The Little People

Orso took a breath of the crisp morning air and let it sigh away. It felt good to be out of the city. The vapours seemed to get worse and the demands of kingship more suffocating every day. Lord Hoff and his wearisome timetable, the pointless functions, the tedious rituals, every moment scrupulously wasted far in advance with never an opportunity to actually do anything. Even Orso’s toilet habits were precisely circumscribed, catalogued, overseen. He would not have been surprised to find there were a bevy of highly lucrative offices for the purpose. Lord High Warden of the Royal Stool. Chief Custodian of His Majesty’s Passage. Piss-Smeller General.

He twisted the circlet gently from his head and held it up, looking through it towards the gleaming track. Towards the expectant crowd. He gave a little giggle.

“Something amusing?” asked his mother, for whom nothing was ever amusing.

“I never realised before. The thing about crowns… there’s nothing in them, is there?”

Orso flinched at a sudden blast of steam from the machinery, a ripple of “oohs” and “aahs,” followed by polite applause. A band played something brassy and optimistic. Smiling children waved little Union flags. The famous device itself was a madman’s nightmare of cogs, rods and rivets, a beast of brass and iron gleaming with grease, vapour puffing from its valves like smoke from a dragon’s nostrils. It was mounted on a pair of polished rails that stretched across two fields to a bridge fluttering with coloured bunting. On top of it, a noted actress wore a headdress and flimsy robe that presumably marked her out as inspiration or some such abstract virtue. The sun kept going in, though, and despite her beaming smile she looked mostly rather cold.

“However does it work?” mused Orso, jamming his circlet back on. The engine might as well have been a sorcerer’s wand for all he understood its workings.

“I believe a coal-fired furnace heats water in the vessel to boiling,” said Dietam dan Kort, his waistcoat straining dangerously about the buttons as he leaned across Curnsbick’s empty chair. “The formation of steam within creates pressure which drives a reciprocating piston converting expansive to rotational force, then transmitting it through a sequence of gears to the wheels. Would Your Majesty like more detail?”

Orso raised his brows. “If anything… less.”

“The fire makes steam,” pronounced Queen Terez, deigning to speak a few words in the common tongue but insisting on doing so with an overpowering Styrian accent. “The steam makes it go.”

“That,” admitted Kort, “is the essence.”

Honrig Curnsbick, the great machinist himself, stood near his creation with tall hat and riotous side whiskers, surrounded by cheering well-wishers, shaking a fistful of drawings at his oil-blackened engineers. One of them shovelled coal furiously into the glowing maw of the machine. Another weighed a giant wrench while frowning towards the royal box with an intensity bordering on hatred. Sadly, there was nothing remarkable in that. Orso regarded anything warmer than strong dislike from one of his subjects as a delightful surprise.

“You really should have a queen beside you,” observed his mother.

He grinned sideways at her. “I do.”

“I mean a wife, as you well know. Help me, High Justice.”

“Her Majesty. As always. Makes a fine point.” Bruckel leaned past Orso’s mother to jab out a few phrases. “See what marriage has done. For the Lord Governor of Angland.” Orso winced. He would rather have been squirted with poison than with more news of Leo dan Brock’s happy union. “The government there was paralysed. Antiquated. Incompetent. Since his wedding? Turned. Around.”

“Lady Savine is an immensely talented woman, though!” Kort leaned in from the other side to unwittingly make matters even worse. “I must confess, I was reluctant to embrace her as a partner but, well, I couldn’t have completed my canal without her. Stupendously talented.” Kort shook his head, chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath. “Not many like her around, Your Majesty.”

“That settles it, then,” said Orso. “Lady Savine will simply have to marry me and her husband.” The real tragedy was that he would likely have clutched at that arrangement with both hands.

His mother was less taken with it. “Don’t be facetious, Orso, it’s beneath your majesty.”

“I’m starting to think there’s nothing beneath my majesty.”

“Your sisters both did their dynastic duty. Do you suppose Cathil wanted to move to Starikland?”

How often had they gone over this same conversation? “She’s an inspiration.”

“Do you think Carlot wanted to marry the Chancellor of Sipani?”

“She always seems rather pleased about it—”

“You cannot delay any longer. You are not only damaging yourself, but the whole Union.”

She detested the Union but believed hypocrisy was a thing that only happened to other people. Orso gritted his teeth. “I’ll look at the latest list again. But I want to organise this grand tour first. Get out into the country and introduce myself to the people!”

“Far better to tour with a wife, then you could introduce her to the people and get started on producing an heir at the same time.”

“What? Actually simultaneously?”

She glanced at him down her nose. “At least they would see you were finally taking your responsibilities seriously.”

“Now who’s being facetious?”

“My master would be delighted if you were to wed.”

