“As every man knows, it is the heart that is the seat of the emotions, including pain and suffering. Destruction of the heart, therefore, brings painless and instantaneous death. To achieve this, I have employed the power and precision of modern clockwork. No expertise is necessary. The condemned is positioned here”—he patted the center of the table—“and bound in place, and then it only remains to throw a s . . . s . . . switch.”

He pressed something on the side of the table. Just left of the center, where a man’s heart would be, a foot-long pointed steel piston slid straight up with the speed of a striking cobra and a clank of shivering metal.

“The procedure is utterly painless,” Sarton said. “The heart is punctured before it has time to react. The limbs may twitch, but the s . . . s . . . soul has departed.” He smiled beatifically, and for a moment his stutter vanished. “I call it the Spike.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then the crowd began to cheer, Radicals and Conservatives alike. Sarton dipped his head politely at Maurisk, and the chairman got to his feet again.

“These men,” he boomed, gesturing at the huddled prisoners, “have confessed to their crimes! They are Borelgai spies. Paid to work against us, to spy and to sabotage, by a nation of shopkeepers and Sworn Church toadies. For years we have suffered the Borels to live among us, tolerated their poisonous words and let them work their malignant influence. All for a dangled purse of gold!”

Raesinia tensed. Maurisk was looking in her direction, and it seemed for a moment he was speaking to her directly. Her father, Farus VIII, had been responsible for much of the “tolerance” that the chairman so disliked. Some of it had indeed been for gold—loans from the great bankers of Borel had kept the Crown afloat—but there was also the little matter of the War of the Princes, which had ended with the death of her older brother Prince Dominic and Vordan’s humiliating surrender.

“No longer,” Maurisk said, his voice ringing off the flagstones. “The veil is torn. The enemies who have intrigued against us for years have been stung into action by the great steps forward we have taken, the establishment of the Deputies-General to ensure justice for all Vordanai. We are at war, my friends, and that means we do not need to abide this treachery in order to salve the feelings of merchants in Viadre! We can finally deal with such vile acts in the manner they fully deserve.”

Cheers rose again, wild and uproarious, mixed with shouts of “Death to traitors!” and “Down with Elysian slaves!” A regular chant emerged, spreading and growing in volume, until it shook the square. “To the Spike! To the Spike!”