The Coronation

(Alder)

There was a crowd, at least. A great one — the square full from the steps to the fountain and the side-streets packed behind, more people than he’d dared hope, and he stood on the high stage in the morning light and let himself have the sight of it, because he’d earned it, and because the night had been a poor one and a man deserved something to set against a poor night.

It had been a very poor night. He didn’t dwell on it. There were things a man put behind him, and the night was one — the staff who couldn’t find his supper, the fire that had gone up like a powder-store and taken half a good head of hair with it so that he’d had to be barbered down one side to match and stood now with his scalp cold in the breeze, the long black hours when sleep wouldn’t come and the same three thoughts went round and round: the prince, the wife, the woman with the blood on her. He put all of it behind him. This was the morning. The morning made up for the night. Look at the crowd.

And there was hope on the prince, real hope, which helped. His people had been through the castle library half the night — there was a use for the stupid old king’s hoard of mouldering books after all — and in one of them, some crumbling court history three hundred years old, a reference: a room. A hidden room, built into the old heart of the castle, a bolt-hole for the royal blood in the realm’s worst hours. That was where the brat was; it could be nowhere else; the castle was sealed and no one had gone out and so the boy was in there, in a hole in the wall some long-dead mason had cut, and they hadn’t found it yet, but they would. A room was a thing in a place. You found things in places. He’d have the prince by nightfall, and then there’d be no prince, and then the last loose thread would be cut and the realm would be his clean. He let himself believe it, standing in the light. By nightfall.

The wife he did not think about. Mostly.

It nagged, though, even here, even now — not the loss of her, he was well rid of her, he should have been rid of her years ago — but the waste of it, the sheer waste of the years he’d spent saddled with Vivienne when there’d been so much else on the table. She’d attached herself to him young and he’d happily said yes, never stopped to count what it cost him. Smith’s wife, for one — the bath-slave, the pretty freed one, Sefa — there’d been a chance there once and he’d let it go by because he was married, like a fool, like a man who didn’t understand his own position. Well. He understood it now. She was back on the table, that one, now that the encumbrance had taken herself off. And Wren — Wren had been a sweet armful, and the prince had sent her away with uncharacteristic foresight when the trouble drew near, and there was no reason now he couldn’t call her back. For the poetry of it, if nothing else. A man who’d taken a kingdom could have a little poetry. He filed it away, pleased, and turned his mind back to the crowd, because the band was lifting its instruments and that meant the anthem, and he wanted to hear the anthem.

The band played. And the crowd sang.

That was the thing he hadn’t been sure of — whether they’d sing — and they sang, the whole square of them, the old grand tune rolling up off thousands of throats into the morning, and something in him eased that had been clenched since the fire. They sang it for him. Crown of the realm, in whom our virtues meet — for him, all of it, the honour and the loyalty and the rest, rising up to where he stood; and when it came round to in whom we are made whole, and need not hide, he thought, yes — that’s it, that’s exactly it, they needn’t hide anymore, I’ve come to set it all right and they can feel it, and he stood straighter and let the sung virtue pour up over him like something owed.

Off to his left, the dignitaries stood ranged in their order, and at the front of them his commander, Hadrel, the man who’d handed him the throne — and Alder, glancing across mid-anthem, saw to his quiet satisfaction that the big soldier had tears in his eyes. Standing there at rigid attention with the anthem rolling over them and his jaw set like a wall and his eyes wet, brimming, one track gone down the weathered cheek. Now there was a man. There was loyalty you couldn’t buy — except of course he had bought it, handsomely, and would buy more — but it was good to see it ran deeper than the coin, that the man was moved, properly moved, by the great occasion and his part in it and his King’s elevation. Alder made a note to say something to him after. A word of recognition. Loyalty like that was an asset and you kept your assets close and watered.

The castle would settle too. It had to. He’d not say it had been easy, this first day and night in the place — it had been a great deal harder than he’d reckoned on, the whole machinery of the castle grinding and balking under his hand like a cart with a seized wheel — but that was a staffing matter and staffing matters got solved. He’d done the generous thing, the enlightened thing: told every slave in the place they were free, and put them on a wage, real coin, more than most of them had ever held — and what had it got him? Cold food and lost orders and a man stuck in a laundry chute and a fire that took his hair. They were stupid, was the trouble. Stunningly, comprehensively stupid, the whole inherited pack of them, fumbling and gaping and getting everything wrong, and he’d freed them and paid them and they were still useless, which told you something. It told you the old king had been a fool to keep such fools about him. It told you they were fools themselves, if they stood about now muttering that he’d been a good king, a good king who’d left them this stupid — well, there it was, that was the measure of them, too stupid even to know they’d been badly served. He’d replace the lot in time. Bring in his own. People who understood that a wage was a wage and a wage bought a day’s good work, which was the whole of the bargain, the whole of what one person owed another, and anyone who pretended there was more to it than that was either a liar or a fool, and Alder had no use for either, and the castle was full of both, and he would fix it, the way he fixed everything, by being cleverer than the problem.

He had no master of ceremonies. He’d considered one and dismissed the idea — an MC was a crutch, a thing weak men hid behind, a sign you couldn’t hold your own crowd. He didn’t need a man to announce him and herd the moment along. He’d run his own business his whole life off his own voice and his own read of the room; he’d run this the same way. Strength didn’t borrow a herald.

He raised his hands, and the anthem died away, and the square came down to a great shuffling hush, and he gave them his voice.

“Citizens of Velomoray,” he said, and it carried well, he had a good carrying voice, “I am your new King.”

He let it land, I am your new King, and gave them a moment to feel the weight of it, the way you let a room sit with a number before you move on to the upside.

“And I welcome you,” he went on, “to a new era. An era of progress. An era of prosperity — real prosperity, growth that all of us will share in, every man and woman in this realm, because that is the kind of King I mean to be: a King who delivers. The old days are done. We are going to do better, all of us, together, and I want to thank every one of you, from the bottom of my heart, for the way you have handled this transition. Peacefully. Smoothly. You have shown real maturity, and I won’t forget it.” He spread his hands, warm, inclusive, a man among his people. “We are one team now. One realm, one team, one shared future, and I am proud — proud — to lead it. There will be challenges. I won’t insult you by pretending otherwise. But we will meet them the way a strong outfit meets anything, which is together, with everyone pulling their weight, and everyone — everyone — respected for the part they play. That is my commitment to you. Values. Respect. Results.”

It was going well. He could feel it going well; this was his ground, the address, the room won by the voice, and the burnt night and the balking castle fell away behind the simple pleasure of a crowd held in his hand.

“Now. Before the part I know you’re all waiting for” — a little smile, let them wait for the slavery business, it was coming — “I want to do something close to my heart, which is to recognise the people who made this possible. Because no leader does it alone. A King is only as good as the team around him, and I have been well served.”

He turned and beckoned, and Hadrel came forward with four of his chief officers, and Alder took the medals from the cushion a boy held out — heavy gold things on broad ribbons, struck in a hurry but struck well — and he hung them one by one about the men’s necks, leaning in to each, a word for each, and when he came to Hadrel he gripped the man’s shoulder and said, low, just between them, “Good man. I saw. Loyalty like yours doesn’t go unmarked,” and watched the commander’s wet eyes and the working of his jaw and thought, there, you see, that’s how you keep a man — a word at the right moment, worth more than the gold. Then he turned them by the shoulders to face the square and presented them, his men, his loyal men, and lifted his own hand with theirs.