the future brings. If we listen and they aren't true, then we're ready for a war that may never come… but it's better to be ready than caught off-guard.” She looked up, her eyebrows lifted. “Dmitri is dead. Robert Drake will rely on you. Tell me what we do now, and I'll go to share your intrigues with Javier de Castille.”
“Primrose?” Robert Drake threw back the tent flap with enough force to set the room shuddering. He looked wilder than she could remember ever seeing him, eyes round with alarm and hair crackling as if alight from within. He had been a long distance across the camp to have taken so long to come to her side, even if he'd known instantly that Dmitri was dead, and she had no way of knowing if he had. If not, a runner would have gone for him, and even still, he'd not been quick in coming. No need to be, perhaps, when it had been his plan as much as hers to remove the dark witchlord from their plots.
She sat in a huddle on the ground, Ivanova wrapped in her arms. They had washed the blood from Ivanova's hands, but stained cloth lay at their feet, and tears welled and spilled from Ivanova's wide staring eyes. “She saved me,” Belinda whispered. “In the heat of battle, she leapt on him and cut his throat, that the Khazarian- Aulunian alliance might not be broken. This is Irina's daughter, Robert. This is Ivanova Durova, and she has pledged herself to us in blood.”
Heed me well, she had whispered into Ivanova's hair. Heed me well, for this is how it shall go. Had Ivanova not announced herself so dramatically-and, Belinda admitted, to such good end; the men who'd been caught up watching her fight with Dmitri had needed an explanation, and the imperator's heir suddenly amongst them was a thing of legend-but had she not done that, Belinda might have secreted her away, might have found her a hiding place or sent her to Javier, and made use of a soldier as the man who'd taken Dmitri's life while paying for the audacity with his own. She had faith in her ability to tweak memories just enough to let that be the dominant perception, even without the sexual link that made altering minds so much easier. That had been before: she was stronger, now.
But Ivanova had been announced, and to change memories that much seemed like too great a risk, especially when Robert Drake would see a malleable child in Ivanova's frightened eyes. He'd shunted Belinda's power into quiescence when she was younger than Ivanova; he would never imagine that Dmitri's daughter had already come into her own. Dmitri's loss would be more than made up for by the chance to shape Ivanova with his own hands.
All they had to do, Belinda whispered, was let him believe himself the mentor, the guide, the saviour of a girl shocked and horrified by the actions she'd taken.
Robert knelt, a show of both sympathy and honour due to the imperator's heir, and extended a fatherly hand toward her.
Ivanova gave a choked sob and flung herself from Belinda into Robert's arms: into the protective circle only a man could offer, and into an assumption of safety created by the world they knew. Robert gathered her close and murmured an assurance, then lifted his eyes to Belinda and smiled with obvious triumph.
Belinda returned the smile, returned pleasure, and kept all her own triumph hidden away where her father would never see it. “She should rest,” she murmured after a little time had passed. “She was very bold in the face of fighting, but it drained her. Let me put her to rest a while, Robert, and then we'll speak on what her being here means.”
“It means my friend is dead,” Robert said after Ivanova was tucked into a warm corner and Belinda had breathed a command to sleep, or at least pretend to sleep, over her. “Was there no other way, Primrose?”
“Not to Ivanova's mind.” Belinda poured wine and offered Robert a glass, aware that she had once more fallen into the position of servant. Better to keep to old and safe roles than to upset a balance she now needed. “How could she know I had the ability to defeat him, to bend him to my will and make him your subservient again? I saw a little of our battle from the soldiers' eyes, Robert, and even I would have thought it Heaven fighting Hell. Ivanov must have seen the Khazarian ambassador doing his best to murder the Aulunian heir. What could she do but try to stop him, and salvage her mother's alliance?”
“How,” Robert said, “did she know who you were?”
