He neglected to mention the worsening shortages of food, coal and raw materials, the dangers of riot and summary arrest, or the never-ending trials for profiteering, speculation and usury. The many empty seats in the audience testified to them more eloquently than even the Great Machinist ever could.

“Our friends in Starikland, Angland and Westport are… a little wary.” On the verge of declaring their secession from the Union, indeed. “Traditional markets may, for now, have been closed off. But a world of possibilities opens up for the enterprising innovator!” Those not rendered into pulp at the foot of the Tower of Chains. “There is a grand harvest to be reaped, not merely material but, far more importantly, moral, social and cultural.” If one could overlook the Burners’ slogans daubed on every mill and manufactory. “With liberty and equality added to our traditional virtues of imagination and endeavour, the Great Change will surely bring prosperity to all its children!” Those it did not eat alive. Curnsbick spread his arms wide as he built to a crescendo of insincerity. “No man can stop, nor would any man want to stop, progress!”

Nobody dared stand out by being first to clap, and so an agonising silence stretched, huge and heavy.

It struck Savine as profoundly strange that, out in the foyer, beneath the two great chandeliers and the broken plaster where the third had once hung, no one was screaming. No one wept, vomited or tore at their faces with their fingernails. Life simply went on. The knots of conversation, the babble of business, the offers, the promises, the investments of a lifetime.

“Where’s old Hogbeck?” someone was asking. “Arrested?”

“Killed himself testing a flying balloon, the old fool. Hoped to swoop down and carry away young Citizenesses, presumably.”

“No woman ever entered his basket and emerged with virtue intact. And Zillman?”

“Ruined. Bet everything he had on glazing, what with all the windows being smashed. Trouble is no one’s bothering to replace the bastards in case they’re smashed again tomorrow…”

Nothing was more changed by the Great Change than fashion. Rich men’s costume had gained workmen’s flourishes, while the ideal for women was the artless shepherdess. Cheeks were painted slapped-arse pink while fans had become a loathed aristocratic affectation. Some women had stopped wearing wigs altogether, proudly displaying their conspicuously lifeless actual hair as if it was a badge of revolutionary pride. Exotic curios had been all the rage; now anything foreign was scorned with a patriotic side-eye. Jewels had plunged in popularity, but fortunes were spent on dried flowers and woven grasses. It was a wonder no one had brought a herd of goats as an accessory. Nurturing bosoms were thrust up so high they presented a danger of suffocation to bystanders. The Great Change had brought freedom to all, of course, but the corsetry of the Citizeness was, if anything, even more constricting than that endured by a lady of King Jezal’s reign.

“Equality never quite comes in equal shares,” murmured Savine.