Orso recoiled at the voice in his ear. Bayaz’s stooge, Yoru Sulfur, had leaned grinning forward from the chairs behind. He was one of those people with an ugly habit of popping up at the worst moments.

“Oh really?” snapped Orso. “Keen to buy a new dress, is he?”

Sulfur’s sharp smile showed no sign of slipping. “Anything that bears on the stability of the realm is of interest to Lord Bayaz.”

“How fortunate we are to have such a guardian. But what brings a magus to a scientific demonstration? Haven’t you got…” Orso waved a hand. “Something magical to be about?”

“There is not so wide a gulf between science and magic as some suppose.” Sulfur nodded towards the city, where the House of the Maker was still the tallest spike on the horizon. “Was not Kanedias himself the first and greatest of engineers? And did not Juvens say that knowledge is the root of power? Lord Bayaz delights in nothing more than ideas, innovations, new ways of thinking.” He turned his bright eyes towards Curnsbick’s steam-wreathed engine. “Imagine a network of these track-roads. Iron bands binding the Union ever more tightly together, carrying a never-ceasing flood of goods and people. A wonder to rank alongside the great achievements of the Old Time!”

“It sounds a marvellous project, Master Sulfur, but… an expensive one.” Orso began to turn away. “I fear my treasury is not up to the challenge.”

“The Banking House of Valint and Balk has already offered to advance the capital.”

Orso frowned. It was largely due to the crippling interest on Valint and Balk’s loans that the treasury was in such a lamentable state. “That is… uncharacteristically generous of them.”

“The bank would take the necessary land in trust and own the tracks, charging a trifling stipend for their use. I was hoping you would consent to my making the arrangements with the lord chancellor.”

“That sounds rather like the first step in selling you my kingdom piece by piece.”

Sufur smiled wider yet. “Hardly the first step.”

“Your Majesties!” Curnsbick hurried up to the royal box, whisking off his hat and dabbing his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. “I hope we haven’t kept you waiting.”

“Not at all,” said Orso. “Converting expansive force to rotational is… no easy business… I suppose—”

The Queen Dowager issued a thunderous snort of contempt, but Curnsbick was already facing the crowds, thumping his broad fists down on the rail. The band sputtered out. The eager conversation died away. The audience turned from the engine to its creator. The great machinist began to speak.

“We have made astonishing progress in a few brief years, my friends!” Depending on who you asked, of course, Orso still heard plenty of complaints. “With the right techniques and machinery, one man can now do the work that once took ten! Took twenty!” Though what became of the other nineteen was not made clear.

“I firmly believe that this, my latest invention…” And Curnsbick wafted a hand towards the engine with the flourish of a pimp introducing his prostitutes. “Our latest invention, for it belongs to posterity, will not simply carry a few of us from Adua to Valbeck in more comfort and less time than ever before. It will carry all of us… into the future!”

“The one undeniable thing about the future,” murmured Orso’s mother in Styrian, “is that it comes to you, ready or not, without need for a conveyance.”

It certainly seemed a rather overcomplicated way of crossing two fields. But Orso could only shrug and smile, which, after all, were his main contributions to any of the many events he attended. If he’d had all the answers then he supposed he could have been the great machinist, instead of merely a king.

“There are those at both ends of the social scale who would have us change direction!” Curnsbick was shouting. “Those who would not only try to dam the river of progress but have it flow uphill! Who would break, burn and murder in the name of dragging us back into a glorious past that never truly was. A place of ignorance, superstition, squalor and fear. A place of darkness! But there will be no going back! I promise you that!” He raised his arm and turned to Orso. “Your Majesty, with your kind permission?”

It always worried Orso when someone wanted to involve him in a decision, however superficially. But decisions still had to be made. However superficially. “Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!” he called, grinning to the crowd.

Curnsbick turned to the engine and portentously chopped down his arm. The engineer, his smile a curve of white in his oil-smeared face, hauled upon one of the levers, and the entire world exploded.

“We have made astonishing progress in a few brief years, my friends!” bellowed Curnsbick.

“Hear, hear!” Verunice piped, and was at once rather embarrassed. One wanted to stand out from the crowd, especially after so many years in the most distant background, but one did not want to make an exhibition of oneself. Only look at Savine dan Glokta, now Brock, of course. Everyone did, after all. So audacious. Yet so feminine. The spirit of the new age! Verunice had joined all the forward-looking societies. The Fellowship for Civic Advancement, the Association for Improving the Condition of the Working Classes, the Solar Society, of course. She had already made what she considered an excellent investment with that young man Arinhorm. So polite. So attentive. He had looked at her in a way no young man had for years. Verunice felt a flush and wished she had brought her fan. But though it was summer, it was not quite fanning weather.

“With the right techniques and machinery,” Curnsbick was explaining, “one man can now do the work that once took ten! Took twenty!”

