“Hear, hear!” blustered that heavyset oaf who used to be one of Savine’s partners. Kort, was it? “The Commissioner’s private war against the banks is bad for business. We’re losing our advantage to the Styrians! It’s a war out there in the markets!”

A foreman from the Three Farms shook a great fist. He was called, appropriately enough, Hefty, though Leo wasn’t sure whether it was a nickname or a surname. “There’s a real fucking war going on!” Whoops in the gallery. He turned red in the face. “Begging your pardon.” Laughter in the gallery. He turned redder. “But there’s royalist rebels to worry about in the east!”

“Treacherous bastards set on raising the king up above us again!”

“We couldn’t possibly have that,” drawled the king himself, whose gilded enclosure had become a wooden one, then a high dais, then a low dais, and finally a nursing chair with a rail around it.

The usual rage, meanwhile, from above. Crumpled pamphlets were flung down. An apple core bounced from the shoulder of an ex-lord a few seats away and Jurand flinched.

“Don’t worry,” said Leo. “They rarely throw anything hard.”

“What’s the People’s Army doing?” someone howled.

“I have men, but no leaders.” General Brint frowned from his chair beside Risinau’s. “I beg you, Citizens, allow me to bring in officers from the old King’s Own—”

“How can we trust men who served the old regime?”

“Who else were they supposed to serve? That was the only regime going!”

“You have staunch patriots!” Hefty stabbed a finger at Broad, who looked more worried than staunch. “Men of good common stock!”

“It’s not a question of birth, but of experience!”

“Principle trumps pragmatism!” someone screeched.

“Not on the battlefield!” growled Brint. “But the moment I need a grocer’s advice on running an army, yours will be the first address I call at!”

Leo winced. Brint was a good enough man, but he didn’t understand the rules of this engagement.

“Is it like this all the time?” murmured Glaward.

“Most of it.”

“How do they get anything done?”

“They don’t.” Leo sensed the slightest lull in the melee, and he settled his stump in the socket of his iron leg, his crutch in his aching armpit. “Could you help me up?”

“The Young Lion!” someone screeched as Glaward guided him to standing, and the hall fell silent. As close as it ever got, anyway.

“Citizens!” Leo limped a few steps onto the tiled floor so that he stood alone. “Friends! Good men and women of the Union!” He aimed that at the public galleries and got a reassuring murmur of support. He’d found if he could bring the scum up there onto his side, the scum down here wouldn’t dare disagree. “We can’t afford to bicker! We’ve got enemies everywhere, keen to divide us!”

Leo was careful not to name the enemies, of course. He let everyone fill in their own.

“Bastard Styrians!” someone snarled.

“Bloody Southerners!”

“Aristocrats!”

“We’ve won a great victory against tyranny,” he called. “We’ve won the chance to forge a Union that’s the envy of the world.” And he set himself so he could strike his crutch on the tiles with an echoing bang. “But we have to build bridges. We have to bring good men in. Like my old friends from Angland. Discord won’t help us. We need equality. We need loyalty. We need unity!”