“No,” he said.

Rithinghorm gave a strange sort of hoot, mouth and eyes wide with surprise, when the short-sword slid into his well-pressed uniform jacket. Hope dragged the blade back and Rithinghorm plucked weakly at his shoulder, cheeks puffed right out. Hope shoved him away, lifted the sword and hacked it into Rithinghorm’s skull. Blood spattered. It’s always a surprise, how much a man holds.

He blinked at his captain’s corpse for a moment. He felt light-headed. He felt light all over. As if a fully laden pack had been snatched from his shoulders.

Through the slitted windows he could see the bridge was a solid press of people. He could hear the gates creaking below under the pressure.

He turned to the men. They were staring at him. Parry and all the rest. So young, they were. Good lads. Could he ever have looked that young, when he first joined? They didn’t know what to say. What to do. Hope didn’t know, either, but they had to do something.

He pointed towards the stair. “Guess we’d better open the gates.”

Smiler heard the clonk of the bar, the rattle of bolts, then the gates gave under the pressure and people surged forwards like a river in spate through a burst dam. Folk pressed against him so tight, he struggled not to prick ’em by accident with the spike on the back of his war hammer.

There was a maid there, bonnet skewed across her face. There was a man might’ve been a wheelwright, or a cooper. There was a fellow looked no better’n a beggar. Citizens of Adua picked up that day, citizens of the Union picked up in their march across Midderland, all mixed in with the First Breakers’ Regiment, men like Smiler who’d fought in the wars in Styria, then in the bread riots in Keln, then struggled in the mills in Valbeck, then been armed with Angland steel and marched to free ’emselves from tyranny. Now all that sacrifice and struggle were finally bearing fruit—the Great Change, come at last.

They tumbled eagerly up the tunnel into the rotten heart of the old order. Into the Agriont, grand buildings rising up on every side. Into the Square of Marshals where once, as a boy, Smiler came to watch the Summer Contest, and screamed his lungs raw as Jezal dan Luthar beat Bremer dan Gorst in the final.

There were swords here today as well. A double line of soldiers strung across the square, crooked and hastily gathered, shields and weapons at all angles, an officer shouting in a broken voice.

The Breakers charged. Didn’t need an order. They couldn’t have stopped even if they’d wanted to, there was so much shoving from behind. The whole People’s Army at their backs. Every ground-down worker in the Union. But Smiler didn’t want to stop. He wanted to smash this whole corrupt place. These grasping bastards who’d sent his friends to die in Styria, to die in the mills, to die in the cellars. He wanted to burn away the rot and make a country for its people.