The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (57 page)

The patriarch and Wyael slipped out of the chapel to take their places for the coronation, and Dunnhem waited while Gully checked himself one last time. The anxiety rose in him as the last few moments slipped away.

Should he run? Would Dunnhem stop him? He had fought with guards before and gotten away every time, and he could do so again. Dunnhem was one of the guards on Roald’s squad, so he would be cleverer and better trained than the others. He suspected he could best him, though, given the element of surprise. The corner of his mouth turned up in a dry smile at the thought.

No, these were all foolish wonderings and pointless daydreams. His days of escape were done, and he had no desire to reward Dunnhem’s good nature so rudely. So that was it. He was out of options. He had nowhere he could go because this time he accepted what fate had dealt him. He never felt so helpless, so powerless, in all of his life.

“I am ready, Dunnhem,” he said quietly.

Dunnhem snapped to a stiff attention and said very formally, “Then I await to escort you to your coronation, Your Highness!” He held out his hand towards the open doors of the Nighting Chapel, two King’s Guards standing at attention on either side.

As soon as Gully stepped out of the door with Dunnhem leading the way, every head present in the packed courtyard turned to see the approach of the first monarch the Iisendom would have in over twenty years. The prestigious crowd in attendance lined both sides of the Courtyard of the Empyrean, and each end as well, leaving only a long rectangle of open space in the center. All of them strained to get their first look at the entrance of their new king.

Dunnhem led him past the armillary sphere and through the crowd to a small raised platform where the Archbishop waited. Off the four corners of the platform stood four disciple interpreters wearing their elaborate pale gold robes, burning handheld bowls of incense and chanting supplications under their breaths. Next to the Archbishop was a table with a book of the coronation rites and beside that was the stand with the crown that would be placed on his head.

Above, the night sky blazed with the multitude of stars that not even the torches and lamps illuminating the courtyard could compete against. From the dais where the Archbishop stood extended a long, indigo-colored carpet that led to the far end of the courtyard. There, the throne awaited Gully on yet another raised platform. The crowds stood formally on either side, filling every available spot in the courtyard and watching intently as the new king stepped up next to the Archbishop. Dunnhem stomped his foot and bowed low, then moved off to the side to his position as honor guard.

Along either side, Gully saw the noble families of Iisen in the front. At the end and in front of the gilded sphere was his brother, Prince Thaybrill, a pale gold sash across his own deep blue doublet. Next to Thaybrill, in the scarlet dress uniform of the Lord Marshal, stood Roald very stiffly.

Beyond the royal families were the other privileged guests of the evening, including many of the Mercher clan that Gully absolutely insisted have places of honor. The patriarch and Wyael had already taken their places amongst Wyael’s parents and the patriarch’s sons and families.

At the far end, on each side of the throne, he managed to catch a glimpse of the two wolves sitting as still as statues, waiting for Gully to take his place between them.

He felt the hundreds and hundreds of eyes upon him and he desperately wanted to fidget with the mantle around his shoulders. He caught himself scratching at his left palm and forced himself to stop. He looked at the Archbishop, who was waiting patiently for Gully to signal his readiness, and nodded his assent.

The Archbishop smiled and held his hand up to pull everyone’s attention to him. Gully waited for the Archbishop to begin reading from the book, but that is not what happened. What happened next took him by surprise.

The Archbishop looked at the book for a moment, open to the page with the ceremonial text for the coronation, and instead of beginning to recite from it, he reached out and gently closed it.

He surveyed those gathered, and then said aloud for all to hear, “This night does not bring us a typical ascension to the throne of Iisen, which has sat empty now for twenty years. The chair of our monarch has been vacant while our land was stewarded in the intervening years by a traitor among us, a man that used the power of his office to corrupt those around him and to enrich himself. A man that betrayed the trust of King Colnor and Queen Sophrienne to murder them. A man that even would have destroyed the entire kingdom to try to satisfy his own boundless avarice.”

