Princess of Glass - Jessica Day George [3]
“See this?” King Karl pointed the telescope at the harbor and gestured for Christian to look through it.
He looked. “It’s the harbor,” he said.
“I know it’s the harbor, Christian,” his father said patiently. “Look at the ships in it.”
“Two of our navy gunners and a merchant from Norsk-land,” Christian reported, not sure where his father was going with all this.
“And there, to the left of the Norske ship?”
“It looks like a Bretoner.” Christian pulled away from the eyepiece to blink for a moment, then looked again. “Yes, a Bretoner galley. Royal Navy, in fact.”
“Very good.” King Karl nodded in approval. “Yesterday I received the ambassador from Breton. It seems that King Rupert has some ideas about the future of Ionia.” Karl chuckled. “Funny, isn’t it? When Breton is doing well, they’re an island unto themselves, but if there’s ever any unrest, suddenly ‘all the nations of Ionia need to band together.’”
Not knowing how to reply to this, Christian merely continued to look at the harbor through the telescope. A sinking feeling was growing in his stomach, however, and he knew that somehow this news from Breton involved him.
“Westfalin’s war with Analousia was not a pretty thing,” King Karl went on. “It cost a lot of lives, and caused a lot of bad blood between former allies. Then there was that business with Gregor’s gaggle of daughters and those fool princes dying left and right.”
The Westfalian princesses again. The back of Christian’s neck prickled.
“A lot of old alliances need renewing,” his father was saying. “Rupert’s quite concerned about it, and I know that Francesco of Spania’s been talking about the same thing for a while. Some official state visits and exchanging of gifts would not be remiss.”
“Do you want me to send a gift to Prince George?” Christian had met the heir to the Bretoner throne once before, and he was a nice enough chap if a bit too obsessed with foxhunting. Christian shrugged. “I could send him a new riding crop or some such.”
But his father was shaking his head. “Well.” King Karl paused. “I suppose if you wanted to take a gift to George you could. But that’s not exactly what we have in mind.”
Christian’s heart began to race. “Take a gift? You want me to go to Breton?” Christian blurted out the question, incredulous.
King Karl nodded, looking uncomfortable.
Jaw agape, Christian stared at his father. He’d been to Breton once, as a child, and once to Analousia before the war, but since then he’d had to fight to even leave the palace grounds. Now his father wanted to send him to Breton?
“Why? Why now?”
“Because we must,” King Karl said simply. “As I said, since the war, things haven’t been right between the nations of Ionia, and the Westfalian princesses did nothing to improve that. It’s time to prove to our neighbors that we trust one another—”
Christian interrupted. “Do we?”
His father looked grim. “We pretend that we do,” he said. “And we pretend that we aren’t all thinking the same thing: that the death of so many princes has left a lot of countries in a vulnerable state. Not all of those poor boys were second sons, you know. Helvetia sent their only heir, the next in line is a cousin’s son. Unless Markus decides to take Westfalin’s lead and declare his daughter and her future husband co-rulers.”
Frowning, Christian asked, “Who is she going to marry?” His tutors had drilled the names of every royal family in Ionia into his head, but it always seemed that there were so many young princesses that their names blurred together in his mind.
“No one yet, and that’s what makes Rupert’s little plan so perfect. We’re going to be exchanging our sons and daughters for a while: sending you to Breton while George goes to Analousia, and Analousia’s little Prince Henri comes here. Ostensibly it’s to make friends among the next generation, but go a little deeper and it’s a grand matchmaking scheme.