“Leo, let me—”

“No need!” he snapped, finally heaving himself free and twisting back into his seat, teeth gritted against the pain.

He thumped at the door and the carriage lurched off towards the Agriont. He didn’t like the dismay in his mother’s eyes, so he frowned out of the window at the honour guards riding to either side, harness polished to gleaming mirror-brightness, and wished he was riding with them. He listened to the hooves pounding the cobbles and thought of the charge at Red Hill. The Young Lion, riding to glory.

“I always thought you hated carriages,” said his mother.

“I do, but…” But it hurt him to ride, he was in more pain than he could stand and the thought of more made him sick. “Anything for you. Did you bring more soldiers?”

“Another regiment should arrive tomorrow. I swear there’s hardly a man under thirty left in Ostenhorm.”

“I need every loyal Anglander,” said Leo. “To keep the peace. To keep order. To keep the people… safe.”

His mother looked even more dismayed at that. “I remember what your father used to say… about the founding principles of the Union.” She had always thought Leo’s father was a fool, and he was starting to think she had been right. “You can have too much order, Leo. People need liberty.”

“Tell that to those splattered to mincemeat at the bottom of the Tower of Chains,” he snapped. “Liberty is a luxury we can’t afford right now.”

“Of course,” she said, looking down at the floor. “We have to take things at the right pace. Have to be cautious.” She looked up at him again, and she looked pale. “Have you heard from… the First of the Magi?”

Leo frowned. “That old fool? Why would I have?”

“In the past, he held… a great deal of influence.”

“In the past, maybe.”

“It was partly through his patronage that your father became Lord Governor.”

“What?”

His mother leaned forwards. A woman who’d fought an army of Northmen to a draw, and she looked positively scared. “Undertakings were made to him. He is not a man to simply let a debt go.”

“Sadly, the banks all burned in the Great Change. I rather think the debts burned with them.”

“I very much doubt he will see it that way.”

“What do I care how he sees it?”

His mother blinked. “Leo, you don’t understand—”

“I have bigger problems than making wizards happy! Have you seen the state of things here?” And he waved towards the window. A burned-out stretch of the city was rolling into view, scorched windows and doorways yawning empty.

“By the Fates,” breathed his mother, eyes wide at the sight. Leo had got used to the city’s scars, perhaps, the way he had to his own, but now he saw those fresh, too.

“The bastards ruined everything,” he said, clenching his fist. “It can’t ever happen again. We need a strong army. A vigilant Inquisition. The Breakers and Burners are still there, in the provinces. Like bloody maggots in the guts of the nation! We need to ferret them out. Teach our enemies to fear us. The bloody Styrians, the bloody Gurkish, the bloody Old Empire.