“How much longer?” Dara asked against Noam’s leather jacket.Leo’sleather jacket, technically.
Noam must have checked his watch using magic, because he didn’t let go. “Fifty-six minutes.”
Those next fifty-six minutes dragged by slowly, the quad filling up with still more people—god, there werethousandsof them. It wasn’t as if Dara hadn’t attended public government events before. But usually he was shuffled from place to place by someone bureaucratic and self-important, pausing only long enough for someone to shield his face from photos—the one good thing Lehrer had done as a parent was to keep Dara out of the public eye.
Dara had never been part of the crowd.
And then a ripple spread through the audience, a sudden ramping up of tension. Dara knew before he even looked:
Lehrer had arrived.
The car was sleek and black—vintage, not driverless; a relic from the early years of Carolinia. Modeled, perhaps, to look similar to the one from which Lehrer had emerged at his coronation.
The driver opened the back door. Dara whipped away before Lehrer could emerge, air gone to frost in his lungs. He stared at the sea of other people built up behind them, all craning to see—lifting phones overhead to film—and hearing the slow crescendo of delighted screams as Lehrer presumably made his first appearance.
“What’s happening?” Dara asked tightly, finding Noam’s hand again without looking and gripping hard.
“Nothing,” Noam said. “He’s just standing there, waving. It’s a photo op.”
Knowing Lehrer was still two hundred feet away didn’t stop Dara’s mouth from going dry. Two hundred feet was far closer than he’d been to Lehrer in—
Well. Since the gala.
Dara had insisted on coming today. Everyone tried to talk him out of it—Claire, Priya, even Noam.Leo’s staying back,Noam had told him.We can’t bring weapons onto the grounds; they’ll be looking for that kind of thing. Without magic to defend yourself, you’ll only be in danger.
It wasn’t even as if Dara thought he was wrong.
But the thought of staying home—watching the speech from his phone and praying,prayingthey all made it out alive—
No.
“He’s walking now,” Noam murmured. “The Chancellarian Guard is ahead of him ... he doesn’t look happy about that.”
The crowd roared louder, all those Lehrer groupies screeching just for the privilege of being heard by him. Dara wanted to press both hands over his ears. Wanted to tape their mouths shut.
“A hundred feet,” Noam went on. Then: “Fifty.”
Dara turned to look.
Lehrer was close enough the proximity sent Dara’s heart slamming against his ribs, his breath coming in abortive little gasps he muffled behind clenched teeth.
He looked the same as he always did. Age hadn’t touched him. Nor, it seemed, had fevermadness—there was no characteristic brightness to his cheeks, no glassy gleam in his eyes. It was as if he’d been constructed from alabaster and bone.
Unbreakable.
But not all the cries of the crowd were of adoration. A low rumble of dissatisfaction echoed far beneath all that devotion—there were those here today who had read all the material Noam leaked online this morning. All that evidence of torture and injustice.
Dara and Noam both averted their gazes when Lehrer drew closer, letting others in the crowd move in to take their coveted spots by the guard rope. Crammed between unfamiliar bodies, they both just stared at each other, neither one speaking—as if even breathing too loudly would lead Lehrer to them.
But Lehrer passed without incident. The crowd kept shouting his name until he had ascended the chapel steps—Dara glimpsed a brief shot of Lehrer waving from the portal before he stepped into the narthex and the heavy wooden door fell shut.
The crowds relaxed after that, attention turning toward the large screens that had been erected for viewing the proceedings within. Dara had always thought it an odd choice, giving this speech frominsidethe chapel instead of on its steps, where the public could see—but now that he was watching the live feed from the chapel itself, he was beginning to understand.
Duke Chapel was a massive feat of architectural design, all tall gothic arches and long stained glass windows. To reach the chancel, Lehrer had to proceed down the length of the entire nave—almost three hundred feet, flanked by eighteen hundred people filling the antique pews. With the late-afternoon light glittering in through the painted glass and lighting gold on Lehrer’s hair, it was not hard to imagine Lehrer as a saint ... to see this whole ceremony as the apotheosis of man to god.
The speech began, broadcast out to the crowd—streamed live to millions of holoreaders and phones and tablets and televisions all over the country. The world.
Noam and Dara stood side by side and listened, Lehrer’s voice the same smooth baritone that had defined Carolinian rhetoric, carried on the same accent Lehrer had spent a hundred years perfecting. An accent he could easily have lost in the 116 years since Lehrer and his family left Europe and came to the former United States.
