osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2013-05-21 12:16 am
osprey_archer) wrote2013-05-21 12:16 am
Entry tags:
Fic: The Unlikely Traitor
So this is all ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
surexit's fault and also sineala's: Lost Prince fic.
Nay! Lost Prince mini-epic! Or the first chapter thereof, anyway.
Fic: The Unlikely Traitor. Chapter 1: The Betrayal
Fandom: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Pairing: none really, though you could totes read it as pre-slashy if you like.
Rating: G
Beta:sineala
Disclaimer: still not mine
Summary: Marco always thought he could trust the Rat's loyalty absolutely. When that trust is betrayed, Marco is crushed. But his duty to Samavia demands that he must search for justice - and for answers.
Also at AO3: Chapter 1: The Betrayal.
It would not have befitted the honor of the House of Loristan or the nation of Samavia for Marco to pace back and forth on the throne dais in front of his entire court. Therefore Marco sat in his throne, a little below his father’s, as calm as if the eyes and the whispers of the court were not fixed on him.
The mocking gaze of the Jiardasian ambassador, dashing in his short velvet cape, especially vexed Marco. The ambassador looked as self-satisfied as a cat, his white teeth flashing occasionally when he could not fight back his smile any longer. “Where is Captain Ratcliffe?” he asked, just loud enough that Marco could hear, and it took all Marco’s self-control to remain calm in his seat.
The Rat would be here soon, he told himself. He would be here at any moment, and then he would explain everything, and they would trust him again. They should never have doubted him, when he had helped bring the message across Europe to Samavia. But of course they did not know the Rat like Marco did.
And they could not forget that the Rat was British. “He is a foreigner,” General Sapt had said, his voice gruff, during the Cabinet meeting that had led to this gathering in the throne room.
“I’m a foreigner,” Marco pointed out with asperity.
The cabinet was so shocked that no one spoke. “Oh no, sir,” said old Tamboran, who was in charge of the exchequer. “A Loristan could never be a foreigner.”
And Marco had not pressed the matter, because he knew that he had to be Samavian for them, even if he still sometimes felt hopelessly confused by the customs of the country that he would one day rule.
Marco wished the Rat would arrive. Despite his resolve to sit still and dignified, he briefly touched his father’s signet ring. If only his father were here!
But Stefan Loristan was away, calming Kaiser Wilhelm from another one of his rages. Marco could not call him back from a mission that was of such importance to Europe. Certainly not for something as minor as this.
Minor.
But it was minor, Marco told himself fiercely. He and the Rat would laugh about it that evening, sitting in front of Marco’s fire.
The throne room, hitherto buzzing quietly, fell abruptly silent. The Rat had entered.
The silence remained. Marco could hear the soft creak of the Rat’s crutches as he traversed the long tiled floor. A pigeon flapped across the vaulted ceiling, its soft wing-beats seeming so loud that many of the courtiers looked up. The Rat swung through the long pools of gold light that the tall arched windows spilled across the tiled floor, the gold braiding and the medals on his tunic glinting in the sun. They were not mere courtesy medals: the army itself had demanded that the Rat be made captain when his brilliant grasp of strategy saved Melzarr from a sneak attack by the last rogue brigade from the Iarovitch army.
And they would trust the Rat again, Marco told himself. The Rat would clear himself publicly of the charge that he was treating with the Jiardasians, and all would be as before.
He found that despite all his attempts to appear calm, his hands were clenched and icy cold.
At last the Rat reached the foot of the dais. He bowed as well as he could on his crutches, wavering with the strain of holding himself up in such an awkward position. and waited for Marco to speak.
Marco found that he did not know what to say. He sat, sweat trickling down his back, and his hands growing tighter and tighter on the arms of his throne while the Rat’s crutches began to wobble from holding himself up.
“Captain,” Marco began, but his voice was barely a whisper; and before he could try again, the Rat’s left crutch slipped on the polished floor and he clattered to the ground.
The court seemed to gasp. Marco was halfway down the dais before he realized he had moved. The Jiardasian ambassador gave a laugh so brief and mocking that his face was smooth again by the time that Marco turned to glare at him.
A guard stepped forward to help the Rat. The Rat slapped away the helping hand. Instead, he hauled himself painfully back to his feet, falling in a heap halfway through and then pulling himself up again. His boots, always so carefully blacked, left a streak of polish on the floor. “My apologies, Your Highness,” he said, his face very red.
