The people knew just as well as she did what happened to the last crowd that stood outside the palace. They were desperate enough to come here anyway.
She’d feared for them ever since she’d heard the news, but now she pitied them. She was furious on their behalf. And she was afraid of them too, because she could feel the fury in the way they stood, the way they muttered and shouted.
“Performance time,” said Rachelle.
“You might have . . . overestimated my ability,” said Armand, sounding a little faint.
“As far as I know,” said Rachelle, “you’ve lied to every person in this palace, one way or another. This shouldn’t be too much harder.”
“You’re so kind.” He squared his shoulders.
Without meaning to in the least, Rachelle took his hand. The metal was cold and slightly damp again her skin. “I’m Armand Vareilles,” he called out. “I’ve come to hear your complaints.”
“Where’s the King?” somebody yelled, but a lot of the people started chanting, “Return to the city! Protect us! Return to the city!” The noise was like a living heartbeat or the breathing of a wolf, and Rachelle nearly took a step back.
“I must obey my father,” he said. “I can’t leave Chateau de Lune.”
“You think that will calm them?” Rachelle hissed.
Armand gave her a bleak look. “Take off my hands,” he said.
“What?”
“Take off my hands,” he repeated, and then raised his voice. “I’m not the King. I can’t defend your city. I can’t even leave the Chateau. But I can be your saint. And more.”
Rachelle pushed up his sleeves and unlocked the straps that bound the silver hands to his arms. He drew a ragged breath. The crowd was growing quieter.
“I am not a legitimate heir. But I am a child of Tyr, and I have the Royal Gift. I defied the Forest and survived. I can let you touch me. Let me be your relic. Take what protection you can from me, what healing you can from me. And then go home in peace.”
There was a stillness where anything might have happened. Then an old woman, supported by a little girl, stumbled forward.
Armand stepped toward her. “You might want to leave,” he said. “I suspect this is going to repulse you.”
Rachelle gripped the back of his shirt. “You don’t get away from me that easily, monsieur.”
The woman was bent nearly in two, though whether by age or the sickness, it was hard to tell. Armand knelt to meet her, holding out his arms. She seized one and kissed the stump where his arm ended. Rachelle felt Armand’s back tense, but he didn’t move.
For a silent, rigid moment, the old woman was still. Then she let his arm drop.
“The pain is better,” she sobbed, and suddenly everyone was cheering.
And then the crowd came. They came from all sides, desperate and reverent and needy and loving. They touched his face, his hair, his shoulders, his arms. They kissed the stumps of his arms again and again. They pressed their rosaries and their neckerchiefs and their staffs to him. He was their relic, their saint. A few seemed ready to regard him as their god.
Rachelle crouched behind him, still gripping his shirt. She felt him tense when a boy with bleeding sores staggered up to him. She felt him flinch when somebody touched the stump of his arm. She felt him shift and straighten, spine cracking, as he tried to find a comfortable position.
It seemed they had been sitting in the crowd for hours. Days. Forever.
She saw Armand’s head bob as he nodded at people, heard him say, “God bless you. God bless you,” in a weary voice.
There were no miracles. Some said they breathed easier, walked better; others simply sobbed when they touched him, and sobbing, crawled away. Rachelle constantly expected somebody to cry fake. Surely any moment they would realize that Armand was not healing them and they would turn on him. But the moment never came. It seemed to be enough for them simply that he would sit among them and let them touch him, despite their uncleanliness.
She realized there were tears sliding down her face. She had, perhaps, only ever wanted the same thing. She had gotten it yesterday, and then she had thrown it away.
Finally the crowd was finished. When they stopped, for a few moments Armand was still, breathing raggedly. Then he got to his feet and said loudly, “In the name of my father, King Auguste-Philippe II, I grant you permission to stay in the orange gardens this night. Please return to the city at dawn.”
He turned and marched back toward the soldiers. “Get them some bread, if you can,” he said to a captain. “They probably haven’t eaten all day. It will help them settle down.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said, and Rachelle realized that the guards, too, were staring at them with something like awe.
“Good,” said Armand.
Rachelle picked up his silver hands by the harnesses. Then she grabbed him by the arm.
“We need to talk,” she said.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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