Verunice nodded eagerly, then realised she might nod her wig loose, put a nervous hand to it and nearly knocked off her hat. She was not at all used to the headgear yet. Nor the dress. If she had been removed from it, the damn thing would probably have stood up by itself, but the dressmaker had told her this was what all the forward-looking ladies were wearing. She now found herself scarcely able to breathe, turn or move her arms, but she had acquired, as if by magic, quite an impressive bust. Her mother had always insisted that a bust was half the battle. Verunice had always wondered what the rest of the battle might be but never had the nerve to ask.

“I firmly believe that this, my latest invention…” And Curnsbick gestured towards his smouldering engine with the presence of a great actor upon the stage. Such a powerful man, those strong hands. Such a generous man, those impressive side whiskers. Such a visionary, piercing eyes behind his flashing lenses. The spirit of the age! “Will carry all of us… into the future!”

Verunice applauded as eagerly as her corsetry allowed. One could see the future coming on the carriage ride out of Adua. The chimneys, the cranes, the endless building, endless creation, endless opportunity.

“There will be no going back!” shouted Curnsbick. “I promise you that!”

Verunice applauded again, painfully this time but she didn’t care. There would be no going back. Not to her smothering marriage or the suffocating house in the country or the stifling conversation at the village meetings. Her husband was dead and she had the money now and she’d buy herself a fucking life. She blushed, then realised she hadn’t said the word, only thought it, so where was the crime? It was a new world. She could think what she liked. Could she even say what she liked?

“Fuck,” she whispered, and felt herself blushing even more deeply. She wished she had brought her fan.

The young king smiled, so carefree, so debonair, such lovely glossy hair, his golden circlet glittering in the sun. The spirit of the age! “Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!”

Curnsbick chopped one broad hand down and Verunice closed her eyes, feeling the wind of freedom on her cheeks. Now she would be—

“We have made astonishing progress in a few brief years, my friends!” It was true the Union was much changed in the two decades since Muslan arrived but mostly, in his opinion, for the worse. He felt the stares when he walked the streets in his own neighbourhood. He felt the stares now. Less curiosity than there once had been, and more fear. More dislike. Insults were sometimes thrown. Objects, too, on occasion. A very pleasant young man of his acquaintance had been hit by a slate thrown from a roof and nearly killed. And he had been born in Adua! To Kadiri parents! When people are fixed on hatred they do not discriminate. But Muslan refused be cowed. He had not hidden from the priests. He would not hide from these damn fool pinks, either.

“With the right techniques and machinery,” Curnsbick blathered on, “one man can now do the work that once took ten! Took twenty!”

Muslan gave a curt nod at that. There was much to detest about the Union. They prated on freedom but the women who toiled in the fields and the kitchens, the men who toiled in the mills and the mines, were as trapped in their lives of drudgery as any slave. A man was at least free to think here, though. To have ideas. To change things.

In Ul-Suffayn the priests had declared him a heretic. His wife had begged him to stop, but to Muslan his work was a holy duty. Others saw their holy duties differently. His workshop had been burned by people he had once called friends and neighbours, the fires of belief in their eyes. They say belief is righteous, but to Muslan only doubt was divine. From doubt flows curiosity, and knowledge, and progress. From belief flows only ignorance and decay.

“I firmly believe that this, my latest invention…” And Curnsbick wafted a hand towards the engine in the manner of a carpet-seller hoping to palm off substandard wares. “Will carry all of us… into the future!”

We all are carried into the future, always. What greets us when we arrive, that is the pressing question. When the Prophet vanished, Muslan and those of his mind—the thinkers, philosophers, engineers—had hoped for a new age of reason. Instead had come an age of madness. The priests had said his work was against the laws of God. Ignorant cowards. Who made the minds of men, if not God? What was the desire to create, if not a humble imitation of His example? What was the grand idea, the great vision, the profound revelation, if not a glimpse of the divine?

“There are those at both ends of the social scale who would have us change direction!” Muslan had heard from those few friends in Ul-Saffayn who still dared write to him that the Eaters had come. They had taken his apprentices and his assistants and had burned his prototypes in the town square. He shuddered to think of it. The Eaters were belief distilled, belief without reason, mercy, compromise or regret. What could you call that, but evil?

“But there will be no going back!” roared Curnsbick. “I promise you that!”

“No going back,” whispered Muslan, in his own tongue. He closed his eyes, feeling tears prickling at the lids, and spoke the words to his wife, or at least to her ashes, wishing she could hear them. “I promise you that.”

“Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!” brayed their dunce of a king.

The priests supposed scriptural and scientific truth were opposed because their tightly strapped little minds had only room for one or the other. They did not realise they were one and the same. Muslan’s grandfather had been a locksmith. Muslan’s father had been a clockmaker. Muslan was an engineer. And so was God. So was—

“I firmly believe that this, my latest invention…” And Curnsbick pointed to his smoking machine like a sideshow-operator to his favourite freak, “will carry all of us… into the future!”

