The Pretender's Crown Read Online Free PDF

even more dearly when she discovered Robert Drake had dallied with another woman while she had been in mourning, and blasted him for it. She sent him from her side for almost a year, and they loved her best of all when she relented and began to be seen with him again.
    Politics, Lorraine thinks now as she thought then, is showmanship and misdirection, and a child born and bred under those two stars, a child whose ambitions are to serve loyally and whose heart is undisturbed by being unknown, is a child who might, at the end of it all, serve as a suitable heir.
    For the first time since her courses stopped, giving lie to the story she might one day wed and bear children for Aulun, the knot in Lorraine Walter's stomach loosens a little, and, alone with her wine and sweets, she smiles at the fire.

J AVIER DE C ASTILLE, PRINCE OF G ALLIN
    22 January 1588
†
Isidro, capital city of Essandia
    Typically, an honour guard was just that: men sent to lend importance to a visitor's arrival. Oft-times that importance lay primarily in the caller's mind, but not when it was the heir to the throne who came to visit.
    It was wrong, then, that Javier's escort bristled the way they did, blocking his view of the city more thoroughly than he might have expected. They were not ungentle with him; that would be too much rudeness to show a prince, but neither were they deferent. Their loyalty lay with another monarch, his uncle. It had been years since Javier had visited Isidro, but it seemed that his younger self had been made far more welcome. Perhaps it was the difference between being a man and a child: one might be expected to lunge for a throne where the other would not. There was irony in that; Javier had never demanded his mother's throne, much less succumbed to the lunacy of pursuing his uncle's, hundreds of miles to the south. He was heir to both already; time would bring both the Essandian and Gallic crowns to his head without any impatient action on his part.
    His recollections of Isidro were of a vivacious city, warmer and friendlier than his native Lutetia, but too much silence filled the streets now. He ought to have demanded a horse that he might see better; that he might ride as befitted a prince, rather than walk asthe lowly sailor whose part he'd played the last fortnight. A glance at his grim-faced guard, though, told him his demands would have gone unheeded, and that it was as well he'd not made them, for the cost would've been his own embarrassment at being refused. Chagrined at the realisation, he took a few light steps on his toes, peering beyond the tall helmed guardsmen surrounding him.
    Black banners fluttered far ahead of them, dancing from windows where nobility and the wealthy made their homes near the palace. Rippling fabric slashed against creamy buildings—Isidro was built of pale stone, a city of brilliance against the day's blue sky—and danced out toward the sky so lightly it took long moments for their import to settle in Javier's thoughts.
    Then, with witchlight clarity, he saw, silver-streaked horror lighting all the crevasses of his mind. It set him to running, shouldering past the guards with youthful strength and the advantage of surprise. A shout came after him and he ignored it, fear rabbiting his heart as he careened through the streets, slamming into passersby and sending up desperate prayers with each slap of his feet against cobblestones. He had not meant to come to Isidro to find a throne, but to seek advice; he could not fathom Rodrigo's death, or what it might mean. Rodrigo was aging, yes, in his fifties, but fit and strong, and Javier's world became an unrecogniseable place without the idea of his uncle on the Essandian throne.
    New banners unfurled above his head as he ran, telling him the news of death was fresh, so fresh the people were still whispering it to one another. There were cries in the street now, voices lifted in sorrow, but power drove him forward and washed away any sense he might