Times change, he supposed. The winners are those who change with them.

The gilded hallways echoed with strange sounds, something between a demented carnival and a riot. Jagged music came from somewhere. Or maybe someone was smashing a harp. There was an odd smell, like a cheap brothel. Slashed paintings of smug monarchs had been hung upside down. A neatly dressed, dark-skinned man sat in a chair, fussing nervously with his hat and jumping at every sound. Some ambassador, maybe. A pair of women in red dresses scarcely fastened stumbled giggling past, one holding a wine bottle, the other a pot of slopping paint, leaving a snaking trail of red footprints behind them.

“They used to say the heart of the state was rotten,” muttered Glaward, with one glance back over his shoulder. “Now look at it.”

“It’s hell,” whispered Jurand. “They’ve turned it into bloody hell.”

Snow swirled in through a broken window, bang, bang, banging a shutter against the frame and leaving a chilly puddle in the hallway. Overstoked blazes in every fireplace made it greasy-hot even so, and if that wasn’t enough to get the sweat springing from Leo’s forehead there were armed Burners everywhere, armour dotted with red paint. Some of them even had their faces smeared with crimson lady’s blusher, stuck somewhere between war-daubed savages from beyond the Crinna and murderous clowns.

“Please! He’s innocent. I swear!”

A cultured voice, weeping and begging at once, coming from a door ajar, its lock hacked away with an axe.

“They’re taking him to the tower today!”

“Maybe I could talk to Judge on your behalf, Lilott…” A man’s voice. He sounded like he was enjoying himself.

“Just tell me what I can do!”

“Get your clothes off, for a start.”

Glaward faltered, jaw clenched as the strip of light from that slightly open door fell across his face. “Should we do something?” he whispered.

Leo didn’t even slow down. “Don’t be fucking ridiculous.”

Before the Great Change it would’ve been him asking whether they should do something. Bursting through that door in some self-indulgent, self-defeating puke of gallantry. But then he used to be a reckless, soft-hearted fool. He remembered giving out bread and blankets in the slums with Savine, a thousand years ago. He’d torn his hair at the state of those poor people. Wept that he couldn’t do more.

Now he winced at the tiresome interruption of this woman’s pain. It felt trivial, beside the pain in his stump. As his mother always used to say, he couldn’t allow himself to be swept off by whatever emotion blew his way. He had the big picture to worry about.

“Well?” purred the man’s voice. “You want him saved or not?”

“There’s nothing we can do.” Jurand caught Glaward’s elbow and hurried him on, the woman’s snivelling soon lost behind them. Leo clenched his jaw and upped the pace, his face twitching with each scrape of his metal foot.

He was finding a way to live with this shit, wasn’t he? So could she.