“I appreciate the visit,” said Leo, “but knowing how much you value honesty—I don’t like you.”

“Good. Mutual suspicion is the best basis for an alliance. Everyone knows where they stand.”

Leo frowned. “An alliance?”

“Forgive me for saying so,” said Savine, “but the last time you came offering help it turned out rather badly for us.”

“You were betraying King Orso then.”

“And now?”

“You’d be helping me put him back on the throne.”

There was a pause one could only have called pregnant. Savine spent it thinking of the old Union, her old life, her old self, and trying not to let her desperate yearning show. “I somehow doubt… that Judge would simply give the power back.”

“No.” Vick leaned forwards, the firelight bright on one side of her face, the other lost in shadow. “We’d have to take it.”

Savine held Harod a little tighter. More blood. More death. She glanced over at Leo. No sign of doubt in his eyes. Quite the reverse.

“What do we get?” he asked.

“Four chairs on the Closed Council, when it’s reconvened.”

Savine could not help taking a sharp breath. Four chairs would once have been a dazzling prize. In the old days, Arch Lector Sult and High Justice Marovia had ruined lives by the hundred over a single one.

“What if I want more?” asked Leo.

“I’m not here to bargain. Four’s what I’ve got and four’s what I’m offering. It’s fair.”

“Fair might look different from where I sit,” said Leo. “With what I’ve lost.”

“You could always ask Judge for more.”

“She might listen if I offered her a treacherous chief inspector in return.”

Leo’s threats moved Teufel no more than his scars or his cock. “Go ahead. But don’t be surprised if I say the whole thing was your idea, but you got greedy and wanted more than I could offer. As you both know, I can be quite convincing. I expect we’d all end up in the dock together, probably with a tailor, and an engraver, and a couple of dark-skinned strangers, accused of a conspiracy to make the river freeze.”

It all sounded depressingly plausible. “What exactly do you expect us to contribute?” asked Savine. For four chairs, she imagined it would be quite a lot.

“Your friends from Angland, your friends from the Open Council.” She paused a moment. “And the People’s Army.”

“I don’t have it,” snapped Leo.

“If you stretched, I reckon you could get your fingers around it.”

“And what do you deliver?”

“Lord Marshal Forest and his rebels, well-organised royalists inside the city, information from inside the Inspectorate, Styrian contacts and Styrian money. Not to mention the king’s blessing. And the king’s forgiveness.”

“You’ve spoken to Orso?” asked Savine.

Teufel gazed levelly back. “I have.”

She resisted the urge to ask how he was. “And you have his agreement?”

“I do.”

“And we’re supposed to take your word for it?” sneered Leo. “Forgive me if I—”

Savine cut him off. “Judge has to be stopped.” She had dreamed, last night, of falling from a high place, and woken in a cold sweat. “At any price.”