“And if you said you were entirely convinced, I would be a fool to believe you.”

“Since neither of us is a fool… let’s just say maybe.”

“Oh, we are all fools. But I enjoy a good maybe.” Pike showed no sign of enjoyment or of anything else. “Absolutes are never to be trusted.”

Vick doubted the two leaders of the Great Change riding towards them across the grassy slope would have agreed.

“Brother Pike!” called Risinau, with a cheery wave of one plump hand. “Sister Victarine!”

Risinau worried Vick. The one-time Superior of Valbeck was considered a deep thinker, but far as she could tell he was an idiot’s notion of a genius, his ideas a maze with nothing at the centre, heavy on the righteous society to come but light as air on the route they’d take to get there. The pockets of his jacket bulged with papers. Scrawled theories, manifestos, proclamations. Speeches he whined out to eager throngs whenever the People’s Army halted. Vick didn’t like the way the crowd greeted his flowery appeals for reason with shaken weapons and howls of approving fury. She never saw more damage done than by folk acting on high principle.

But Judge worried Vick a lot more. She wore a rusty old breastplate rattling with stolen chains over a ball gown crusted with chips of cracked crystal, but she sat her saddle astride not aside so the flounce of tattered petticoats was gathered up around her thighs, her muddy bare feet shoved into battered cavalry stirrups. Her face was like a bag of daggers, lean jaw angrily clenched, black eyes angrily narrowed, her usually flaming crest of hair turned brown by the rain and plastered wetly down one side of her skull. Principles only interested her as an excuse for mayhem. When her Burners had taken the courthouse in Valbeck, her jury had found no one innocent and the one sentence she’d given was death.

If Risinau was forever gazing up, no thought for the wreckage he was stepping through, Judge was glaring down, trying to trample everything she could. And Pike? There were no clues on the ex-Arch Lector’s burned mask of a face. Who could say what Brother Pike was after?

Vick nodded towards grime-streaked Adua, its pall of smoke inching irresistibly closer. “What happens when we get there?”

“Change,” said Risinau, smug as a rooster. “The Great Change.”

“From what, to what?”

“I am not blessed with the Long Eye, Sister Victarine.” Risinau giggled at the thought. “From the pupa alone it is hard to know what kind of butterfly might emerge to greet the dawn. But change.” He wagged a thick finger at her. “Of that you can be sure! A new Union, built from high ideals!”

“The world doesn’t need changing,” grunted Judge, black eyes fixed on the capital. “It needs burning.”

Vick wouldn’t have trusted either one of them to herd pigs, let alone to herd the dreams of millions into a new future. She kept her face blank, of course, but Pike must have caught some hint of her feelings. “You appear to have doubts.”