Sydney Grier
Stories (51/0)
An Uncrowned King Chapter 7 Part 3
“What an actress the woman must be!” he said to himself. “What pluck, what nerve she has! But this sort of thing won’t do. She will think nothing of dynamiting us before long, if this is the way she begins. We shall be obliged to take a hostage from her. She doesn’t care a scrap for the girl; but if Louis, for whom she does seem to have a little natural affection, were safely installed here, she would think twice before blowing us up. I must get that settled.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 7 Part 2
“Now,” said M. Drakovics, triumphantly, “we have proved who did not cause the fire; but beyond that, I am in a position to inform your Majesty that the miscreant was undoubtedly an emissary of Scythia, and was either a woman or a man in women’s clothes.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 5 Part 2
On the plea of extreme fatigue, Caerleon and Cyril excused themselves to their guest as early as was possible with due regard for politeness, and prepared to consider the situation in concert. Leaning out of the window of Caerleon’s room, with the watch-fires of the expectant Thracians starring the mountain-slopes on every hand, they discussed the subject in all its bearings. As was generally the case on such occasions, Cyril did most of the talking, and he summed up his arguments very concisely before they separated for the night.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 7 Part 1
“I feel I’ve about earned my night’s repose,” yawned Cyril to himself in the solitude of his own room. “If all the Thracians have worked as hard to-day as their king and his brother, they’re an industrious nation. Hullo! some of them must be at it still. I suppose old Drakovics has been hurrying them, for fear things won’t be ready for the coronation.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 5 Part 4
“But how can it signify what I thought of you? How can my conscience judge for yours? Oh, I have been thinking often since we have been here that I may have led you wrong. I ought to have advised you to see which was the harder to do—to accept or decline the crown—and to choose that.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 8 Part 4
The persons who in reality carried on the work of government were not the grey-haired chiefs who surrounded their new King, but the army of inferior officials to whom the Scythian newspapers were wont to refer scathingly as “briefless barristers and unsuccessful journalists.” They were western to a fault, wore their black broadcloth as though to the manner born, and it was easy to see that it was on them, and not on the titular heads of their departments, that M. Drakovics relied for the prosecution of his policy. Each of these men was directly responsible to him, for the nominal Ministers relied on him to tell them what papers they were to sign, and what orders they were to give, and he sent them as subordinates whom he chose. On these subordinates he could depend, for he had raised them from their original obscurity to the position they occupied at present, and all their interests were bound up with his, so that they were ready to cling to him through thick and thin. Perilous as such an autocracy may appear, the dangers which usually accompany an experiment of the kind had not as yet shown themselves in any great degree, probably owing to the common peril from Scythia which menaced ruler and ruled alike, while the administration of King Peter Franza had been so corrupt that the people hailed the present one as a foretaste of the millennium.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 5 Part 3
Caerleon followed him out, intending to comply with the request, but speech was impossible in presence of the cry of welcome that went up as soon as he became visible. For some minutes he was perforce silent, while the people shouted themselves hoarse, flung their caps into the air, leaped for joy, embraced one another, and wept copiously. He felt oddly reminded of his coming of age, and how he had risen to make his speech at the great dinner his father had given to the Llandiarmid tenants amid a scene of excitement such as this, when the sturdy farmers had sprung up like one man, and drunk his health with acclamations. They had presented him with an old silver punch-bowl—rather an incongruous gift for an uncompromising temperance man—and it had put him into an awkward predicament. A happy thought had struck him, he remembered, and he had told them that he would use the bowl for salad—a statement which was regarded as an exquisite joke, and received with shouts of approving laughter. It was queer that this should all pass through his mind now, as he stood waiting until the rejoicing calmed down a little, and he was able to obtain a moment’s silence. He found himself almost as much at a loss for words as on that earlier occasion, but at last he managed to say—
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 6 Part 2
“Oh, my friend, why were you not born a Thracian?” cried M. Drakovics, seizing Cyril in his arms, and imprinting a fervent kiss on each of his cheeks. “Your plan is almost perfect: it has only one drawback—that it is impossible. Every King of Thracia must be crowned in the chapel of St Peter at Bellaviste. It is a small, rude building, standing in the quadrangle of the palace, and in it Alexander Franza, first of the name—the patriot king—saw a vision of St Peter, the night before the great battle in which he burst the Roumi yoke. No other coronation would be valid in the opinion of the people, nor can the crown be legally removed from the chapel. It is kept in a great chest built into the wall, of which I hold one key, the Metropolitan another, and the king the third. I have it now to deliver to his Majesty, but none of the keys will open the box without the other two. Your brother cannot be crowned until we reach Bellaviste, for no make-shift crown would be tolerated by the Thracians.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction