Chapter 1426: Kingship(2)

On the eve of his coronation, sleep proved a traitor.

I have guards, Alpheo had told himself into the dark of his bedchamber. Over a thousand spears in the street alone.

A thousand veteran shields ought to hold back any rabble, yet a single assassin with three inches of steel or a poisoned bodkin could turn the dawn of a kingdom into a slaughterhouse.

He had cursed the Archon to his withered face over the rite, fighting tooth and claw against the holy mandates. The old zealot had demanded it: a barefoot march from the lowest sea-gate of the outer wall to the high steps of the throne. Alpheo had haggled the old vulture down to a quarter of the city. Thinking back he should have showed the fucker the gate.

A quarter, he thought.Some thousands paces of naked flesh upon cold rock.He could do it, he was not happy about it , but he was more than able to stomach it.

’’Are you read Your Majesty?Would you like to postopone for a few minutes?’’ Vrosk asked his king, his visor down covering his face, the white cloak wrapped up behind him.

’’It is as good as any. The sooner I do it, the sooner I am home’’

Stepping down from the gilded box of the royal carriage, the winter air bit viciously at his bare chest. The stones of the causeway were iron-cold beneath his soles. Thousands of his subjects packed the avenue from curb to timber eaves, yet the silence was absolute, a crushing, suffocating stillness held fast by three ranks of the Black Stripes, their shields locked and spear-butts resting on the ground

The cohort had strict orders: at the faintest tremor of disorder, strike hard, crack skulls, and ask no questions of the dead.

Hundreds of them dead was worth if the king’s lived.

Priests in white vestments led the van, swinging heavy iron censers on short chains like knights’ morningstars. The burning coals within hissed like angry vipers, spitting thick, choking plumes of frankincense and myrrh into the morning air. Their low, nasal chanting droned in a ceaseless cadence, the only voices daring to break the city’s quiet.

Behind him, the Archon shuffling in ivory silk so pristine Alpheo silently prayed the holy man would trip and shatter both his brittle kneecaps, struck a silver hand-bell.

Clang.

From the high tower above, the great bronze bells of Yarzat answered, tolling three slow, deafening notes that shook the marrow of the city.

Ding. Dong. Ding.

The King stepped forward.

Thousands of eyes bore into his flesh. Hungry and curious.

Alpheo kept his chin raised, looking neither left nor right, his gaze anchored to the limestone crest of the citadel ahead. The heavy incense warred with the familiar, pungent breath of his capital: the sourdough of the bakers’ ovens, stale dregs of sour wine, horse lather, woodsmoke, and the sour salt of human sweat. It was not the perfumed air a flower, but it was his.

Around him moved the White Cloaks of the Kingsguard. Their locked long kite-shields waiting to frame him in an unyielding box of steel at the slightest danger. Alpheo had drilled them himself; while the line cohorts held the masses at bay, his personal guard kept their visors tilted upward, scanning the overhanging eaves, the dormers, and the chimney stacks.

A true assassin never charged through three ranks of spears; he perched on a rotting shingle with a yew bow and a venom-tipped shaft, looking to undo twelve thousand men’s bloody labor with a single loosed string.

That was what Alpheo would do at least.

The soft, rhythmic clinking of their plate harness and the rasp of scabbards against iron greaves was music to his ears, vastly sweeter than the droning liturgy of the priests.

Still, the sheer lunacy of the spectacle rankled in his gut. A mistake, he cursed inwardly, his soles scraping against the abrasive blue-grey slabs. He should have dragged the Archon by his beard into a cellar rather than yield to the dust-and-bone traditions .

The flagstones bit into his bare heels. These avenues had been little more than muddy ruts when he first rode through the gates a decade ago, a sellsword captain with blood on his mail.

He still remembered the reek of the corpse wagon after the slaughter at Aracina, the copper stench of his fallen employer’s corpse mingling with the salt wind of the distant sea.

He could have looted the dead lord’s camp, bought a vineyard in the sun, and let the realm tear itself apart in the civil war between greedy uncles and grasping daughters.