“The apologies are mine, Captain Ratcliffe,” said Marco. His face was at hot as the Rat’s must have been, though he hoped his darker skin hid it better.
But now, even more than before, he did not know what to say. The silence stretched again. A pigeon cooed among the vaults. The Rat looked at him, but Marco found that he could not bring himself to look back.
What would Stefan Loristan do? He would simply tell the truth. So Marco said, “Captain Ratcliffe, you are accused of trying to sell a blueprint of the palace to the Jiardasians.”
The Rat’s scarlet face turned abruptly white.
Marco gave a strange laugh. “I know it’s ridiculous,” he assured the Rat. “Not just ridiculous - it’s an affront to your honor - I told them it was ridiculous. You would never betray Samavia. That’s why I had everyone gathered here, so everyone can witness the disproving of these false accusations.”
Marco stopped. He looked at the Rat, waiting for him to speak, to say something that proved false the seemingly incontrovertible mound of evidence that the Cabinet had presented to Marco. But the Rat, still white-faced, remained silent. Doubt curdled in Marco’s stomach.
But of course! The Rat was, he must be, waiting for Marco’s permission to speak. The Rat was a stickler for protocol. “Go ahead," Marco said. "I know you can prove the accusations false. Why did you go to the Golden Bough to meet with Miarsa, who is a known Jiardasian spy?”
Silence. The women’s skirts rustled in the quiet, almost like the sound of the pigeons flying across the ceiling. The Rat looked Marco steadily in the face, his gray eyes clear and steady, but he did not say anything.
“You will prove that the accusations are false,” Marco repeated, more loudly, and when the Rat still did not speak, Marco descended the last few steps and said, quietly, “Rat - ”
“I can’t,” the Rat said, just as quietly. His eyes were fixed on Marco’s, his gaze so fierce and steady that he seemed to be trying to speak to Marco with his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Marco said.
“I mean,” said the Rat, his voice measured, looking steadily into Marco’s face, “that I can’t.” His voice rose, so that it rang through the hall. “I am afraid the accusation is true.”
The year before, Marco had been shot. At first it had not hurt. The bullet had hit him in the arm, and it was as if all the air had been squeezed out of him, as if he were a bellows, and his arm had felt very strange. Marco remembered looking at it, watching the blood ooze out over his sleeve, as if it were someone else’s arm. And there had been no pain.
And then the Rat had tackled him off his horse, shouting, “Marco!” And his voice had also sounded very far away. And Marco had hit the road, and suddenly he could feel again, and his arm hurt so much that in that moment he would have cut it off if it would have stopped the pain.
It had been a Jiardasian assassin, hiding in the cheering crowds as Marco and his father led Marco's eighteenth birthday cavalcade through Melzarr.
Marco felt much the same now: the same sense that he had been knocked out of his body and could feel no pain. “You’ve been treating with the Jiardasians,” Marco said, and he gave a brief meaningless laugh. “You tried to sell them a blueprint to the palace. To the Jiardasians, who tried to kill my father and me last year. The Jiardasians, who nearly shot you.”
The Rat’s gray eyes remained clear and steady on Marco’s face. But he did not deny it.
“Your most esteemed and royal highness, I protest!” said the Jiardasian ambassador, his voice ringing through the throne room. Marco had almost forgotten that he and the Rat were not alone. “The nation of Jiardasia wants nothing more than to live in peace with its Samavian neighbor, for two such great nations ought always to be bound together by the bonds of amity. It can only be the Beltrazans, your highness, who are responsible for last year’s - ”
“I protest!” cried the Beltrazan ambassador, storming forward, his long beard all but bristling with wrath.
“ - despicable outrage against your most esteemed royal persons!” the Jiardasian ambassador finished, flourishing his cloak. His cheeks were red, and despite himself he could not stop smiling, his face strangely obscene with glee: the same glee that he had shown last year when he heard of the assassination attempt. “Out of respect for the dignity of diplomacy I have remained silent, but I accuse - ”
It was true, then. Marco had not quite believed it, even though the Rat had confessed. But the Jiardasian ambassador’s glee confirmed it.
“You - ! You - ! You - !” the Beltrazan ambassador fumed, incoherent.
