Read Online The Pretender's Crown by C. E. Murphy - Free Book Online Page B

world He has created and granted life. God has guided Rodrigo, to the best of his frail human ability to follow, through all the years of his princedom. He has tried to act with wisdom, with grace, with compassion; it is whyhe has avoided war as best he can, when other kings and queens of Echon have made or agitated for it.
    It's not that Rodrigo believes infidels and heathens will be spared Hell; it's that he doubts God would approve of murdering unlettered peasants and unwise children as a means of spreading His word and changing their minds. There are better ways; if there were not, men would not have been granted reason or free will, but would have been born to follow blindly. To Rodrigo, it is far more a triumph to bring one thinking man to God's path than to slaughter thousands of innocents who have been led astray. The dead, after all, cannot convert.
    Faced with Javier, Rodrigo wonders if it may be better, this once, to condemn a soul to Hell so that many more might live.
    Because Javier is not touched with God's power. What Rodrigo saw in his nephew was selfish hurt, lashing out. God has more mercy and more wisdom than that: His chosen few are not of a temperament to redress personal wrongs with the power He grants. Of this, Rodrigo is confident.
    And yet; and yet; and yet. There is the matter of Sandalia's death; there is the matter, perhaps even more pressing, of Sandalia's heir. Of his
own
heir. Yes, Rodrigo is afraid of the boy, but far worse than Javier's selfish use of power might lie ahead if neither Essandia nor Gallin has an heir to take their thrones. Aulun will sweep in and roll over the Ecumenic countries with its armies and its heretical faith, and while Lorraine has no heir of her blood to put on the throne, she has lackeys and hangers-on a-plenty, and no small willingness to back a pretender to the Gallic and Essandian thrones.
    Humour ghosts through him. It's only fair; he and Sandalia are happy enough to put their prince on Lorraine's throne.
    Were
, he reminds himself. He and Sandalia
were
happy enough, and now that duty lies with him.
    Mouth thinned with determination, Rodrigo leaves the fire he's been contemplating and rings a bell. In moments a servant enters, and Rodrigo orders his nephew brought to him. Fears must be faced, and weapons must be forged.
    When Javier enters, Rodrigo's before the fire again, fingers steepled against his mouth, eyebrows drawn into a headache-causing crease. He has been thinking—thinking of the instinct thatmade him seize on Javier's devil's power as a gift in the first moments he saw it manifested. That's the pragmatic streak in him, stronger than the fear; it's to that which he must now turn. Ambition can be shaped, is what Rodrigo is thinking, and when Javier hesitates at the corner of his vision, the Essandian prince drops his hands and gestures to the other chair settled before the fire. He says “Nephew” gravely, and Javier sits with the wide-eyed expression of a child uncertain if he has been caught at some illicit activity.
    “Uncle.” Javier hesitates again, then makes a feeble smile. “You've had the door fixed.”
    Rodrigo's smile is much better than Javier's, but then, he has many years more practise at dissembling. “I thought you might be more comfortable returning to my chambers if everything appeared normal.”
    “I'd be more comfortable, or you would be?”
    “Some of both.” There's no sense in lying; he needs Javier's utter trust in order to guide him. He needs Javier to believe what Rodrigo does not: that his power is God's, and that God intends him to make war on Aulun.
    For the briefest moment Rodrigo looks at himself as though from the outside, as though he is another man listening to his own thoughts. They are contradictory and complicated, pulled one way and another, and yet from within they feel a steady course. He is not one who likes war, and yet when it must be made—and it must, because Sandalia is dead and there seems little