Risinau looked near dead already from the climb. Face pale and beaded with sweat and tears, mouth hanging open, gasping for breath. “I wish…

to say—”

“You’ve fucking said enough,” said Sarlby, and jabbed his knife into the Chairman’s arse, herding him up onto the box.

Vick watched another little speck fall from the Tower of Chains. Took a long time. Seemed a lucky thing, that from where she stood she couldn’t see them hit the ground. In the slimy bottom of the drained moat, most likely. But she heard it, she thought. The faint scream, carried on the wind, suddenly cut off. Felt like the last shreds of hope for Sibalt’s better world were cut off with it.

Vick had borne witness to some horrors in her life. In the camps. In the mines. In the rebellion in Starikland, the uprising in Valbeck, the battle at Stoffenbeck. But she’d never seen anything like this.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

Pike raised one hairless brow at her. “What have we done, you mean? It was you who told me Risinau had to go. And you were right.”

“Risinau had to go, but…” She wanted to be sick as she said the name. “Judge?”

“Too many principles did not work for us.”

“So we’ll try none at all?” Her voice had become a disbelieving shriek.

“The time for half-measures is past.” Pike looked evenly back at her. “Sometimes, the only way to improve something is to destroy it, so it can be rebuilt better.” There was a time she’d thought that burned face was a perfect mask for his feelings. Now she wondered whether there were any underneath. “Sometimes, to change the world, we must first burn it down.”

Another little speck tumbled from the top of the Tower of Chains.

Beyond the ruined walls of the Agriont, the crowd applauded.

PART VIII

“In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.”

Gustave Le Bon

A Sea of Terror

“Welcome, Citizens and Citizenesses, to this sixteenth biannual general meeting of Adua’s Solar Society. Somewhat delayed, I regret to say, by… events.”

Curnsbick, understated in a rough-spun waistcoat with a flavour of workman’s apron, held up his broad hands for silence, though more from habit than necessity. The members used to raise the roof. Now they sat in anxious silence.

“With thanks to our distinguished patron, Citizeness Brock.” Curnsbick gestured in the vague direction of the box where Savine sat. She forced an awkward smile and eased deeper into the shadows. She had spent half her life trying to stand out from the crowd, but only fools made themselves conspicuous these days.

“I come before you full of optimism!” called Curnsbick, with the sweaty demeanour of a pedlar who would never buy what he was being forced to sell. “The Great Change offers us brave new opportunities! Workers flock to the cities.” Or were driven there by cold, hunger and war to freeze on the roads or starve in the doorways. “Regulations are relaxed.” Because no one knew who was in charge or whether anything would be enforced. “Land long occupied becomes available.” Chiefly through the mechanism of uncontrolled fire.