“ - nay! Without proof I refrain from accusing! My love for the people and the country of Samavia has led me astray in my zeal to protect their esteemed royal family, the descendants of the great house of Fedorovitch - ”
Of course the Jiardasian ambassador mentioned the Fedorovitch. If the Loristans died, then the kings of Jiardasia had the best claim to Samavia, through a Fedorovitch princess centuries ago.
A film of ice seemed to settle on Marco’s heart.
“I humbly offer an entire squadron of Jiardasia’s finest, at your service, your royal highness,” the Jiardasian ambassador finished.
Marco said, with the quiet and commanding tone he had learned from Stefan Loristan, “Be silent.”
Silence, again. He turned back to the Rat, very still and cold. “You betrayed Samavia,” he said steadily.
“Yes,” said the Rat, just as calmly. His clear gray eyes remained on Marco’s face, searching Marco’s eyes, and that steady gaze hurt Marco so much that he had to look away. How could the Rat’s eyes still look so pure and truthful when he was a traitor?
“Why?” asked Marco. The ice on his heart seemed to crack as he said it, and his voice went high at the end.
And finally, finally the Rat looked away from him. “They offered,” he said, and had to lick his lips before he continued, “so much money.”
“Money,” said Marco, and his voice started to shake. He had not imagined that anyone could be so base as to betray years of friendship for mere money.
“Money,” said the Rat, and a note of viciousness crept into his voice. “Masses of it. Piles of it, Marco.”
“You will address him as Your Royal Highness, traitor,” thundered General Sapt. “You’re a shame to the uniform of Samavia.”
At this, the Rat’s head snapped up again, his cheeks flaming, but he didn’t answer General Sapt. “Your Royal Highness,” he said instead, almost spitting the words. “You don't even pay me.”
Rage swelled in Marco’s chest. Perhaps they didn’t pay the Rat, but when had he wanted for anything? “I didn’t realize I had to buy your loyalty,” Marco said. His heart thudded in his chest. “I thought we were friends.”
The Rat raised his eyes again, trying to catch Marco’s eyes. Marco, unwilling to look at him, turned from him sharply, taking a few steps away. “You’ve never been good at thinking,” said the Rat.
Marco whirled around. He strode back to the Rat. His little-used ornamental dagger hissed as he drew it from its scabbard.
The Rat’s face whitened again, but he didn’t try to flee or even flinch. “Go ahead,” he said. “Stab an unarmed man.”
“I would never kill you without a proper trial,” Marco said. He grabbed the Rat’s prized medals, yanking on them hard enough that he nearly pulled the Rat off his feet. The Rat’s crutches shrieked against the floor. “But you’ve shamed Samavia. You shame those medals by wearing them.” And he dragged the dagger through the ribbons the attached the medals to the Rat’s coat.
He stepped back, letting the medals fall to the floor. They chimed on the tiles like dropped coins.
Marco dropped the dagger too and backed away from the Rat, almost tripping when his heel caught against the lowest step of the dais. He turned around, walking up to the platform but not taking his throne. “Take him away,” he said, back to the throne room - back to the Rat. “Take him to the dungeon. We will try him when King Stefan returns.”
The guards’ hobnailed boots clattered on the floor as they moved to flank the Rat.
“Mar - ” the Rat began, then cut stopped with a thump and a gasp, as if someone had hit him for insolence.
Marco whirled. "None of that," he barked, glaring at the guards flanking the Rat. The one on the right hung his head guiltily. He looked almost comically tall, standing next to the Rat. "We do not hit prisoners in Samavia."
"Yes, Your Highness," the guards said.
Marco began to turn away again, waving a hand to dismiss them, but the Rat tried again: "Your Highness," he said, and despite himself Marco could not ignore him. The Rat's crutches stuck out at odd angles, and his hands, clenched on their crossbars, had turned white from holding so hard. “Your Highness. Let me walk to the dungeon on my own power. You know I cannot run away.”
“Do I?” Marco said, rage swelling in his throat. “You’ve lied about everything else.” And again he turned away. “Take him down,” he said, and wished he could close his ears against the clack of boots on the tile floor as the guards took the Rat’s arms and turned him around to march him out. Marco flinched at the crack, almost like a gunshot, of the Rat’s crutches clattering to the tiles.
