[Books of Bayern 1] The Goose Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

move.
    Falada circled back, began a quick canter, and jumped the fence. The mare started at his leap but did not move away from the king. Falada shook his mane and walked forward to touch noses with the mare. He nudged her with his cheek and breathed on her neck. Tirean seemed to sigh, a gust of warm breath that played in Falada's mane. She stepped back carefully and huddled against a tree, her neck and mane shuddering, her head bent to the ground.
    Ani rushed to him and heard his breath rattle strangely in his chest. She bade the stable-hands move the king to the stable-master's bed, where he slept for three days. The palace physicians could not wake him. The queen sat by his side, dry-eyed, sleepless. Calib, Napralina, Susena-Ofelienna, and the toddler Rianno-Hancery took turns holding his hand.
    Ani sat in a chair, gazing at his still face, and felt again like the little girl who had watched her aunt walk away into the purple horizon, her chest an abandoned snail shell.
    On the fourth day, the king woke briefly to smile up at Susena, who was holding his hand at the time. His eyes fluttered closed, then he turned his head to one side and did not breathe in again.
    The Great City was decked with white on the day of his burial. The royal family in white mourning dress walked like ghosts after the funeral wagon. Ani gripped her skirts in her lists and concentrated on the single note of the flute player and Rianno-Hancery's high, sobbing cries twisting about one another in a painful harmony. She looked up where the White Stone Palace stretched its walls like low wings and raised the head of its single high tower to the winter blue— so like a swan, the bird of mourning. She took a shred of comfort in imagining that even the palace mourned. Her mother walked at the head of her remaining family, elegant and poised in her sorrow. Ani thought, These people watch me, their future queen. I need to seem strong. She straightened and stopped her tears, but next to her mother, she felt only half-formed.
    After the burial and ceremony, the queen stood before the tomb and spoke to the gathered people. She recalled the king's diplomatic and military successes, the alliances he had formed, and the peace Kildenree had enjoyed since his coronation. To herself, Ani remembered other things, like his smile that pulled stronger on his right side than his left, the smell of the sheep oil he kept on his beard, and how these last years he had begun to smell less of parchment wax and more of stables. That made her smile.
    Then the queen said, "Do not fear that this sad day means more than the end of this king's life. We will go on. I will continue as your queen and keeper of the realm. And in that distant day when you will carry my body to this place, my noble and capable son Calib-Loncris will be ready to take up the scepter and crown."
    Ani looked up, her mouth slightly agape. Selia at her side pinched her arm.
    "Did you hear that, Crown Princess?"
    Ani shook her head slowly. "She made a mistake. She must be . . . she is confused in her sorrow, that's all."
    "Calib doesn't look confused," said Selia.
    Ani caught sight of her fifteen-year-old brother standing to her mother's right. When had he grown up so much? she wondered. He was as tall as his very tall mother, and his face was smooth and controlled like hers.
    The queen finished and descended the tomb steps. Calib looked at Ani for the first time, hesitated, then stepped close to her.
    "I'm sorry," he said. His forehead creased, and his eyes filled with the concern of an uncertain boy.
    "How long have you known she would do this?" said Ani.

    Calib shrugged. There was a trace of smugness in his refusal to smile, before he turned and walked stately after his mother.

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Selia prodded, but Ani refused to talk to her mother until after the six weeks of mourning white.
    "She is your mother, and she owes you an explanation."
    Ani sighed. "First, she is the queen, and