Pierce, Tamora - The Song Of The Lioness Quartet 04 - Alanna by Pierce Tamora

Author:Pierce, Tamora [Pierce, Tamora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-08-15T16:19:48+00:00

The usual audible and sometimes satiric comments on the nobles' dress and private lives were missing.

George Cooper watched. He'd risked reopening his wounds and being spotted by Claw's or the Provost's men to see how people received their new King. He scanned faces in the crowd, trying to find any feelings other than suspicion or wariness.

"That Conte Duke looks like a king," someone muttered. "Against him Prince Jonathan's a boy."

"I never heard bad of the Prince," someone else hissed. "I've heard plenty bad about his Grace! Ain't natural for a man t'live twice�"

"Th' Prince be cursed," came a third voice, cracked with age. "Th' Sweatin'

Sickness when he was a lad, that took my Alish, and both his parents dead, and him, the sorcerer, come back�"

"He drove the evil from the Black City, away south," a fourth voice argued. "He made peace with the Bazhir. The old King, his grandda, couldn't even do that."

"He helped a woman make herself a knight. If that ain't unnatural�"

"Hush! Crowds is full of spies, and you've a loose tongue in your head!"

The people stirred with interest as the Lord Provost rode up to change places with Gary. George's long-time enemy was blue eyed and lean, his face leathery from years in the sun and framed by heavy silver hair and a short silver beard.

The Tortall rogues called him "The Old Demon" and were intensely proud of him; foreign rogues made the Sign when he was mentioned.

The people in the crowd, the honest ones, liked the fierce old man. Someone applauded, then someone else. A woman raised a cheer and was joined by others.

Jonathan smiled. Someone cried, "God bless you, Majesty!" This received a cheer from many, and George smiled at the fickle nature of the crowd.

A woman in front of the riding party held her child up to see, and shrieked when the toddler wriggled out of her hands and ran into the cluster of riders. Jon swung far to the right and down, seizing the child with one hand and scooping it up out of danger from the horses' hooves. Darkness reared and plunged at his rider's activity, but the King-to-be held him as the child wailed. The Provost gripped Darkness's bridle, forcing the stallion down.

Jonathan dismounted, carrying the squalling toddler. The mother ran forward under the glares of the King's Own, laughing and crying, to take her little one back. She hugged Jon in one arm and the child in the other, thanking the young man. Her words were inaudible against the cheer that went up as word circulated about what Jon had done. Uneasy for some reason, George left his niche and began to make his way through the crowd, heading for the group of nobles.

His intuition was good. A man near the party drew a knife from his belt and ran for Jonathan while George was too far away to help. The attacker was screaming something. Later the Provost told Myles it sounded like "Death to the unlucky King!"

Jonathan was tangled in woman and child.

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