“You look… wonderful.” Savine had been aiming at earnest, but had not the history to pull it off, and Selest’s bosom heaved with offence. Probably there was nothing Savine could have said that would not have caused offence, and certainly nothing that would have stopped that bosom heaving.

Selest gave Savine a sneering look up and down. “You look… motherly.”

That would once have been an insult punishable by a slow social death, meticulously engineered. Now it hardly drew a shrug.

“After the year I’ve had…” The aftermath of Valbeck, her marriage to Leo, their treason against the king, the mass violence of the battle at Stoffenbeck, the almost-hanging of her husband, the even greater violence of the Great Change, the birth of her children, the coming of Judge and the whole world slowly, painfully ripping apart. Savine realised she had put a hand to the well-powdered scar on her forehead and forced it back down. “I’m only surprised I look alive.”

“I spend much of my time at the Court of the People these days. You really should see your husband address the Representatives. He still makes the ladies gasp, up in the balcony. Quite the man. Even if he is half a man now.”

Savine smiled. “As tired as I am, half is more than I can manage.”

“Fancy. And you used to have such an appetite.” Selest spun away, that ridiculous axe bouncing against her leg.

“Haven’t you heard?” Savine muttered wearily at her back. “Everything is changed.”

“Citizeness Brock!” A young man she did not know, with cheap clothes and the light of ambition in his eyes. “Would you have a moment to hear about a new type of mirror? Tougher, clearer, cheaper. We’ll put those swine in Visserine out of business—”

“I fear you must do it without me.” She used to swoop on every hint of opportunity, hawk-eyed, eagle-taloned, every mark clawed up a point triumphantly scored against the world. Now the thought of profits made her sick. With a little guilt, when she thought of the bread queues, the homeless in the doorways, the dead in the frozen graveyards. With a lot of fear, when she thought of them rendered into accusations in the Court of the People, screamed from the benches, flung down from the public galleries.

It was coming. She knew it was coming. They all would have their moment in the dock. She pressed a smile down on top of her dread like the lid on a box of snakes.

“But, Citizeness—”

“I wish you every success, but I am not seeking to make money. I am looking for opportunities to give it away.”

A flicker of incomprehension, and the man drifted on.

“All that effort to acquire it.” Curnsbick stood, shaking his head. “And now you’re simply giving it away. Do you really suppose charity will help, Savine?”

“We can hope,” she said, pressing his hand.

“We can.” He had lost weight. He looked a shadow of himself. “But, given where we are, it might be better if we didn’t.”