“I do understand, Your Highness, I do, I do, please, you must see, I… I lost perspective.”

“Perspective? Is that what you lost?”

“I got carried away… and not for the first time. When I was in the Far Country, Fates help me… I am so easily dragged off course! I never learn! It was the times… it was Judge… I didn’t know what I was doing!”

“Please! All you got carried away with, Sworbreck, was your own power, and cruelty, and self-importance.”

“I am a worm,” he whispered, head hanging, tears dripping. “An utter worm!”

“Oh, no. Worms do some good.” Savine slowly sat back, lip wrinkled with disgust, the angry flush fading from her cheek. “Cowardly liar you may be, ridiculous fantasist you may be, disloyal scum you certainly are, but for reasons I cannot divine… people listen to you.”

“They do, Lady Savine!” A sudden hope lit his face. “Your Highness, Lady Regent, I am ever so keen to be of service, in whatever humble and lowly way—”

“You will write of me again,” said Savine.

“I will?”

“Just like you did in The Darling of the Slums. Your best work.”

The flicker of a smile on Sworbreck’s lips. “You think so?”

“The best turd in the sewer,” growled Vick, making him cringe again.

“You will rain praise upon me,” said Savine.

“I will lavish you with compliments, Your Highness! I will burnish your legend! I will raise you up on a cushion of eulogy. The deliverer of the people! The Mother of the Nation! You and your children,” blubbered Sworbreck. “And your noble husband—”

“My children, yes. My husband can extol his own virtues.”

“Sure you don’t want to hang this bastard?” asked Vick. Seemed there was no more justice in the world than there had been when Judge sat in the Court of the People. But then justice had always been in short supply. Who’d know better than her, who’d had years of her life stolen for someone else’s crimes?

The Lady Regent considered her carefully. “You spent years working for my father. You should have learned not to hang what you can use.” She narrowed her eyes at Sworbreck. “I suggest you get to your press and keep it hot. You live now to make me loved. And you will live precisely as long as you are useful to me.” Savine stood, looking down her nose at the sobbing ex-prosecutor. “Not an instant longer.”

A Sea of Power

“Welcome, one and all, to this exceptional general meeting of Adua’s Solar Society!”

Curnsbick, resplendent in a waistcoat embroidered with blazing suns, flung wide his arms and delivered a beaming smile. The applause was positively thunderous. All the pent-up terror and frustration of the last few months released in an outpouring of joy and relief.

“With thanks to our most radiant patron, Her Highness the Lady Regent and Mother of the King, Savine dan Brock!” Curnsbick humbly bowed his head towards Savine’s box and she lowered her fan to give a nod and smile of her own. There was a kind of ripple through the audience as every face turned towards her. The ovation grew, if anything, even louder. Her smile grew, if anything, even wider. Joyous screeches, admiring coos. Someone shouted, “The Mother of the Nation!”