Then Curnsbick stepped forwards. “Your Highness,” he murmured, lowering himself to one knee. As if it was arranged, every man and woman, several hundred of the richest and most talented in the Union, sank down with him, bowing, curtsying, competing viciously to get closest to the floor.

Savine liked to think she had changed. She had taken a beating in Valbeck. Reeled through the year afterwards, finally put herself back together, then taken another beating at Stoffenbeck. Everyone had taken a beating in the Great Change. Then she had spent six months hiding, giving herself up to her babies, to her husband, to her charity, and finally taken yet another beating in the Court of the People and on the roof of the Tower of Chains. Though there, it had to be said, she had given far worse than she got.

Savine liked to think she had changed. Come through her ordeals a better woman. But perhaps she was like a leaf of steel, bent by great pressure into new shapes but, given the chance, springing all too quickly back. In the warm draft of the foyer the embers of ambition flared up again as hot as ever. There was no denying the satisfaction she felt to see every man and woman not only seeking her money, not only seeking her approval, not only envying her, but kneeling before her.

Savine liked to think she had changed. But who dislikes being knelt to?

She left them kneeling long enough to know she could have left them kneeling all night. Then she smiled her sweetest smile. “Don’t be ridiculous, everyone. Please rise.”

She swallowed that horrible, lovely pearl dust bitterness and swept down the steps into the foyer. Her foyer. Once she had fought battles here. Now she reigned over the place as the unquestioned victor. The dozen armoured Anglanders who followed her everywhere she went were something of a clattering nuisance, and more had been posted at the theatre’s every doorway. She did wonder, in her more suspicious moments, whether Leo sent them to watch her as much as to protect her, but she supposed great figures must have an entourage. There was a wave of bowing heads, a rustle of curtsying skirts, a wake of awestruck respect wherever Savine passed.

“One could get used to this,” murmured Zuri, sliding her pencil from behind her ear, and she was right, as always. All Savine had to do was smile to bring them rushing forwards like pigs at feeding time.

“My surveys show there is room for three thousand thoroughly modern houses in the burned areas of the Three Farms alone. Thoroughly modern, Your Highness! Running water!”

“New ships, Lady Regent. Towering ships. Cities on the salt, bristling with cannon. Blow anything those Styrian bastards have out of the water. The Union will rule the seas again!”

“Have you had the opportunity to consider my designs, Lady Regent? Better statues on the Kingsway that celebrate the new while harking back to the glory of the old!”