Morilee frowned at that Gurkish bastard. Was that the future of the Union? Overrun by brown bastards, not even with the decency to come with drum and flag and sword so they could be properly fought and beaten, but just welcomed in at the back door by treacherous fucks wanting to sell their country for a few marks.

Thirty years ago, when this was all woods she’d come to for picnics with her grandad, King Jezal had told the people to rise up for their country. Morilee had got her father’s old pike out of the shed, and put a new staff on it ’cause the old one was rotten, and she’d risen up, damn it, like the womenfolk always did when they had to. She’d fought those Gurkish bastards in the fire-blasted ruins of the streets she’d grown up in. She rubbed at the stump of her arm. Thirty years on and it still ached. But maybe the ache weren’t in her arm really, but in her heart. She frowned again at that Gurkish bastard, standing proud with his little black beard like this was his country. Had she fought for this? Lost her arm for this? Lost her fucking home for this?

“There are those at both ends of the social scale who would have us change direction!” Morilee knew how the ones at the bottom o’ the scale felt, that was sure, with their houses knocked down to make way for the mills and their gardens built over to make way for the temples and their families crowded into smaller and smaller rooms to make way for all the bastards flooding in from outside, the Gurkish and the Styrians and the Northmen and who knew what, all babbling in their own dirty tongues and forcing down the wages and forcing up the rents and choking the air with their horrible cook-smells, filth you wouldn’t feed a dog, the gutters swarming with their mongrel brats.

“A place of ignorance, superstition, squalor and fear. A place of darkness!” She snorted. Curnsbick should come to the place she’d been living the past year, she’d show him squalor and darkness. She turned her head and spat. Tried to spit as far as that Gurkish bastard, but it fell short and spattered on some woman’s hat. Curnsbick raised his arm and turned to Orso. “Your Majesty, with your kind permission?”

Morilee put the one hand she still had on her heart. Maybe this new king was a clueless fucker but he was king still, and when she saw the golden sun flashing on the flags above, it still tickled the tears out. The country might be brought low, but it was still her country, in her blood, in her bones. If she was called on again, she’d fight again. Even if it meant her other arm. That was who she was.

“Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!” bellowed His Majesty. A fine, strong voice, and folk started to cheer and, in spite of her hurts, Morilee cheered loudest of all. Might be he was a shit king. But it’s the shit kings need most cheering for.

The engineer pulled his lever and—

Blah, blah, progress, invention. High Justice Bruckel was hardly listening. He was thinking about that case yesterday. Terrible case. Regrettable business. The way the woman wept in the dock. Bruckel had wanted to weep himself. You cry so easily, his father used to say, you have to present a hard front. What would become of the children, though? It felt as if every verdict took a piece of him. Every sentence bled him. But his hands had been tied, as always. Arch Lector Glokta would demand harsh penalties. Lessons taught. Examples made.

One had to present a hard front to sit on the Closed Council. Any weakness and the vultures would be circling. Not a friend anywhere. Couldn’t afford ’em. Bruckel glanced sideways. Only look at Her Majesty. Magnificent figure of a woman. Magnificent example. All the hatred flung at her. Simply bounced off, like arrows off a gatehouse. But so lonely. Like a single white tower on a blasted heath. Few truly realised how… difficult her position had been. Regrettable business. But Bruckel knew. And admired her hugely. Would never say so. Would be a kind of betrayal to acknowledge it. But he knew it. And she knew he knew. Was that some comfort to her? Probably not.

Curnsbick was working up to the crescendo. Blah, blah, me, me, me, change the world. Bruckel sagged back into his chair. The world did not change. Not in the ways that mattered. He was presiding over another case later today. Millworkers dead of the white lung. Not to be confused with the black lung. That was the one the miners died of. Regrettable business. But there was nothing Bruckel could do. Not with the interests lined up on the other side. Towering interests. Terrible case.

“Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!” called His Majesty. Bruckel wondered if Orso would make a good king. Wondered if any change could be effected. It hardly seemed likely. Not with all the interests lined up. The biggest interests of all. Valint and Balk, of course. Look at that bastard Sulfur, already easing his hooks into the king. Hooks that would rip him apart, as they had ripped apart his father. Always the vultures, circling. But the world was the world. Bruckel’s hands were tied. They called him the high justice. But he was low, and there was no justice.

Curnsbick chopped down his arm with the greatest portentous self-satisfaction. Bruckel glanced sideways at Queen Terez, so endlessly impressive. He ventured the tiniest smile. She could not return it, of course. A regrettable—

“It will carry all of us…” screeched Curnsbick, a pygmy pretending to be a giant, the sort of man who passed for a hero in this petty age, “into the future!”

