The Chosen Prince Read Online Free PDF

chamber pot for a crown.”
    â€œNo, I think Titus is right. We should throw him in the trough.”
    â€œBut what if he doesn’t make the cut?” Felix says.
    That brings the conversation to a halt. It’s not that they haven’t considered this possibility. But by the time Leander made it to the finals, it had come to seem inevitable that he’d go all the way. It would be bad luck even to suggest otherwise.
    â€œI say we throw him in the trough anyway,” Titus says.
    And then Delius spots Leander far in the distance, ambling across the field at an easy pace, looking down at his feet as he goes. He seems to be in no hurry, kind of thoughtful, lazy, perhaps even a little bored. When he’s near enough, they see he isn’t smiling.
    This is exactly how Leander would act if he had lost: casual, easy, dignified. He wouldn’t have the heart to joke about it, but nor would he show them his pain.
    â€œOh, no!” Gaius says.
    â€œDon’t jump to conclusions,” Markos says. “He’s probably just tired from the race.”
    â€œYeah, probably.”
    Alexos feels sick. He’s back to thinking about falling down stairs.
    The master of arms takes a step forward. The boyshadn’t heard him come out onto the portico, hadn’t even known he was there. He’d probably been standing nearby all along, waiting like the rest of them. Now the other masters emerge from various doorways. Together they watch his approach.
    At last Leander reaches the porch and flops down on his end of a bench. He is red-faced and slick with sweat. He looks around at the shocked, expectant faces, raises his brows, shrugs, and gives a brave, false smile. “Oh, well,” he says.
    There is a deep silence in which all of them search for comforting things to say, then wonder if some sort of joke might be better, more in keeping with Leander’s style, less humiliating. They gaze down at the table, at their hands, at their feet. They nod silently, in a sad, “Oh, well” sort of way.
    But Alexos continues to look directly at Leander. So he is the only one to notice when Leander starts to lose control. There’s a twitching at the corners of his mouth, a pursing of the lips. And now Alexos is leaning in, drilling him with his eyes, daring him to keep it up, knowing he can’t do it.
    â€œYou made the finals, didn’t you?” he shouts. “You absolutely did!”
    Leander breaks into a spectacular grimace of shock and wide-eyed amazement, then jumps off the bench and dashes away as the others are up and runningafter him. He barely makes it to the grass along the side of the portico before they bring him down, pile on him in a heap, screaming, “Horse trough! Horse trough! Horse trough!”
    An hour later, having doused their champion and sent away the masters, they sit in a companionable circle, laughing and slapping their thighs at the wonder of it all, while Leander gives his highly colored account of the race.
    He had come in ninth. And of course he makes a huge drama of that, with the Giant of the North (of whom they’ve already heard) playing a strong supporting role—dogging Leander’s heels, frothing at the mouth, grunting and growling.
    â€œAnd wait till you hear the best part,” he says. They wait. He leans into the center of the circle, looks left and right, and drops his voice. “You’ll never guess.”
    â€œThat’s right , you toad,” Titus says. “So tell us!”
    â€œOh, I’m wounded.” Leander pretends to be wounded. Then there’s another long pause with lots of feigned scowling. “All right,” he says, relenting. “So. Here it is. Among the final eleven—plus Alexos, of course, who makes twelve—there are several from the royal city. We’ve seen them around, but I don’t know any of them by name. There are also several of the type you’d