“Don’t get out. The ghana has spies in the crowd.”

He pulled down the glass in the window so I could hear. Bee’s voice carried easily, for she certainly never had any trouble making herself heard. She spoke in clear schoolroom Latin meant to be widely understood.

“Our demands for new laws will not cede to the demands of blood and birth. We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth which is claimed as the natural order. We know it is not natural. It is artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. Why should those privileges be reserved to only a few communities? By what judgment do the patricians claim they stand above the rest? It is on our backs and our labor and our blood and our children that they rise. We need not stand bent beneath. We can stand straight and say—”

“Kiss me, sweetheart!” shouted some wag in the crowd. “That’s what we say. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen in an age.”

Raucous laughter followed this sally. I glanced anxiously across the crowd. Brennan pointed to two trolls stationed intimidatingly behind Bee: Chartji and Caith.

“Kiss you!” Bee exclaimed without losing a beat. “Why would I kiss you when a Roman legate begged me to become his favored one and yet I turned him down? Do you think you are as much of a man as a Roman legate?”

“More a man than any legate, as I can show you!” the fellow called to shouts of laughter.

“Thus you prove my point. If you wish me to look upon you as the amatory equal of a Roman legate, then you must surely believe that justice is no different from love. You cannot chain one community into clientage and call that justice while you let another community enrich its coffers and feed its children off the blood and toil of the first. The blood of a poor laborer flows as red as the blood of a prince. Death hunts them both equally, for a corpse knows no rank. It is only those who survive the dead man who dedicate themselves to making such distinctions. There should be one law that treats all communities in equal part, so every person has honor and dignity.”

“She’s quite remarkable,” said Brennan, keeping his face in shadow as he gazed out the window. “A natural orator. I’ve never seen a heckler get the better of her, and they do try.”

“I had no idea she would ever be giving speeches!” I stared in rapt admiration at the way she exhorted the crowd to consider how unjust laws and antiquated customs were the means by which the many were sacrificed to exalt the few. Yet it was not Bee’s bold voice I had doubted but the idea that people like us would ever get a chance to speak at all.