“You haven’t heard?” Gorodets had graduated from his usual habit of fluffing and combing his long beard to wringing it between clawing fingers. “Valbeck has fallen to an uprising!”

The glug of Orso swallowing echoed audibly from the stark white walls. “Fallen?”

“Again?” squealed Hoff.

“No word from His Eminence,” said Gorodets. “We fear he may be a captive of the Breakers.”

“Captive?” muttered Orso. The room was feeling even more intolerably cramped than usual.

“News of turmoil pours in from all across Midderland!” blurted the high consul, warbling on the edge of panic. “We have lost contact with the authorities in Keln. Troubling news from Holsthorm. Robbings. Lynchings. Purges.”

“Purges?” breathed Orso. It appeared he was doomed to endlessly repeat single words in a tone of horrified upset.

“There are rumours of bands of Breakers ravaging the countryside!”

“Huge bands,” said Lord Admiral Krepskin. “Converging on the capital! Bastards have taken to calling ’emselves the People’s Army.”

“A bloody plague of treason,” breathed Hoff, eyes fixed on the empty chair at the bottom of the table. “Can we get a message to Lord Bayaz?”

Orso dumbly shook his head. “Not soon enough to make a difference.” He imagined the First of the Magi would choose to keep a discreet distance in any case, while calculating how he could profit from the aftermath.

“We have done all we can to keep the news from becoming public—”

“To prevent panic, you understand, Your Majesty, but—”

“They may be at our gates within days!”

There was a long silence. The sense of triumph as Orso approached the city was a dimly remembered dream.

If there was a polar opposite to feeling like a king, he had discovered it.

Change

“You must confess,” said Pike. “It’s impressive.”

“I must,” said Vick. And she wasn’t easily impressed.

The People’s Army might have lacked discipline, equipment and supplies, but there was no arguing with its scale. It stretched off, clogging the road in the valley bottom and straggling up the soggy slopes on both sides, until it was lost in the drizzly distance.

There might’ve been ten thousand when they set out from Valbeck. A couple of regiments of ex-soldiers had formed the bright spearhead, gleaming with new-forged gifts from Savine dan Brock’s foundries. But order soon gave way to ragged chaos. Mill workers and foundry workers, dye-women and laundry-women, cobblers and cutlers, butchers and butlers, dancing more than marching to old work songs and drums made from cookpots. A largely good-natured riot.

Vick had half-expected, half-hoped that they’d melt away as they slogged across the muddy country in worsening weather, but their numbers had quickly swelled. In came labourers, smallholders and farmers with scythes and pitchforks—which caused some concern—and with flour and hams—which caused some celebration. In came gangs of beggars and gangs of orphans. In came soldiers, deserted from who knew what lost battalions. In came dealers, whores and demagogues, dishing up husk, fucks and political theory in tents by roadways trampled into bogs.