16
Realisation
William found himself unaccountably nervous. He knew the Summer and Winter Palaces and the towns along the route between them both, yet this was a new experience, entering a bar in a prosperous border town—or any of the towns in his kingdom. While he’d been to some of the establishments in Vallantia and Callenhain, those visits had been all carefully controlled and executed, and there had probably been more of his own people in those places than locals, all in the name of security, of course. Alex should never have been to the bars, taverns and brothels he’d attended either, but Alex had been a law unto himself. Oh, he listened politely enough to the security briefings that told him why he shouldn’t do such things. He even agreed about the rating of most of the places he w