Terez restrained a snort of contempt. Whose future? The one she had longed for had been crushed long ago. How could her fragile hopes ever have held up the weight of her father’s smothering expectations, her husband’s well-meaning ignorance, his subjects’ mindless prejudice, the cripple Glokta’s unspeakable threats?

She had sent Shalere away. Even now, Terez felt the pain of tears at the thought of her face, her smile, her warmth, the way she sang, danced, kissed. Terez kept a bottle of her scent still. Among all the gaudy trash they heap upon a queen, the one thing that was truly precious to her. Just the faintest whiff of that perfume brought it all tumbling back. That mad, romantic girl who would have fought the world for love was still trapped somewhere in this stern old body. Terez felt the pain of tears, but she had trained her eyes not to weep. She had sent her true love to safety. One must take consolation in the small things, when one has nothing else. A nearly empty scent bottle, and a few sweet memories.

She took a deep breath, used it to force herself straighter. She lived now to hold up Orso’s hopes. To be his unflinching pillar. His dauntless shield against the barbs of the leering public. She had remade herself from stone and steel, an unbending, unsmiling, unfeeling sculpture of a woman, for his sake.

She could have played the game. She could have smiled, and lied, and struck deals. But her father had taught her that compromise was weakness, and weakness, death. Only far too late had she begun to wonder whether her father might not have been a giant, but a fool. Strange, how long a shadow one’s parents cast. All she wanted now was to see Orso married to some fearsomely sensible woman. A woman with a strong enough grip to squeeze him into the great man she knew he could be. Then, perhaps, she could finally stop squeezing herself. Take the trip to Styria. See Shalere again, one last time…

“Carry us into the future, Master Curnsbick!” shouted Orso, with that infinitely good-humoured smile Terez’s own mouth always longed to imitate.

High Justice Bruckel was looking at her, she realised, and with a deeply sad expression. Like a man watching a tragic play that, to his surprise, had struck some deep-buried nerve. As though he somehow guessed at the endless spring of sadness that welled inside her. As though—

There was a flash, Terez thought. A burst of fire. She opened her mouth to gasp in shock.

Something whizzed past. There was a loud popping sound and a strange silence.

A hot wind tore at her, twisted her back in her chair.

She could hardly see anything. Could hear absolutely nothing. Everything moved very slowly. As if she was underwater.

An armoured man blundered past, screaming silently, a smouldering shard of metal embedded in his breastplate.

There was something wet on her face. She touched it. Red fingertips. She realised High Justice Bruckel had pressed himself against her shoulder. How dare he? As she turned to remonstrate with him, she saw the side of his head was sheared away, blood spurting from the pulp inside and turning her dress red.

Probably she should assist. Very severe injury, by all appearances.

“High Justice?” she asked as he flopped into her lap, but she could not even hear her own voice. She did her best to hold his broken skull together but pieces of it slid between her red fingers.

She tried to stand, but the over-bright world tipped crazily and slapped her in the side. Dust and splinters. Boots shuffled. She saw someone staring at her. One of Curnsbick’s friends, blowing bloody bubbles out of his nose. It looked as if there might be an iron rivet embedded in the side of his neck. She realised they were both lying on the floor.

She tried to stand again, thought it prudent to clutch at something for support. The railing of the royal box, its gaudy decorations now red-spotted. Curnsbick stood swaying beside her. His hat had been blown off and his grey hair stuck out at all angles.

Terez clutched at his bloody jacket. “What happened?” Couldn’t hear herself speak. Couldn’t hear anything. Curnsbick clasped his hands to his face. Stared between his fingers.

Terez stuck her thumb in her ear and waggled it. It made nothing but a muffled squelching. She squinted into the sunlight. Towards the engine. Or towards where the engine had been.

There was nothing of it left now but a great claw of burning wreckage, sending up a thick plume of brown smoke. Papers fluttered down. Like the flower petals at her wedding, so long ago. Bodies were fanned out from the engine in rows. Mangled, tangled. Bodies still and bodies vaguely moving, twisting, crawling. A man wandered drunkenly. His shirt appeared to have been torn off.

There were people coming through the bodies. Not helping. Stepping over the corpses. People in dark clothes, with dark masks over their faces. One held a hatchet. One a long knife. One pointed towards the royal box with a sword. Where was Orso? By the Fates, where was Orso?

Beside her! He was beside her, staring, blood on his face. He had drawn his sword. A king should never have to touch his sword, let alone draw it. She tried to put herself between him and the assassins, but he brushed her away, pushed her back. He was so much stronger than she had expected. Had some part of her thought he was a snivelling toddler, still helpless in her arms?

Faint through the burbling in her ears she heard him speak: “Get behind me, Mother.”

Sofee came blundering through the murk, gripping her sword so tight her hand ached, hardly able to breathe even with the cloth over her face, and stumbled to an uncertain stop.

