The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) by William Dietrich Page B

palaces and they abide with the seasons.”
    “I’ve had the same thought. But we also know their lives are brutal much of the year, and that we’d never be content with a life like this. We’ve seen too much. Experience has doomed us to be strivers.”
    “Which will be the death of us someday.” She tried it as a joke, and yet we both knew it wasn’t one.
    “But what a life we’ll have led!” I rolled atop her, Harry sound asleep beside us. I was restless with desire.
    Astiza shifted her hips away. “Easy for you to say,” she said as she pushed me off. “Horus hasn’t had a life yet.”
    “He’s had the life of a dozen boys his age. I vow that someday he’ll live the life we dream of. He’ll be a great man.”
    “And what makes a man great?” And then she did hug, but only that. By the curse of Casanova, we spend entirely too much time in awkward situations. That’s what striving does to you.
    The Baltic clouds were like clammy canvas when we traveled that last day from forest farmstead to Louis’ refuge, and it was early dusk when we reached the still-frozen Lielupe. Like wary animals, we peered from the trees. The palace across the ice seemed as big as a mountain range, lights and lamps glowing in half the hundred windows we could count. “We couldn’t even afford the candles,” I remarked. The snowy lawn was an unmarked white sheet, and on the roof flew both the Russian flag and the fleur-de-lis of the displaced Bourbons. Maybe I could persuade Louis we were fellow exiles.
    First I took precautions. We backed into the forest and found a hollow log to hide the swords, Harry cheerfully crawling far inside to secrete them securely. Then we took bearings to mark the spot and returned to the riverbank. Now we’d nothing to tempt our new host with, or arouse suspicion, or rashly trade away.
    “Ready for a royal audience?” I asked my family.
    “If he consorts with paupers.”
    “What’s a pauper, Mama?”
    “Us, Horus. People like us.”
    We walked cautiously across the frozen river, in full view of the house, and then up the meadow toward the main entry. Armed guards with lanterns came out to challenge us, gigantic in their greatcoats and towering bearskin hats. They had muskets, pikes, swords, and pistols.
    “
Nous sommes amis!
We are friends!” I called out in French.
    “Friends are recognized,” their leader replied in heavily accented French of his own. “Who are you, and why do you trespass?” A woolen scarf around his mouth and nose muffled his voice, his eyes sharp and quick as an falcon’s. His companions reinforced his stare.
    “We’re ambassadors, come to pay respects from the United States of America to the Bourbon heir to the throne of France,” I said, bowing slightly. Yes, our appearance made this absurd, but best to make an entrance. The art of the bow is to adjust the amount of incline to the station of the person being addressed. Sentries deserve a swift bob, beauties a slow tilt that hovers at their décolletage, and kings a full duck and flourish, fingers out and one boot extended. “I know we look hard traveled, but we’ve been hard used.”
    “United States?” He made it sound like the Moon.
    “Americans by way of France, Bohemia, and Russia,” I said. “A confidant of President Jefferson and a protégé of Benjamin Franklin. Something of an authority on Bonaparte, as well.”
    One of the soldiers snickered at my name-dropping.
    Astiza stood taller. “And the Tsarina Elizabeth.”
    Their leader looked at her with interest, as men tend to do, and squinted dubiously down at Harry, an unexpected dwarf. What sort of diplomat materializes with a child? “You conduct your embassy in rags?”
    “We were ambushed by bandits,” I replied. “We look molested because we were. But I truly do represent my country—or at least I have, occasionally—and it is in all sincerity that I’ve come to the future King Louis for sanctuary while offering insight into his