The guards walked far too fast for the Rat to keep pace. The tips of the Rat’s polished boots squeaked on the floor as the guards dragged him through the throne room.
surexit's fault and also sineala's: Lost Prince fic. Nay! Lost Prince mini-epic! Or the first chapter thereof, anyway.
Fic: The Unlikely Traitor. Chapter 1: The Betrayal
Fandom: The Lost Prince - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Pairing: none really, though you could totes read it as pre-slashy if you like.
Rating: G
Beta:
sinealaDisclaimer: still not mine
Summary: Marco always thought he could trust the Rat's loyalty absolutely. When that trust is betrayed, Marco is crushed. But his duty to Samavia demands that he must search for justice - and for answers.
Also at AO3: Chapter 1: The Betrayal.
It would not have befitted the honor of the House of Loristan or the nation of Samavia for Marco to pace back and forth on the throne dais in front of his entire court. Therefore Marco sat in his throne, a little below his father’s, as calm as if the eyes and the whispers of the court were not fixed on him.
The mocking gaze of the Jiardasian ambassador, dashing in his short velvet cape, especially vexed Marco. The ambassador looked as self-satisfied as a cat, his white teeth flashing occasionally when he could not fight back his smile any longer. “Where is Captain Ratcliffe?” he asked, just loud enough that Marco could hear, and it took all Marco’s self-control to remain calm in his seat.
The Rat would be here soon, he told himself. He would be here at any moment, and then he would explain everything, and they would trust him again. They should never have doubted him, when he had helped bring the message across Europe to Samavia. But of course they did not know the Rat like Marco did.
And they could not forget that the Rat was British. “He is a foreigner,” General Sapt had said, his voice gruff, during the Cabinet meeting that had led to this gathering in the throne room.
“I’m a foreigner,” Marco pointed out with asperity.
The cabinet was so shocked that no one spoke. “Oh no, sir,” said old Tamboran, who was in charge of the exchequer. “A Loristan could never be a foreigner.”
And Marco had not pressed the matter, because he knew that he had to be Samavian for them, even if he still sometimes felt hopelessly confused by the customs of the country that he would one day rule.
Marco wished the Rat would arrive. Despite his resolve to sit still and dignified, he briefly touched his father’s signet ring. If only his father were here!
But Stefan Loristan was away, calming Kaiser Wilhelm from another one of his rages. Marco could not call him back from a mission that was of such importance to Europe. Certainly not for something as minor as this.
Minor.
But it was minor, Marco told himself fiercely. He and the Rat would laugh about it that evening, sitting in front of Marco’s fire.
The throne room, hitherto buzzing quietly, fell abruptly silent. The Rat had entered.
The silence remained. Marco could hear the soft creak of the Rat’s crutches as he traversed the long tiled floor. A pigeon flapped across the vaulted ceiling, its soft wing-beats seeming so loud that many of the courtiers looked up. The Rat swung through the long pools of gold light that the tall arched windows spilled across the tiled floor, the gold braiding and the medals on his tunic glinting in the sun. They were not mere courtesy medals: the army itself had demanded that the Rat be made captain when his brilliant grasp of strategy saved Melzarr from a sneak attack by the last rogue brigade from the Iarovitch army.
And they would trust the Rat again, Marco told himself. The Rat would clear himself publicly of the charge that he was treating with the Jiardasians, and all would be as before.
He found that despite all his attempts to appear calm, his hands were clenched and icy cold.
At last the Rat reached the foot of the dais. He bowed as well as he could on his crutches, wavering with the strain of holding himself up in such an awkward position. and waited for Marco to speak.
Marco found that he did not know what to say. He sat, sweat trickling down his back, and his hands growing tighter and tighter on the arms of his throne while the Rat’s crutches began to wobble from holding himself up.
“Captain,” Marco began, but his voice was barely a whisper; and before he could try again, the Rat’s left crutch slipped on the polished floor and he clattered to the ground.
The court seemed to gasp. Marco was halfway down the dais before he realized he had moved. The Jiardasian ambassador gave a laugh so brief and mocking that his face was smooth again by the time that Marco turned to glare at him.
A guard stepped forward to help the Rat. The Rat slapped away the helping hand. Instead, he hauled himself painfully back to his feet, falling in a heap halfway through and then pulling himself up again. His boots, always so carefully blacked, left a streak of polish on the floor. “My apologies, Your Highness,” he said, his face very red.