Bodies everywhere. Bodies and parts of bodies. More and more revealed as the breeze snatched the smoke away. Things dropped. A walking stick. A hat. A broken picnic hamper, spilling broken crockery. A glove.

No. It was a hand.

The pamphlets they’d made fluttered down. The explanations, the excuses, the justifications. One fell near Sofee’s boot, and began to soak up blood at one corner, and turn red. She’d been a governess for a year, before she was married, so she’d been very particular about the wording of that pamphlet. She’d wanted to convince people. To show them the truth.

Someone shoved her, near knocked her over. One of the other Burners, desperate to begin the killing. Wasn’t that what she came for? All she’d wanted, for so long. To kill them. Tear them with her bare hands. Bite them with her teeth. Now she wondered who “them” was. Whose enemy was the little boy with a fluttering pamphlet stuck across his face and his guts hanging out? She felt sick.

Brevan had been the kind of man everyone liked the moment they met him. The day they were married had been the happiest of her life. Suddenly special, when she’d been nothing since the day she was born. After they hanged him, left the crows picking at him above the road to Valbeck, it was like the sun went out for her. Such a gloom she couldn’t even lift a finger. Judge had given her purpose. Lit a fire in the ashes. But now that helplessness came flooding back.

“Come on!” screeched Gus, dragging at her, and he half-pulled her over, left her kneeling in the dirt as he charged on. Charged on with the rest of them, all with a thirst for blood that would never be satisfied.

Judge had promised her she’d feel better, after this. Cleansed by righteous fire. But she saw now there was no feeling better, and for damn sure no cleansing. All she’d done was what was done to her.

Sofee had dropped her sword. She left it where it was. All those bodies. All those injured. Even if she’d wanted to help them, where would you start?

Brevan had been such a good man. Everyone loved him the moment they met him. Would he have wanted this?

She put a hand over her mouth.

What had she done?

Curnsbick’s terror, when he struggled up with his hat blown off, was not for his own safety, but that he might be responsible. Or, at any rate, that he might be blamed.

“Oh, my,” he whispered. Carnage where the cheering onlookers had stood. Bodies strewn everywhere. It was as bad as that day in Crease. Worse, because then he had not been responsible. Could not possibly have been blamed.

Among engineers and investors there were many embittered failures, and he knew they must gaze enviously at him and think how wonderful it must be, to be Curnsbick. They had no idea of the pressure. Ever since his patent portable forge, with every success the weight of expectation grew heavier. For every world-changing idea there were a million duds, and until they were thoroughly tested and explored, the two could be surprisingly hard to tell apart. That was why he had founded the Solar Society, really. As a great sounding board for his worse notions. That, and he simply could not say no to Savine dan Glokta.

Someone clutched hold of him. Queen Terez? He wanted to blubber some ridiculous apology, but his voice utterly failed him. All he could do was put his hands over his face, stare between his fingers like a child at some horror and murmur, “Oh, my.”

So when he saw the Burners coming, his first feeling was an improbable flood of relief. Someone to blame! The villains of the piece, custom made for the purpose! Then came the sickening concern for his own safety. There were a great number of black-clothed assassins down there. They had dispatched the disorganised guards, were converging on the royal box. They had a Knight of the Body on his knees! Were smashing at him with hammers!

“Oh, my.” Men can be brave in some ways, not in others. Curnsbick could face the unknown and summon new things into being. Could stand before a crowd of hundreds and make them believe. Could take responsibility for millions of marks and never falter. But when it came to physical danger, he had always been a hopeless coward. He missed Majud terribly, then. Brave, stingy Majud. Missed him as he had every day these past ten years. But Curnsbick had made his choices. All that remained was to live with them. Or perhaps die with them.

“If I may, Your Majesty?” That man Sulfur. He was brushing the king aside. Went smiling towards a dozen well-armed fanatics as they mounted the steps. What the hell was he about?

A Knight of the Body came stumbling from the direction of the royal box. He was stunned by the explosion, tangled with his purple cloak, and the Burners had come prepared. Judge had loved the notion of pouring Gurkish sugar through their visors and setting a match to it, but Gus had a more practical solution.

Briar threw a net and pinned his sword-arm, then Rollow and Laws, two beefy ex-diggers, went at him with hammers, aiming for knees and elbows. Once they brought him down, Gus stepped up, swung his pick high and neatly punched it right through the top of his helmet. It was some time since he had thought of himself as an engineer, but he could still take pleasure in a well-executed design.

He had been a wheelman once. A specialist in the design of waterwheels, that was. A surveyor of slopes and flows. A connoisseur of dams and sluices. His scheme for the river-driven mill at Sharnlost had been much admired. But for the important work, one had to go to Adua. So he had set out to study at the University, hoping to wear the robes of an Adeptus Mechanical himself one day, perhaps. What petty ambitions.

