The Matador's Crown

Restless Soul

False Horizon

The Other Crowd

The Matador’s Crown

Alex Archer

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

The Legend

...The English commander took Joan’s sword and raised it high.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned, gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against the ground and his foot at the center of the blade. The broadsword shattered, fragments falling into the mud. The crowd surged forward, peasant and soldier, and snatched the shards from the trampled mud. The commander tossed the hilt deep into the crowd. Smoke almost obscured Joan, but she continued praying till the end, until finally the flames climbed her body and she sagged against the restraints.

Joan of Arc died that fateful day in France,

but her legend and sword are reborn....

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Michele Hauf for her contribution to this work.

Contents

Prologue (#u5a4ccabd-15b3-5687-b28d-a46c3f992867)

Chapter 1 (#u6c46200e-c9bd-5cf0-8601-4f0ba19302dd)

Chapter 2 (#u440ba04b-5d31-513f-b136-83dadc77e38a)

Chapter 3 (#u86781d65-58fc-5262-a2ee-cc878594a7dc)

Chapter 4 (#ue4a18a9d-49ff-57c6-89f3-0baa62b7d018)

Chapter 5 (#u2d073ddb-413f-54dc-b014-9a7d3fa1c966)

Chapter 6 (#ub2156668-8c00-5125-a220-2ffdb38f2924)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Prologue

The woman walking thirty strides ahead of him moved like a flamenco dancer. Powerful, forceful, yet graceful. She reminded him of Ava, the dancer in the club where he played guitar.

Ava barely acknowledged his existence and frequently complained he did not keep proper compas, marking the beat, which spoiled her dance and made her look bad in front of the audience. As a guitarist, he was attuned to the dancer and singer, but his concentration tended to waver around Ava.

He’d thought her just another dancer when he’d taken the job at the Gato Negra club. But there was a shadow inside Ava and he felt its presence every time she took the stage. Darkness emerged in her footwork, in the aggressive expressions that contorted her face and the fierce control with which she captured the audience nightly.

So he did not hurry his pace to catch up with this other woman. Best to admire from afar.

With the guitar he’d made from German spruce and Spanish cypress strapped across his back, Diego Montera carried the cumbersome wooden crate at stomach level. He had to deliver it at midnight. In a cotton bag tied to his belt loop, he had a change of clothing and enough euros to cover a meal. He also carried the small bronze artifact he had to deliver the following morning. He had seen that much—that it was bronze—as his employer had wrapped it and handed it to him. What was in the crate, he didn’t know. It wasn’t much heavier than his guitar.

His employer had rented him a room in the Hotel Blanca tonight for the first delivery. It was not as if he could complete the transaction on the street, in the open. Or at his home where Diego’s mother would question a stranger’s visit. The buyer preferred a private meeting, valued his privacy.

Diego was excited about tonight. That his employer had trusted him with two jobs within a day of each other meant he was moving up, earning respect. If both exchanges went well, perhaps he’d earn a position as a regular liaison. A guitarist’s wages were nothing to write home about, and he still lived with his mother, who complained when he didn’t help clean around the house. A guitarist shouldn’t do manual labor such as fixing the plumbing! Diego wanted his own apartment so he could entertain friends and bring home women without the curse of his mother’s condemning eye.

Even though he had no information about who would arrive to pick up the wooden crate and its contents tonight, Diego felt confident the meeting would go well. The money would be transferred electronically through a secure service. Then Diego got paid in cash. He knew to go online and verify that his employer had received the transfer before handing over the item. He had one of those fancy cell phones with the internet browser in his jeans pocket. The device, a hand-me-down, had received a pounding from one of Diego’s brothers and was on its last legs.

Tomorrow morning’s handoff would be at a public place—a city fountain—not far from the Museum of Cádiz. What he did when he was not playing in the club wasn’t legal, but it paid too well to pass up. He hadn’t learned the name of the outfit he worked for, but it probably didn’t have one. Most of the deals, if not all, were made under the table.

His mother would never look him in the eye again if she knew who he was involved with. But if Diego wanted to finally attract the eye of Ava, the beautiful flamenco dancer, he had to have money.