“The apologies are mine, Captain Ratcliffe,” said Marco. His face was at hot as the Rat’s must have been, though he hoped his darker skin hid it better.
But now, even more than before, he did not know what to say. The silence stretched again. A pigeon cooed among the vaults. The Rat looked at him, but Marco found that he could not bring himself to look back.
What would Stefan Loristan do? He would simply tell the truth. So Marco said, “Captain Ratcliffe, you are accused of trying to sell a blueprint of the palace to the Jiardasians.”
The Rat’s scarlet face turned abruptly white.
Marco gave a strange laugh. “I know it’s ridiculous,” he assured the Rat. “Not just ridiculous - it’s an affront to your honor - I told them it was ridiculous. You would never betray Samavia. That’s why I had everyone gathered here, so everyone can witness the disproving of these false accusations.”
Marco stopped. He looked at the Rat, waiting for him to speak, to say something that proved false the seemingly incontrovertible mound of evidence that the Cabinet had presented to Marco. But the Rat, still white-faced, remained silent. Doubt curdled in Marco’s stomach.
But of course! The Rat was, he must be, waiting for Marco’s permission to speak. The Rat was a stickler for protocol. “Go ahead," Marco said. "I know you can prove the accusations false. Why did you go to the Golden Bough to meet with Miarsa, who is a known Jiardasian spy?”
Silence. The women’s skirts rustled in the quiet, almost like the sound of the pigeons flying across the ceiling. The Rat looked Marco steadily in the face, his gray eyes clear and steady, but he did not say anything.
“You will prove that the accusations are false,” Marco repeated, more loudly, and when the Rat still did not speak, Marco descended the last few steps and said, quietly, “Rat - ”
“I can’t,” the Rat said, just as quietly. His eyes were fixed on Marco’s, his gaze so fierce and steady that he seemed to be trying to speak to Marco with his eyes.
“What do you mean?” Marco said.
“I mean,” said the Rat, his voice measured, looking steadily into Marco’s face, “that I can’t.” His voice rose, so that it rang through the hall. “I am afraid the accusation is true.”
The year before, Marco had been shot. At first it had not hurt. The bullet had hit him in the arm, and it was as if all the air had been squeezed out of him, as if he were a bellows, and his arm had felt very strange. Marco remembered looking at it, watching the blood ooze out over his sleeve, as if it were someone else’s arm. And there had been no pain.
And then the Rat had tackled him off his horse, shouting, “Marco!” And his voice had also sounded very far away. And Marco had hit the road, and suddenly he could feel again, and his arm hurt so much that in that moment he would have cut it off if it would have stopped the pain.
It had been a Jiardasian assassin, hiding in the cheering crowds as Marco and his father led Marco's eighteenth birthday cavalcade through Melzarr.
Marco felt much the same now: the same sense that he had been knocked out of his body and could feel no pain. “You’ve been treating with the Jiardasians,” Marco said, and he gave a brief meaningless laugh. “You tried to sell them a blueprint to the palace. To the Jiardasians, who tried to kill my father and me last year. The Jiardasians, who nearly shot you.”
The Rat’s gray eyes remained clear and steady on Marco’s face. But he did not deny it.
“Your most esteemed and royal highness, I protest!” said the Jiardasian ambassador, his voice ringing through the throne room. Marco had almost forgotten that he and the Rat were not alone. “The nation of Jiardasia wants nothing more than to live in peace with its Samavian neighbor, for two such great nations ought always to be bound together by the bonds of amity. It can only be the Beltrazans, your highness, who are responsible for last year’s - ”
“I protest!” cried the Beltrazan ambassador, storming forward, his long beard all but bristling with wrath.
“ - despicable outrage against your most esteemed royal persons!” the Jiardasian ambassador finished, flourishing his cloak. His cheeks were red, and despite himself he could not stop smiling, his face strangely obscene with glee: the same glee that he had shown last year when he heard of the assassination attempt. “Out of respect for the dignity of diplomacy I have remained silent, but I accuse - ”
It was true, then. Marco had not quite believed it, even though the Rat had confessed. But the Jiardasian ambassador’s glee confirmed it.
“You - ! You - ! You - !” the Beltrazan ambassador fumed, incoherent.
