He could’ve shoved her away. Bony as she was, he could’ve backhanded her across the hall. But all he did was stand there, helpless. Helpless as he’d been tied to a chair in a Valbeck cellar with her sitting astride him. “Captain Broad and I understand each other,” she said, softly.

And she was right, Fates help him. Judge was trouble made flesh. The monster off the leash. She was madness, and fire, and violence, and all the things he’d told himself he didn’t want.

But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

The little girl held up the paint pot and Judge stuck her hand into it. Drops spattered the tiles as she smeared four streaks across Broad’s breastplate with her red fingers. “You’re one of us now.” She went up on her tiptoes to whisper, “But we know you always were.”

No one did a thing as the Burners brought out chains and started to shackle the men and women gathered around Risinau. Not the king, sitting meekly on his little chair. Not the Young Lion, watching warily from among his Anglanders. Not the artists and the thinkers Risinau had brought to the Assembly. Even the rowdies in the public galleries had swallowed their tongues.

And Broad was quietest of the lot. He knew a lost cause when he saw one.

“You can’t do this!” Risinau clung to his chair as Sarlby caught him under the arm, dragging it squealing over the tiles. “I will go to the Weaver—”

Judge’s red-rimmed eyes slid sideways to him. “Who d’you think gave me the keys to the chamber, you fat fool?”

Risinau gaped at her as he was finally bundled from his chair and Sarlby snapped manacles shut around his wrists. “But… we need a new constitution—”

“What we need is purpose,” sneered Judge. “What we need is purity. What we need is a fresh start.”

“Shall we hang ’em?” asked Sarlby.

“Hang ’em? No. Wouldn’t send at all the right message.” Judge dropped into Risinau’s chair and swept some of his papers off onto the floor to clear a space. “The bright future’s come at last.” And she propped one bare foot up on the polished table and crossed the other one on top of it, their soles grey with dirt. “Don’t want to usher it in with a hanging, do we?” Broad took a sharp breath. Only realised then that he’d been holding it the whole time. Mercy was the last thing he’d expected from Judge.

“We need to kill these bastards with more guts,” she said. “We need something spectacular. Anyone got any ideas?”

Not mercy, then. Its very opposite. There was a brittle silence. The Representatives glanced at each other, at Risinau and his underlings being chained, at all the well-armed Burners, no one wanting to stand out from the crowd.

Then Ramnard cleared his throat. “I suppose… there’s always beheading?”

And now those very same bastards who’d competed for Risinau’s notice that morning competed to dream up the most savage way to kill him in the afternoon.