He arrived on a Thursday, without warning, in a carriage that bore the royal crest and moved through the estate gates with the unhurried authority of a vehicle that did not expect to be stopped.
I was in the herb garden when the gate steward sent word, which gave me approximately four minutes to compose myself, change the angle of my thinking from the supply route problem I had been untangling in my head, and present myself at the main entrance with the expression of a man who was pleasantly unsurprised by the arrival of royalty.
Prince Cassian was everything I had been told he was and several things I had not anticipated.