Gully watched the Archbishop closely, keeping his surprise at the unexpected deviation from the ceremony closely held. The crowd gathered in the courtyard seemed to lean in even more given the words of the leader of the church. Even the interpreters had stopped their mumbled chants and glanced at each other in furtive curiosity.

“As much as we would see the life of Prince Thayliss veLohrdan as a curse upon him — nearly murdered at birth and an orphan multiple times over, left to fend for himself in the alleys, consigned to the gutters and gullies of the streets, the selfsame gutters and gullies that he took into a name by which some know him,” continued the Archbishop, “we must, each of us, think about the truth of what has happened.”

The Archbishop raised a hand to the stars overhead. “If the events of the last few weeks and His Royal Highness Prince Thayliss veLohrdan’s role in it are not evidence of our ancestor’s grace and guidance, then nothing in this world will ever rise to that standard. Out of the curse and treachery and tragedy of His Highness’ life has come the saving grace of our land in one of our deepest moments of crisis. By our law and his birthright, all of us gathered, and all those of our land, owe him our full loyalty and due, for he is crowned our king. But by our hearts and our very lives, and far deeper than law, we owe him our full loyalty in gratitude for keeping us safe from the betrayal of our kingdom and our enslavement at the hands of Maqara. There is not a one of us here today, walking free, that does not owe this to the man who stands before us now.”

Gully felt his cheeks prickle and turn pink, but the Archbishop was not paying attention to him. The Archbishop’s attention was fully on the assembled people while he paused dramatically. There was not a sound at all from anywhere in the courtyard. There was no motion from any of the people watching, and those present might have even been tempted to claim that the stars above paused in their trek through the night.

The Archbishop turned his gaze back to Gully. He raised both his hands to the stars above and intoned, “Thayliss veLohrdan, first born of King Colnor, Fifth of the Name, please kneel before those of your family that have gone before you and now witness this night from their places of honor in the firmament.”

Gully slowly knelt down onto one knee. Per the ceremony, Gully lifted his head and his eyes skyward, towards those who sat in judgment of him in the evening sky. He held like this until the Archbishop touched his forehead, signaling to Gully to lower his eyes and head. Surrounded by so many people, he felt lonelier than he ever felt in his life and he had to place his hands on one knee to keep them from trembling.

In his mind, he sought out memories to comfort himself. He remembered to distract himself. He remembered in order to still his heart and to remind him of whom he was. In his mind, he saw his father scolding him gently for getting a tear in his breeches one day while playing, then his father laughing and telling him when he saw his son’s frown and distraught eyes that he could not even get properly angry with him.

“I call to the Nighting Empyrean above, in this moment,” intoned the Archbishop. “Kneeling before you is Thayliss veLohrdan, claimant to the throne of Iisen by birthright. If any of his ancestors above have cause to preclude his ascension to the throne, show your sign to us now.” The Archbishop held his hands out wide, waiting for any sign that might appear. The courtyard paused in baited silence as the crowd waited. Above, the stars continued with no more than the same indifferent twinkling that was their hallmark. Gully was too busy thinking of his father to even notice the foolish deference to a swath of dotted lights in the sky, so very far away.

After a sufficient pause, the Archbishop smiled as he looked back down at the prince before him. He carefully lifted the crown of Iisen from its stand and held it aloft. It was not a heavy or ponderous crown as Gully had expected. Instead, it was far more delicate. Its color was fascinating as he caught a glimpse of it for the first time. It was made of a gold, but a very rare kind of gold — what was called nocturne gold. It made it almost black, but with something of an iridescent quality that the eye had trouble catching directly. Set into the deep indigo gold were precious stones, white and pink and blue and golden, that formed the chief stars of the Iisen constellations against the metal that constituted their night sky. It struck Gully that the stones were all the colors of the sparkflies he had chased with Pe’taro at his side while his father watched in amusement, smoking his pipe.

