“Oh no,” she whispered. She could not run any more. There was nowhere left to run to. A house was on fire, smoke rolling from the upstairs windows into the spitting sky.

People began to scatter, knocking each other down, trampling each other in their mindless haste. Lilott took an elbow in the face and tottered back, tasting blood. Her foot caught in her torn dress, the parapet hit her in the knees and, with a despairing gasp, she tumbled over.

It was not that far to the moat, but even so the water hit her hard, knocked out her breath and sucked her down in a rush of bubbles. The floating glory of her dress became an instant dead weight, fabric clutching at her, dragging her down. She was beyond exhaustion. Beyond terror. Part of her wanted just to sink, but another would not let go, made her thrash, kick, struggle.

She came up coughing dirty water, wriggled through the clutching, slapping lily pads, far less picturesque at close quarters, and into the darkness under the bridge. She pressed herself to the slimy stones, hair plastered across her face, her head full of the smell of vegetable rot.

Not far away a corpse floated, face down. A hint of sodden cloth, of tangled hair. She watched it turn slowly, bump against the moss-covered wall of the moat, drift away. She wondered who it had been. She wondered who she was now. She wondered if she would live out the hour. Everything was changed.

The People’s Army was coming. Wasn’t she the people, too? When had she become their enemy? She squeezed her eyes shut, shivering in the icy water, and gave up trying to smother her own sobs. No one could have heard them over the deafening noise of the mob above. Tramping boots, clashing metal, breaking glass, rumbling wagon wheels. A demon with many voices.

“Bread! Give us bread!”

“Send out the Closed Council!”

“The Great Change is come!”

“Let us in, you fuckers.”

“Let us in or we break in!”

And, louder than all, a sawing, maddened shriek. “Bring out His fucking Majesty!”

“Bring him out!” screamed Mother Mostly, shoving forward.

They’d made it to the Agriont. Ready to seize their own justice for once, rather’n be crushed by the king’s. But now folk held up. From some shred of respect for their old masters, or fear of ’em, at least. They loitered at the head of the bridge.

“There’s men up there!” someone said. “King’s men, with bows!”

Mother Mostly’s eyesight weren’t near good enough to see any king’s men that far off. The whole gatehouse was a looming blur over the heads of the folk packed in front. The king’s men couldn’t kill this whole crowd, but no doubt they could kill a few, and no one was eager to be first.

But Mother Mostly wouldn’t be fucking bullied. Her father had tried it, when she was a girl, and she’d stabbed him with a knitting needle and run away from home. Her first husband had tried it, and she’d stabbed him with a butcher’s knife and rolled his body into the canal. The Styrians had tried it, when they came to put their boot across the Arches. They’d come asking for money and she’d told ’em to go back where they fucking came from. They’d beaten her, but she healed. They’d cut two of her fingers off, and she got her hands back in the soap the same day. They’d smashed her doors, smashed her shutters, smashed her tubs, but she got new ones. In the end their boss turned up, and she was sure he’d kill her, but he gave her a nod of respect instead. She needn’t pay, he’d said. She alone.