Free Sword of the Lamb by M. K. Wren Page B

protective brocade, but with the shorter mantlets, rather than cloaks.
    The lead ’car, with its complement of House guards and gonfalon bearers, landed in front of the podium, and a few seconds later, Hilding, their chauffeur, set the Faeton down as lightly as a feather. Alexand turned, feeling an indefinable chill.
    Beside him Rich sat stiff and mute, trying hard to hide his misery, but Alexand felt it as if it were born in his own mind. Rich was well aware of the curious stares his crutches attracted and looked forward to becoming the focal point of those multitudes of eyes with nothing but dread.
    No one would laugh, not at the son of Phillip DeKoven Woolf. But they would stare. The curiosity would be there, and the pity.
    Alexand found his mouth dry, his eyes burning. It wasn’t fair. Not Rich . . .
    One of the guards opened the ’car door, and the blare of trumpets, the massed voices of the crowd, seemed to explode against his eardrums. Rich went pale, but when Elise paused to kiss his cheek before she stepped out of the ’car, he called up an uncertain smile. Woolf sent him an anxious glance as he followed his wife.
    Alexand preceded Rich onto the landing area, restraining the impulse to close his eyes against the glare of light, and if he could, his ears against the onslaught of sound. From behind the barrier of Directorate guards, vidicam and imagraph lenses flashed avidly. Alexand didn’t offer Rich a helping hand, but he was close enough to reach him in a split-second. The ’cars whisked away, and the Woolfs mounted the first tier of steps beneath the podium, then turned, standing side by side, the scarlet-clad House guards forming a line behind them with a gonfalon bearer at each end. The ampspeakers blared, “
The Lord Phillip DeKoven Woolf and the Lady Elise Galinin Woolf, with their sons, Ser Alexand and Ser Richard
.”
    A roar of applause and cheering followed, a concussive shockwave of sound. And Alexand wondered, as he always did, why they cheered.
    Confetti and flowers thrown by the jubilant crowd showered the landing area and the tier of steps where they stood. Alexand saw his mother’s radiant smile as she leaned down to pick up a blossom, kissed it, then tossed it back to the crowd, where it was hungrily fought over, and the volume of sound increased. He held himself erect, looking down at the shouting, ecstatic, grinning faces. What did they see? Something bigger than life, the stuff of legends: the Black Eagle of DeKoven Woolf, and his fair Lady, so exquisitely beautiful in the white light, and their handsome sons.
    Of course, it was too bad about Ser Richard. . . .
    Woolf offered his arm to Elise, and the roar began to subside as they turned to mount the steps to their seats. The guards hadn’t yet realigned themselves, when Alexand heard a scream from the crowd behind him, and saw something small and dark fly past.
    He ducked reflexively as the missile sliced close to his head, shouts of alarm and panic a meaningless assault on his senses. All he could think of was Rich.
    He must not fall
. Alexand reached out for him, dimly aware of a sodden smash and his mother’s cry of surprise. Rich was off balance, staggering.
    Alexand caught him, and at the same time, saw his father’s face, dark with rage, and his mother’s bewildered expression; not anger, only bewilderment and hurt. Rich was trembling, a tangible aura of fear emanating from him as he stared at the dripping stain on Elise’s cape.
    Black against the
lapis
blue. An ink bomb.
    Alexand concentrated on getting Rich balanced on his crutches, his mind reverberating with the shock of realization.
    An ink bomb. A childish prank, and harmless enough, but that the Lady Galinin Woolf had suffered such an indignity was incomprehensible.
    He felt something of his father’s rage then, and knew himself capable at this moment of violence against the person responsible for the hurt chagrin in his mother’s eyes and for Rich’s fear and