But of course the crown had far more symbolic value. It could only be worn by a Burgrave. It was the symbol of his lordship, the image of his right to rule the city as he pleased. It was what separated him from the citizens, what imbued him with all of his power. The Burgrave wore it every time he went out in public—when he led civic processions, when he sat to watch a tourney, when he handed down judgments in the law courts. He’d worn it the day Malden saw him in Market Square, the day he’d condemned that blond fool to death. The crown was the Burgrave’s power.

Malden was dimly aware in his untutored way that he lived in a kingdom called Skrae, that beyond the Free City’s walls there was a grand feudal system of nobility with, at its head, a single monarch who had granted the city its charter and appointed the Burgrave’s great-great-etcetera-grandfather to be the city’s ultimate ruler. He had never paid taxes to that particular king, and had certainly never seen him. Even the portrait stamped on the larger denominations of money in the Free City was not that of the king, but of one of said king’s distant ancestors. Inside the city’s walls, the Burgrave was the only power that mattered, and Malden didn’t care a jot for anything outside them.

The Burgrave ruled by the authority invested in the crown. A thief who could take the crown away would be sending a message: that the Burgrave’s authority was not sacrosanct. That in Ness, in the so-called Free City, every man was vulnerable and no man was truly better—superior—to another.

Malden kind of liked that idea. He’d grown up the son of a whore, a man with no status whatsoever. A man who wasn’t even respectable enough to clean the Burgrave’s privy. That he could strike such a blow was a great triumph for the equality of men. It would be justice, of a sort. Of course, no one could ever know that he had achieved the theft, more’s the pity.

As for the Burgrave, how much would he pay to keep its theft a secret? Surely that was the point of this ridiculous scheme. To extort the Burgrave for as much as his position was worth. It was certainly a dangerous plan, no matter what Bikker said, but still it seemed like it could be quite lucrative.

Malden was now close enough to the crown to reach out and grab it. The tower room was almost empty. Its walls were lined with old campaign banners and tattered flags. Its floor was strewn with sand that ground noisily under his feet. Of furniture, the room possessed a single piece, set exactly in its center: a simple stone pedestal, atop which sat a crystal bowl three feet in diameter.