Rodrigo had given him a dour look or two; another such and Javier would make an outrageous claim, insist no blade would touch his head until Sandalia was avenged, Aulun's Reformation yoke was broken, and Belinda Primrose was dead. Might, less dramatically, claim that he intended to set a new fashion, as was his right and even his people's expectation, as their new king. Besides, he thought it suited him: his face was long and narrow, and he imagined the fullness of longer hair gave him more presence. Black banners still fluttered in Isidro's streets, blocking out the city's clean white lines. Javier tried not to see them: they might have been painted with his mother's face, so clearly did their presence bring it to mind. Emptiness tore his chest apart, breath too little to fill it when he thought that she was gone. He was a man grown, but he'd stood in her shadow without complaint or ambition, and to know he would never again see her was a fist squeezed around his heart. Tears blurring his vision, he tried to look beyond the banners, all the way to Lutetia, so many hundreds of miles to the north.