Gus charged through the scattering mass of panicked humanity, people running, begging, blubbing, bleeding, towards the royal box, waving his comrades forward. “For the people!” he roared. “For the Great Change!”

The lecture theatres of the University’s grand new buildings had contained only dry whispers and dated ideas. The inspiring speeches were given in the teahouses and jerry shops on the borders of the poor districts, where the intellectuals would spring onto the tables to hold forth on the injustice of the current system, lay out bold fantasies for what could replace it, compete with each other to make the most outrageous pronouncements on behalf of the noble and oppressed commoner. The commoners themselves, it hardly needed to be said, could scarcely get a word in. Gus still remembered the excitement of those heady days. It was the first time he had ever believed in something greater than himself. Belonged to something greater than himself.

His pick thudded into the back of a crawling city watchman, and as he dragged the bloody weapon free, he knew he had never done such important work.

It was not until he went to Valbeck, and saw the great chimneys, the great smogs, the great slums, and heard the Weaver speak, that he began to glimpse the truth. That the Union was itself a wheel, designed not by a single engineer but by a web of mutual interest, hidden influence and collective greed, to raise up the rich and drag the poor down into the churning waters. Well, now the wheel would turn, as wheels are made to do, and drive down the privileged, and lift up the downtrodden, and there would be justice. There would be justice, and equality, and plenty for all.

He had cut the “dan” from his name. Guslav dan Turmric had become simple Gus Turmer. Arguments with his family had borne no fruit so he had cut them off, too. He had been a stack of kindling waiting desperately for a spark. Then he met Judge, and his eyes were opened. There was no dry theory with her, no sentimental compromises, no having to be patient, no convincing the doubters. What some called madness he recognised as diamond-edged clarity. The time for arguments in the teahouse, for pretty words and fancy theories, was over. The grasping hands of the owners, the noblemen, the king and his venal henchmen could only be opened by force. Fire and steel would be the last words in their argument.

Another knight had killed two of his brothers, but they had him cornered now and were battering away at him, leaving great dents in his armour. Gus left the pick stuck in his helmet, kicked the knight over with a clatter of falling steel, pulled out his sword and charged for the royal box, its steps unguarded. He caught a glimpse of the king, mouth and eyes wide open, his Styrian mother, too, her face spattered with blood. If he could get to them… what a blow for the common man! A blow that would resound across the Circle Sea and around the world as if his clenched fist were the clapper of a great bell. The history books would record this as the day of the Great Change, and Gus Turmer as the man who ushered it in!

Except someone stepped in front of the king as Gus laboured to the top of the steps. No armoured Knight of the Body, just a nondescript, curly haired fellow in plain clothes, with a strange, bland smile which did not quite touch his eyes. If this fool thought he could stop the changing of an epoch, rob the people, steal this moment, he was mistaken! Gus was the instrument of history! He was a torrent that could not be dammed!

He raised his sword, shouting, “The Great Change!” The man seemed to shimmer, to blur. There was a blast of wind, and—

“Oh dear,” said Orso. Mouth all numb. Could hardly make the words.

He’d been thinking when he let the footman buckle his sword on that morning how pointless it was. How he’d never draw the bloody thing. Now he fumbled it from the sheath. He got the blade caught on the back of his chair. Realised there was a piece of metal lodged in the split wood. Must’ve missed his head by no more than a hand’s width.

“Get behind me, Mother,” he said, pawing at her shoulder, but his voice was an echoing burble. Like water sloshing at the bottom of a very deep drain. His head hurt. His jacket felt all sticky inside. Bloody hell, was he wounded? Or was it someone else’s blood? That’s the thing about blood. King’s or commoner’s, everyone’s looks much the same.

Where were the Knights of the Body? Weren’t they supposed to handle this type of thing? The absolute point of the bastards, wasn’t it? He saw one dead with a piece of metal through his breastplate. So he could hardly be blamed. Where was Bremer dan Gorst? Had given him the day off. Insisted on it. Terrible decision. Did Orso make any good ones? Couldn’t think of any. Probably the blame was his. It usually was. A king was just a kind of bin for all the blame to go in.

No one up here would be much use in a fight. Curnsbick had his hands pressed to his horrified face. Kort had scrambled for the rear. Funny, when death’s on the table, how vitally important it seems that one be killed last.

He felt very tired. As if he’d run a mile. Papers were fluttering down. Scorched pamphlets. Whole thing was like a nightmare. One was still burning as it fell beside him. He scrubbed it out under his boot. Could’ve been dangerous. Almost wanted to laugh at that. But not for long.

Someone was coming up the steps to the royal box. A big man wearing a dark coat. Thin yellow hair stirred by the smoky wind. A cloth wrapped around his face so Orso could only see his eyes. Hard eyes. Furious about something. There was a sword in his hand. An old, cheap sword, but cheap swords can still kill you.