The Archbishop said, “By the sacrament of blood and ancestry that is the core of our people and our faith, and with the assent of your forebears, I now crown you... King Thayliss, ruler and monarch over all the Iisendom! May your ancestors bless and guide your rule!”

The Archbishop placed the crown on Gully’s head.

Gully sighed as he felt the weight of the crown settle upon his brow. He already disliked the name King Thayliss.

He stood slowly and then turned, the faces and people falling from his attention so that all that was left was the seat he was to take at the far end of the carpeted pathway. Everything else faded into the soft light of the torches and the misty host of stars above. He took his first step down from the dais while the Archbishop remained behind.

In his mind, he remembered riding his father’s shoulders as they arrived in East End, so very long ago now. The people and noise and bustling activity frightened him, but his father’s hands held him tight and the sound of Ollon’s voice describing everything had made him feel safer. He remembered the first time his father purchased a small bit of sweetened chicory there in the city market as a treat and how wonderful it had tasted.

Gully continued his slow walk towards the throne, a seat painstakingly pieced together from hundreds of pannyfruit trees centuries earlier. The faces of those on either side of him faded into indistinct shapes, as if covered with layers of gauze, so that all he saw was the end of his journey, the seat where he would become someone else. Where he would become someone he did not know.

He clutched for his memories, as if he would never again have the chance. He pulled at them, anything he could remember, in the case that this was the last time he would be able to do so.

He remembered sitting by the firelight of his father’s cabin, the snow falling silently outside and Pe’taro curled up next to him on the floor. His father, as he did so many times after this first time, took the crystal pendant from its safe spot among the fireplace stones and handed it to Gully, who examined it with curious eyes. Gully remembered turning it over and over, seeing how the firelight danced inside of it and shot out from it, all over the small cabin. His father’s words reverberated in his head, “This is our most important possession, my son, and never you forget... this is more of whom we are than our bodies or our thoughts or anything we accomplish. Both our past and our future are bound up in it. Never lose it. Never let go of it. It is now as much yours as it is mine, and you are as much a part of the circle as I am.” His father leaned over and kissed him on the top of his head sweetly. “And that makes me very happy. You are fate’s blessing for me, my precious son!”

Gully stopped in front of the throne. He turned and finally took notice of the faces watching him. Every one of these people were now dependent on him for their well-being. All of those around him, and how many thousands upon thousands more throughout the kingdom, now looked to him for good or bad.

Gully stood and let his gaze wander across all those silently anticipating faces. He was so absorbed in the eyes upon him that he did not notice how his hand gripped at the crystal sigil that he wore underneath his coronation tunic.

The words of his father reverberated in the back of his head, “We are all born someone, Di’taro, but it is only whom we choose to be that matters.”

I did not choose this
, he thought hopelessly.
I choose to allow it. I choose to take this throne and this crown. But I was not given any real choice.

Gully pulled at the mantle he wore and sat down heavily upon the throne.

All of the of faces looking at him, all of the most powerful, the most wealthy, the most vaunted in the realm, watched as he did so. At the instant he took the throne, every knee knelt and every head bowed before the new sovereign of Iisen, the first in twenty years.

And none of the gathered saw the few teardrops that slipped from his eyes.

Gully stood from the large chair behind the table, now
his
table, the dark stone one that served as the centerpiece of the room where the monarch took counsel in private, in the sovereign’s chambers behind the Throne Hall. It felt a little stuffy to Gully because, for absolute privacy, there were no windows. The stone walls, with their carvings, felt heavy and closed in, even with the high ceiling.

Thaybrill, Roald, and Chancellor Barolloy remained standing motionless and watched him from the other side of the table.

“Let us please go and get through this. There is no benefit to waiting, and if I embarrass you now versus embarrassing you an hour later makes no difference, I suppose,” said the king. He had been delaying, but he had become frustrated with himself for the pointless vacillations he had engaged in thus far that morning.

Thaybrill grinned while the Chancellor seemed supremely uncomfortable.