Perhaps fortunately, perhaps not, his attention was soon claimed by the jeering. Winter had drastically reduced the size of the crowds before the Court of the People, but the fanatics that remained made up for it by sheer weight of anger, pressing in around the guards, shaking pamphlets and yelling insults.

Orso smiled, waved, blew kisses, as he always did. “Too kind, my subjects! To turn out in the cold, for me? Too kind!” A sneering woman spat on him, and he clutched it to his stained jacket like a bouquet. “I shall treasure it!”

“Long live the king!” came a scream.

“Oh no,” said Hildi.

Someone had clambered up on one of the broken pedestals near the steps of the court. A flash of the golden sun of the Union on a piece of cloth, frantically waved. Rage flashed through the mob. “Long live the—” Cut off in a squawk as he was dragged down. A surge as people struggled to get close enough to participate in the beating.

This kind of thing was becoming more and more common. Were these spur-of-the-moment royalists lunatics? Simpletons? Suicidal? Or had the disappointments of the Great Change simply piled on them so heavily it induced a kind of mania? Orso was grateful for any support, but could they not support him silently? Open demonstrations of monarchism did no one any good. Least of all the monarch himself.

In her last message, Teufel had told him that plans were in place. That he should be ready. That it might be a matter of days. He had to smother a surge of nerves at the thought. He leaned close to Hildi to whisper, “I think Judge is going to put me on trial soon.”

“You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“It’s getting dangerous.”

“You’ve been saying that for weeks.”

“And I’ve been right. Hildi, I mean it, this would be an excellent moment for you to abandon me.”

She dropped her voice even further, murmuring through tight lips. “Your friends will come through.”

Orso caught a glimpse of his latest supporter dragged past insensible, blood in his hair. One of the guards aimed a lazy kick at him. The crowd had fallen on the old flag like wolves on a carcass and were trampling each other in their eagerness to trample it. Corporal Halder surveyed the scene with an air of bored detachment, hands on hips.

“I still hope they will,” muttered Orso, “but, being realistic—”

“When have you ever done that?”

“—the chances of failure are very high.” The closer the day came, indeed, the higher the chances of failure seemed. “The consequences of failure…” It was hardly worth spelling them out. He spent every waking moment powerlessly turning them over, after all, and every sleeping moment

dreaming about them. “If they don’t come through—”

“You’ll know about it when you hear me denouncing you to the Court of the People.”

Orso smiled. “That’s my girl. Make it a spicy denunciation, though, won’t you? None of these droning lists of names we get these days. I want it overflowing with scandal, shocks and low moral character.”