He hobbled to his seat with the applause ringing in his ears and dropped down wincing, shaking his leg to loosen it on his sore stump.

Glaward looked more dumbfounded than ever. “You didn’t… say anything.” Perhaps he was faithful and diligent, like Savine said, but Leo had forgotten how slow he could be.

“Only an idiot stands in front of this rabble to say something,” muttered Leo, wiping the fresh sheen of sweat from his forehead. “You shuffle a few of the right words together and make sure you look ’em in the eye.” He flashed the humble smile he’d been working on. Waved away the congratulations as men leaned from the benches behind to slap him on the shoulder. “You’re going for a feeling. Make them think you’re one of them. Prove the mob’s behind you. You want to get something done, you pick a few men to talk to behind closed doors.”

Jurand looked almost admiring. A happy hint of the way he used to look at Leo before… all this. “I thought you were a blunt soldier?”

“I’m still a soldier.” Leo shifted his useless arm in his jacket and saluted the gallery. “It’s just a different battlefield.”

“When did that fucker get eloquent?” grumbled Orso, slumping into his ridiculous little chair. He had half a mind to applaud himself. “Equality? He must be the most privileged bastard in here.”

“Other than you,” murmured Hildi.

“Other than me, yes, thanks for that, Hildi. His family’s had a seat in this bloody chamber for centuries. His grandfather was almost elected king himself and betrayed the Union when he lost the vote. Like grandfather like grandson, eh?”

“You can’t deny folk warm to him, though.”

“Oh, yes. People have always loved the Young Lion.” He still seemed to be the same honest Anglander, none of Sworbreck’s flowery style, but these days he was playing the mob like his own personal orchestra and leading the nervous ex-lords wherever he pleased. Now he had a dozen virile young heroes of Angland on the front benches ready to nod along at his every utterance as though it fell from the mouth of Euz himself. Orso was starting to think he was far more dangerous now than he had been with all his limbs.

“An appeal for loyalty, can you imagine? A few months ago he was leading his own rebellion!”

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. But the public appetite for hypocrisy appeared insatiable. Isher, who not long ago had enriched himself beyond the dreams of avarice by evicting impoverished tenants from common land, had risen to preach thrift in the most conspicuously humble, dirt-coloured clothes one could imagine.

“Citizens, please!” Risinau was struggling vainly, as he had been for weeks, to impose order on this shambles. “Our constitution!”

And Orso started to laugh. A little snigger at first. He tried to hold it in, but it burst out again. An explosive giggle. Every face he noticed made it worse. The monstrously wealthy traitor Isher, hiding in an honest man’s feast-day clothes. The turncoat loser Brock, cheered to the rafters for his patriotism and prowess. The cowardly fantasist Sworbreck, posing as the common man’s fearless champion. The onslaught of overblown preaching, sentimental one-upmanship, angry stands on shifting principles, tearful declarations of shifting loyalty. The worst of mankind jammed into the sockets where the best should have been. A crown of turds.