Savine remembered Judge falling. That flash of her sneer as she dropped away. She shed no tears for the evil bitch. The Fates knew, no one had ever deserved the long drop more. And yet she could not stop thinking of it. The hand at her throat. The parapet grinding into her back. The hollow sucking in her stomach as she tumbled over.

She clenched her fist as she sat facing those ranks of false smiles, nails cutting sharp into her palm. She told herself she was safe. The Representatives might well have been outnumbered by Leo’s heavily armed Anglanders, standing watchful at every door and window. She could not have been safer. She had to focus on what could be changed, and change it for the better. She glanced down at her infant daughter, nudged the blanket from her sleeping face. She had to turn her back on the past and focus on the future.

“Are you all right?” Zuri murmured in her ear.

Savine forced out a smile. “I should be asking you that.”

Zuri looked as composed as ever. She had not breathed a word of whatever tortures she had endured beneath the House of Questions and Savine had not the courage to ask. That way she could almost pretend it had never happened. Except there were some strange marks on the backs of Zuri’s hands now. Pinpricks. Dimples. Not exactly scars. But not quite normal, either.

Zuri saw her looking and worked the sleeves of her dress down over them.

“My friends!” called Leo as the clapping faded. “My peers! Noblemen and commoners! Representatives of the people of the Union! The Great Change… is behind us!”

The applause at that was even louder. Few indeed mourned its passing, and Leo had made sure any that did occupied cells in the House of Questions rather than seats in this chamber.

“Thanks to the courage of my wife, Lady Brock—” He was interrupted by cheers, mostly from the commoners’ side of the room.

“The Darling of the Slums!” someone shouted.

“The Mother of the Nation!” roared another, smashing his hands together.

Savine had to force out another smile. Kindly meant, she was sure, but their clamour reminded her too much of the crowd at her trial. Of the mobs on the day of the Great Change. She was safe. All those guards. But it was as if her body had not quite realised it. Sweat prickled under her clothes.

Leo, looking slightly put out at the admiration for his wife, held up his hand for silence. “Thanks to Lady Brock, Judge has been thrown down. The Burners and the Breakers are routed, their ringleaders dead, captured or even now being hunted down. They’ll find there’s nowhere to hide! They won’t scrub the blood of innocents from their clawing hands. Justice will find them out, whatever hole they wriggle into!”

More applause. Savine had to admit she was impressed. She had always been more comfortable with small rooms, intimate groups, hushed whispers. But Leo knew how to fill a hall. “He speaks well,” she murmured.