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. His companions were hampered by the crowd and their own horses. It was Darkness who came to his master’s defense, rearing to strike the assassin with his hooves. The man went down as other killers swathed in cloaks appeared out of the crowd.
George tackled one and knifed another. The Provost had dismounted and was fighting with knives, grinning fiercely as he caught one man on crossed blades and kneed him. Horses reared, ladies screamed, and the Great Market Riot had begun.
Of it all, George remembered only the moment when he and the Provost—for the first time in their long war—came face-to-face in the melee. Given a choice, he would have relinquished the honor. Now he froze, letting the assassin he’d targeted get away. The Provost looked at him, turned, and disappeared back into the crowd. Had he winked?
Accompanied by his most trusted people—the brothers Orem and Shem, the knife masters Ercole and Marek—George reached Jonathan’s party to find the king-to-be nursing a wounded arm. The King’s Own closed in, forming a tight circle around Gary, Jonathan, and Josiane. Roger was nowhere to be seen, the thief noted. The Provost was mounting his horse, secure in the middle of a second ring of guards. George’s shoulder wound had opened and was bleeding again.
He ignored it. “I know a way out!” he called to Jon. “If you’ll trust me!”
The leader of the King’s Own glanced at the prince, who nodded. George guided Jon’s party into a side street and out of the riot, keeping an eye out for assassins. He and his people left the nobles on the Temple Way when others of the riding party arrived and a second company of the King’s Own came riding down from the palace.
“It was Claw,” George told Eleni and Myles at House Olau soon after. He winced as his mother applied yet another poultice to his reopened shoulder. “The assassins were his, every one, and they wanted Jon.”
“What does Claw gain if anything happens to Jonathan?” Myles wanted to know. “He’s not connected to anyone at the palace who would benefit—not as far as I’ve heard. Although Delia—”
“I find it interestin’ that his Grace of Conté got out so easy,” George drawled, propping his feet on a hassock. “But you’re right, it still makes no sense. ’Twas too easy for the innocent to get hurt along with the guilty this mornin’. If he planned it, he ran as great a risk of bein’ trampled as the rest of us.”
Eleni shook her head sadly. “I’m worried about those who got hurt in this madness. I’d best go see what I may do.” She stood, shaking out her skirts. “But isn’t that always the way when folk plot to steal power? The innocent get hurt.”
The final toll of the Great Market Riot was fifteen dead, thirty-six hurt (including the king-to-be), and untold damages to shops and stalls. The atmosphere of suspicion and fear thickened. In spite of it, or perhaps because of it, Jonathan began to ride once a week through the capital and the surrounding countryside.
Jonathan watched the stars appear from a castle balcony, relaxing as he prepared himself for a night among his court. Again Josiane would try to win him back, and again he’d keep her at a distance. Not for the first time he regretted his involvement with the princess from the Copper Isles. He’d tired of her quickly, and she’d been reluctant to understand that. Now that he knew her better, he also realized that, in spite of his mother’s plans for Josiane, the princess would have made a very bad queen.
Still, he had to smile. He’d just come from his time as the Voice of the Tribes. In touch with Coram for the first time since January, he’d learned that the wayfarers had reached Maren’s western border and would anchor in Tyra in the morning. Soon Alanna would be home, and he could put his Lioness—and the Dominion Jewel—to work.
“That’s all of it, Majesty.” The humpbacked man known as Aled the Armorer fidgeted. “I wish Claw’d never come t’me. I don’t like this, nor the consequences if word leaks out of what’s afoot.”
George sprawled in his chair, rubbing his chin as he surveyed his informant. His hazel eyes glittered through his lashes, making the armorer twist his cap into a knot. “Mayhap Claw fed you a tale, Aled. It won’t be the first time a man tested loyalty by givin’ out a lie.”
“He paid gold for his tale, then,” Aled whined. “Asides, he don’t know I’ve been sellin’ t’Isham Killmaster and Kasi the Spy these five years. Only Killmaster favors armor in the K’miri style but lacquered black like they never do. And the Spy—”
“Enough. If you say that’s who’s involved, I must trust you. I pay you enough.”
“T’ain’t just the gold, Majesty,” Aled protested. “My mam raised no fools. They’s one fate for them as kills a king.” His gesture illustrated the fate clearly. “I’m afeared of Claw, bein’s he’s crazier’n a priest, but Provost’s justice is fast. Our folk be crooked, but loyal all the same. If they knew Claw was up t’this, them that helps ’ im wouldn’t live t’face the Provost. I’m between Goddess and Black God with no place to run.”
George tossed a silver noble to the armorer, who caught it and bit it (to make sure it wasn’t fake). “Not a word to Claw, Aled.”
The other man winced. He knew what Claw would do to him if the news he’d talked to George leaked out. “No, indeed, Majesty!” He left the Dancing Dove, muttering.
George stared into the distance. When Alanna had introduced him to Jonathan, he knew the day might come when his duty to the Rogue would conflict with his friendship with the prince. That time had come. What was he to do? A rescue in a riot, with everyone too excited to think clearly, was one thing. Informing on a plot was another. The marketplace assassins were dead and Claw in hiding, so no good would have come of his saying who’d started the whole thing. But Aled’s tale had concerned corrupt servants, and a new plot that reached from the palace to Claw.
George grew up in the Lower City, learning the underworld’s laws: Obey the Rogue; pay his tax; and—most importantly—never betray a fellow Rogue to the King’s Justice. The penalty was slow death. A year ago George would have been the last to consider such a betrayal. But that was before Claw changed things.