A few bits of thrown food accompanied the name and some light heckling which Judge was obliged to wave into silence. “Interrupt the defence, people, by all means, but not the fucking denunciations!”

“My thanks, Your Honour.” Orso bowed extravagantly, exactly the way his mother had taught him. “I like to think my father had good instincts, buried deep. He would often discuss them, when we fenced together. Projects for the relief of the poor. For the fair distribution of medicine and education. For peace on our borders. But that he had good instincts only makes his total failure to follow them all the worse. You can pardon a man who knows no better. One who ignores the best parts of himself you can only condemn. What a waste of flesh he turned out to be! What a worthless fart! What an empty vessel!”

“Hear, hear!” Judge hammered lazily at the table. “I find the bastard guilty in his absence!”

Far from the worst injustice witnessed in the Court of the People. In spite of his many faults, Orso’s father had been a generous sort. He would not have minded being lightly slandered in a good cause. Especially when that good cause was the life of his first-born natural child.

“Thank you, friends, for your patience,” bellowed Orso, “but my roll of ignominy is by no means finished. You might suppose the blame would stop at the throne, but you could not be more wrong! There has always been a man behind the throne of the Union…” He let the moment stretch, the anticipation build. “I would like next to denounce none other than Bayaz, the First of the Magi, whose statue until recently stood in the Kingsway! Two statues of the bastard, in fact, such was his monstrous vanity. The top and tail to centuries of exploitation! He was the man who gave my father and Old Sticks their orders. He was the painstaking watchmaker who pieced together the corrupt system that ground every Citizen of the Union down. He was the one who returned when it suited him, to ensure it was still grinding people down as efficiently as ever. He was the one who carelessly laid waste to the Agriont, who killed thousands in the name of his ambitions, then forced the survivors to celebrate him as their saviour! The very personification of ruthlessness, a puppeteer who used kings as his marionettes!”

All eyes were fixed on him as he paraded across the grubby tiles. He caught a glimpse of Savine whispering to her maid and the woman edged away with the children in her arms. Orso redoubled his efforts.

“All this is common—if horrible—knowledge, but do you know how he profited from it all? Profited beyond the dreams of avarice? You want usurers? Hoarders? Speculators? Bayaz is the grandfather of them all. A magus more taken with money than magic!” Secrets did not seem so very important now, nor immortal wizards so very frightening. “He is both Valint and Balk! The loans that broke the state were all taken from him, the interest all paid to him. He was the one who made a Great Change inevitable. Made it necessary, even! He is the one who should be standing in that dock, to receive the People’s Justice!”