Belinda lowered her wine cup and stared at the handsome bearded lord across from her. “Father.” The word was spoken with acidic incredulity. “Half the Aulunian army believes me to be here, in spirit if not in physical form. I'm praying for them, remember? And God Himself graced me with the light and the power of Heaven so I might save the fleet from sure defeat against the armada. So when a woman bursting with God's light stands battling a man filled with black spite at the heart of the Aulunian camp, who else could she be?”
Robert pursed his lips, then shrugged his eyebrows and took a long draught of wine. “A fair point, I suppose. You're meant to be safe at home in a convent in Alunaer, Primrose. How am I to explain your presence here when you've been seen there?”
“My spirit has flown to war,” Belinda said airily. “My physical form kneels in dutiful prayer and God gives my soul wings that I might lift the hearts of my soldiers to His command, and inspire a conversion to the Reformation church in all those who fall before our army.” She smiled, and, clearly despite himself, Robert laughed.
“Ah, and damn the nurse who taught you cleverness, girl, for certainly I'd have instilled a civil tongue in your head.”
Belinda all but dipped a curtsey where she sat, a smile still curving her mouth. “Of course, papa.”
Robert's voice softened. “You haven't called me that in a long time.”
“We haven't played at games of family for a long time. I've been too long a tool, and not at all a daughter. Perhaps things are changing now.” She glanced toward Ivanova and then back to Robert, eyebrows lifted. “Things are unquestionably changing. I know you think it's unnecessary, but I need to understand. War brings innovation- that I can appreciate. But to make ships that sail through the sky, to dig pits in the earth so vast whole seas could disappear into them… these things are so far beyond us. How can we few shape a world that's worthy for our queen?”
“Our,” Robert echoed, thoughtfully, curiously.
Belinda spread her hands. “Is she not? Is serving Aulun, and through Aulun, your queen, not what I have been made for?” She fell silent, looking away from Robert as she worked her way toward the right things to say. A lifetime of training had taught her to find them, had taught her to play silences and speech as instruments, carrying them each to the breaking point before shoring them up with the other.
“I understand so little,” she eventually murmured. “Yet what I do know is that when I see the things that drive you, I see loyalty most of all. In my life I have been loyal and held faith and trust in you.” She shook her head, almost dismissing her own fancies. “‘Heed me well, Primrose, for this is how it shall go.’ Those words have always been true. Each time you've said them, the things you've named have played out as you've said they would, and Lorraine's throne has remained safe. You love her,” Belinda said, so clearly it might have been an accusation. “I think you didn't mean to, but you love her, and I think that if your foreign queen's needs should damage Lorraine's own that even you might hesitate in fulfilling them.”
“I'm fortunate,” Robert said, “that the two have never run counter to each other. Nor will they ever; even if Lorraine should live to the greatest span of mortal years, her world won't change so much in that time that I'll find myself standing against her. I have been fortunate,” he said again, and a note of sorrow deepened the words, proving him too aware that fortune was a fool's friend.
“So even if I look only to the things I understand, if I bend my head to my mother's crown and play the part she's given me, then I serve where and how I should. That's comfortable to me, Robert.” The truth there made her heart hurt, even when filtered through witchpower ambition. Aspirations born of magic ran down certain channels, willing to serve one far-off and mighty figurehead so long as her own supremacy went unchallenged by the greater populace. Bending knee to Lorraine felt right, even still; bowing to a foreign queen was not anathema to one such as Belinda, who was made to serve. It was this other thing she'd become, with awakening and breaking free from the rigours she'd been shaped to, that fit poorly, and yet even as she spun her web for Robert, she knew she would follow the lines she cast out for herself, rather than be drawn into his intrigues. He and Dmitri had demanded too much, had pushed too far, and in doing so had unintentionally set her on her own path.
“If I look beyond those comfortable places then I see what I've seen all my life. My papa, guiding me toward something he understands more clearly than I do. I want to understand,” she whispered, suddenly harsh. “I want these goals and intentions to be shared, I want you to think me worthy of that trust. But even if you won't give me that, I'll serve Lorraine with all my soul, and until the day I die, and in doing so, think I must give myself over to