Instead, he had marched his company through the citadel gates, seized the throne with an iron fist, and forced his own pieces onto the great board, smashing and swallowing those that already were there, and by the end of it all those that hadn’t knelt had their neck bent under a sword.

Egil was dead now. Arkawatt was rotting in an unmarked ditch. Robert and the rest of them were food for crows.

And Yarzat was all the better for all that butchery he made.

Everywhere he stepped, the crowd watched in breathless reverie. He passed commoners pressed against the iron line, their fingers tracing the five-pointed holy star over their hearts as the Archon swung the smoking incense. Somewhere in the tight press, a babe began to wail, its sharp cry piercing the church chanting until its mother frantically hushed it against her breast.

Old men, so withered and frail that a stiff breeze might blow them to ash, leaned upon the shoulders of their grandsons just to catch a glimpse of the scar-marked sovereign. Tanners, weavers, dockers, and street-mummers stood in equal awe.

The whole capital was scoured to take a glimpse of its king.

Yet beneath their reverence, a foul, sour pride stirred in Alpheo’s ribs. He felt the cold air biting at the criss-crossed white scars on his back,the tale of a long battle laid bare for the gutter-rabble to gawk at. For an instant, he felt an urge to cover himself, to wrap his old soldier’s mail around his skin and hide the butcher’s marks on his back.

He crushed the thought under his heel.It took all his will for that.

Let them look at me, then, he snarled silently, his stride never breaking. He knew it was his mind playing games, but he felt like a damn monkey being gaped at. He hated that.

Gaze upon the man who slew your enemy and raised you up. This city was a heap of dung and broken timber before I took it, and I turned it into the iron jewel of the south.

You were peasants, cavemen, and sheperd.Now you are engeneer, soldiers and commanders.

You were starving wretches eating turnip peelings, and I put swords in your hands and silver in your jars. Look at your King, and thank your Gods I passed by.

He marched on.

The suffocating crush of the lower ward finally receded, taking with it the harsh stone that had punished every inch of his bare soles. Curse Vesparian to the deepest hells, Alpheo swore silently, his jaw tight as he thought of the Archon. The pious old vulture had not even yielded on a pair of soft turnshoes, he looked down to see if they were bloody.

Luckily they were not.

Step by step, the cramped grey tenements fell behind, opening onto the vast, manicured expanse of the royal green. The foul stench of crowded people melted away, replaced by the clean, sharp fragrance of crushed winter grass, weeping willows, and blooming jasmine.

Ahead, across the sweeping lawn and nestled bbehind the keep’s curtain wall, the palace’s bronze doors stood wide, poised to welcome the sovereign who had hauled Yarzat from the mud into the light.

The commoners were gone now, penned safely in the lower city where the shops and timber houses ended. No more desperate, reverent eyes stared between the locked kite-shields of the legions or the fluttering blue cloaks of the city guard. The rabble had been left in the dust behind him.

Left back where Egil’s ghost belonged, buried deep in the past, far beyond his sight. Though , always back in his thought.

With no eyes upon him save for his silent guard and the chanting priests, Alpheo halted in the middle of the causeway.

"Your Grace?" murmured Ser Meloy , the knight’s wispy red beard bristling beneath the rim of his polished helm. He was usually a blubbermouth but today he kept his mouth shut.

"Just a heartbeat, Ser," the King murmured.

Alpheo closed his eyes and drew a long, deep breath of the garden air. It was the scent of his own domain, a seat carved and raised by the very same hand that had learned to wield both the broadsword and the builder hammer.

This was the fortress that sheltered his wife and blood, the ground he had made his own, and the stone beneath which he intended, when the gods finally came for their due, to take the old bones of the fucker who refused to die so many times.

A wisp of a smile went to his mouth.

He opened his eyes. The hesitation vanished, replaced by an iron calm.

Without another word, the barefoot King resumed his stride, marching steady and unbroken across the green toward the towering bronze gates that rose to meet him against the sky.

Damn Vesparian, and damn his pained feet.

He was home with a crown standing at his pleasure.