“Where the hell’s the Young Lion?” he whispered through fixed lips. Not so very long ago, before the battle at Stoffenbeck, he had spent several sleepless nights hoping Brock never arrived. Now he was desperate for the least hint of the bastard.

Hildi glanced towards Corporal Halder, but he and the rest of Orso’s guards had long ago given up any pretence of guarding and had slunk into one of the patches of sunlight to bask like lizards, not paying the slightest attention. “They’re on their way,” she hissed from the corner of her mouth.

“What if they don’t get here in time?” He was all too keenly aware how quickly the Court of the People could produce a verdict. “What if Savine’s… convicted?”

“Then I’ve seen it happen to better people.”

Orso could hardly deny that, despite for some reason desperately wanting to. “My worry is it’ll happen to a worse next,” he whispered. “Namely me.”

Hildi was showing depressingly little sign of disagreeing when Judge swept into the hall, chains on her breastplate twinkling, hem of her ripped ballgown hissing across the tiles and sending washes of dust motes through the bars of sunlight. Sworbreck, Broad, Sarlby and a few dozen of the most committed Burners stalked up in her wake. The hubbub dropped away into the usual awful quiet as the Union’s vengeful nightmare lowered herself into the chair once reserved for Orso, picked up her smith’s hammer and gave the already ruined High Table a brutal beating.

“Court is in fucking session!” she snarled.

Orso tried to flap some air into his collar. For months he had hardly been able to remember what warmth felt like. Now the Court of the People was smotheringly hot. Hot with the spring sun flashing and twinkling through the distorting windows. Hot with the excited breath of the crowd. Hot with rumour, gossip, scandal, fear. The only cool thing in the whole place, as the great doors were swung open, was the defendant.

Savine wore a plain nursing dress, pure white. No jewels. No wig. Her dark hair was clipped close to her skull so she looked shorn of all pretence, the scar up her forehead showing red. Orso had never seen her look so beautiful. But then he thought that every time he saw her, with tiresome predictability. He gripped the bars of his cage, face all but pressed to the metal as she passed.

He wanted to call out some encouragement. Be strong! or You’ll beat the bastards! or I love you! but she did not meet his eye. She glided across the tiled floor with her hands clasped and her head high, a member of some more virtuous species than the sweaty mass gathered on the benches and in the galleries. Two maids followed, each carrying what looked like a little bundle of blankets.

“Are those her children?” muttered Hildi, sitting up. One of the bundles twisted, made a little mew, and Orso caught a glimpse of its tiny baffled face as it was whisked past.