“ - nay! Without proof I refrain from accusing! My love for the people and the country of Samavia has led me astray in my zeal to protect their esteemed royal family, the descendants of the great house of Fedorovitch - ”
Of course the Jiardasian ambassador mentioned the Fedorovitch. If the Loristans died, then the kings of Jiardasia had the best claim to Samavia, through a Fedorovitch princess centuries ago.
A film of ice seemed to settle on Marco’s heart.
“I humbly offer an entire squadron of Jiardasia’s finest, at your service, your royal highness,” the Jiardasian ambassador finished.
Marco said, with the quiet and commanding tone he had learned from Stefan Loristan, “Be silent.”
Silence, again. He turned back to the Rat, very still and cold. “You betrayed Samavia,” he said steadily.
“Yes,” said the Rat, just as calmly. His clear gray eyes remained on Marco’s face, searching Marco’s eyes, and that steady gaze hurt Marco so much that he had to look away. How could the Rat’s eyes still look so pure and truthful when he was a traitor?
“Why?” asked Marco. The ice on his heart seemed to crack as he said it, and his voice went high at the end.
And finally, finally the Rat looked away from him. “They offered,” he said, and had to lick his lips before he continued, “so much money.”
“Money,” said Marco, and his voice started to shake. He had not imagined that anyone could be so base as to betray years of friendship for mere money.
“Money,” said the Rat, and a note of viciousness crept into his voice. “Masses of it. Piles of it, Marco.”
“You will address him as Your Royal Highness, traitor,” thundered General Sapt. “You’re a shame to the uniform of Samavia.”
At this, the Rat’s head snapped up again, his cheeks flaming, but he didn’t answer General Sapt. “Your Royal Highness,” he said instead, almost spitting the words. “You don't even pay me.”
Rage swelled in Marco’s chest. Perhaps they didn’t pay the Rat, but when had he wanted for anything? “I didn’t realize I had to buy your loyalty,” Marco said. His heart thudded in his chest. “I thought we were friends.”
The Rat raised his eyes again, trying to catch Marco’s eyes. Marco, unwilling to look at him, turned from him sharply, taking a few steps away. “You’ve never been good at thinking,” said the Rat.
Marco whirled around. He strode back to the Rat. His little-used ornamental dagger hissed as he drew it from its scabbard.
The Rat’s face whitened again, but he didn’t try to flee or even flinch. “Go ahead,” he said. “Stab an unarmed man.”
“I would never kill you without a proper trial,” Marco said. He grabbed the Rat’s prized medals, yanking on them hard enough that he nearly pulled the Rat off his feet. The Rat’s crutches shrieked against the floor. “But you’ve shamed Samavia. You shame those medals by wearing them.” And he dragged the dagger through the ribbons the attached the medals to the Rat’s coat.
He stepped back, letting the medals fall to the floor. They chimed on the tiles like dropped coins.
Marco dropped the dagger too and backed away from the Rat, almost tripping when his heel caught against the lowest step of the dais. He turned around, walking up to the platform but not taking his throne. “Take him away,” he said, back to the throne room - back to the Rat. “Take him to the dungeon. We will try him when King Stefan returns.”
The guards’ hobnailed boots clattered on the floor as they moved to flank the Rat.
“Mar - ” the Rat began, then cut stopped with a thump and a gasp, as if someone had hit him for insolence.
Marco whirled. "None of that," he barked, glaring at the guards flanking the Rat. The one on the right hung his head guiltily. He looked almost comically tall, standing next to the Rat. "We do not hit prisoners in Samavia."
"Yes, Your Highness," the guards said.
Marco began to turn away again, waving a hand to dismiss them, but the Rat tried again: "Your Highness," he said, and despite himself Marco could not ignore him. The Rat's crutches stuck out at odd angles, and his hands, clenched on their crossbars, had turned white from holding so hard. “Your Highness. Let me walk to the dungeon on my own power. You know I cannot run away.”
“Do I?” Marco said, rage swelling in his throat. “You’ve lied about everything else.” And again he turned away. “Take him down,” he said, and wished he could close his ears against the clack of boots on the tile floor as the guards took the Rat’s arms and turned him around to march him out. Marco flinched at the crack, almost like a gunshot, of the Rat’s crutches clattering to the tiles.
The guards walked far too fast for the Rat to keep pace. The tips of the Rat’s polished boots squeaked on the floor as the guards dragged him through the throne room.
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