All seemed so unlikely. Orso was a pleasant fellow, wasn’t he? Always tried to see other people’s points of view. To be polite. He could hardly believe this man had come here to murder him. There might have been a dozen killers crowding towards the steps, and none looked likely to be moved by politeness.

“Oh dear,” said Orso again. Probably the best chance was if he met them at the top of the stair. But he was worried if he took a step he might fall over. Then a hand caught his shoulder.

“If I may, Your Majesty?” It was Sulfur, brushing past and carefully, almost daintily, stepping over High Justice Bruckel’s corpse. Orso had forgotten the magus was even there.

The big Burner raised his sword, the cloth over his mouth fluttering faintly as he shouted something. “A great shame!” Orso thought it might have been, a sentiment with which he could readily agree. He narrowed his eyes, expecting that blade to swing down and split the humble representative of the Order of Magi in half.

But Sulfur had already moved. With breathtaking, impossible speed. Orso’s eyes could barely follow him. His fist sank into the Burner’s gut with a wet-sounding thud, so hard it folded him in half, lifted him right off his feet then dropped him on the floor of the royal box like a heap of rags, his cheap sword clattering from his hand and bouncing harmlessly from Curnsbick’s leg.

The next Burner raised his shield. Sulfur’s fist was a blur that turned it into flying splinters, folded the man’s arm back on itself, ripped his head half-off in a spray of blood and sent him flopping like a rag doll among the benches below. Sulfur had already caught a woman by her hair, ripped her head down and smashed his knee into her face with a bang so loud it set Orso’s ears ringing again.

He flinched as blood spotted the royal box, stared in horror as a man was smashed into a shape no man should ever be with one chop of an open hand. Sulfur caught another under the jaw, a board cracking beneath his heel as he flung the man high into the sky, his echoing shriek fading as if he had been shot from a cannon. Sulfur backhanded a third man and sent him tumbling bonelessly end-over-end, tangled up with fluttering festoons of the bunting that had decorated the royal box.

Orso was not sure whether he was trying to shield his mother or cling to her for support. In the space of a breath, maybe two, Sulfur reduced half a dozen assassins to flying meat. Corpses turned inside out, twisted into corkscrews, popped open or crushed in on themselves. Worse than anything the exploding engine had done to the people down near the tracks.

A man screamed through the cloth around his face as Sulfur caught the wrist of his sword-arm, the joint popping apart in his grip, and dragged him close. The scream turned to a bubbling groan, and there was a crunching, cracking, slurping, the back of Sulfur’s head jolting like a famished dog’s at its dinner.

“An Eater,” breathed Queen Terez. Orso made a point of never arguing with his mother. While watching a man rip into another with his teeth was no time to start. Orso’s father had fought Eaters at the Battle of Adua. When Orso asked him what it was like, he had turned pale, and said nothing. Now, as the man Sulfur had thrown into the sky plummeted down and crashed into the ground thirty strides away, he finally understood why.

The last of the Burners was running. Orso caught a glimpse of her terrified eyes as she dropped her axe and bolted. Sulfur let the limp corpse fall, its throat one single glistening black wound. The air about his shoulders shimmered, like the horizon on a hot day. Orso flinched as the woman burst into flames, fell to the ground on fire, thrashing and squealing.

Perhaps they were living in the age of reason, but anyone proclaiming the death of magic had done so, it seemed, a little prematurely.

Sulfur turned towards Orso with the very same smile he had worn before the explosion. But what had been a bland salesman’s grin was become a monster’s leer, dotted with shreds of flesh, his mouth daubed red, different-coloured eyes twinkling with the reflected flames of the woman he had somehow set on fire.

“So, might I speak to the lord chancellor?” Sulfur asked.

Orso was not sure what word he wanted to make, but what came from his mouth was a breathy, “Uh?”

“Regarding the funding for new track-roads, Your Majesty. Under the auspices of the Banking House of Valint and Balk.”

Orso stood staring for what felt like a very long time, one hand weakly holding his mother’s limp arm, his sword dangling uselessly from the other. He would have dropped it had his fingers not been stuck in the elaborate basketwork. The first of the attackers lay on his side at their feet, the cloth twisted from his stubbly face, a steadily widening pool of blood bubbling from his nose and mouth.

“Yes,” muttered Orso. “Yes… of course.”

Sulfur looked down at himself and frowned, as if he had only just now realised he was spattered red from head to toe. He dragged a hank of bloody hair from between his fingers and flicked it away.

“I should probably change first.”

Through the steady hiss in his ears, Orso could hear shouting. Sobbing of wounded. Cries for help. A breeze came up and kissed his sweaty face. Perhaps the future they were heading for was not quite the one that Curnsbick was selling. His knees felt very weak.

“Sorry, Mother,” he muttered, flopping back into his chair. “Need to sit down.”