Leo’s mother nervously cleared her throat. “Of course… we would not want to do anything that might inflame passions—”

“But sometimes we must,” said Leo, cutting her off dead. “A king’s just a man, in the end. Meat and bone and blood, like other men, and vulnerable to the same things. The same sharp edges. The same long drops. It’s really not so big a problem as you think.”

Mozolia gave a satisfied grunt and turned back to her meal. Leo’s mother was less impressed. “Leo, really—”

“No, Lady Finree, we must be hard-headed.” With all her customary precision, Savine set down her cutlery and gently put her cool hand on Leo’s. “I and my husband speak with one voice on this, as on so much. It is most regrettable, but, after all we have been through, after all the nation has been through…” Finally, she met Leo’s eye. That flinty look she used to have, when trying to convince him to be more ruthless. “I would far rather have another regret than another rebellion.”

It was more of a relief than Leo had expected to find the old Savine beside him again. He turned his hand over and gripped hers tight. He needed her guile. He needed her popularity with the masses. The dead knew, he couldn’t do bloody everything himself.

“What a woman,” he said, treating the delegates from Westport to a beaming smile. “I swear I’m the luckiest man in the world.” And he shoved his plate away. “Now could someone bring me something I can fucking eat?”

Redemption

His Highness Crown Prince Orso would, no doubt, have considered these conditions intolerable. His August Majesty King Orso had, however, become something of an authority on cells, a dungeon devotee, and honestly considered this far from the worst he had occupied. It had a bed, a table, a chair. The window was more of a barred slot, but at least it let him feel the sun on his face in the mornings. The food was passable, the temperature comfortable, the odour not oppressive. The guards, clad in the dark uniform of Angland, did not speak to him with scorn. They did not speak to him at all. In most respects, it was very much preferable to the damp cellar in which Judge had kept him. When it came to ways out, however, it was much the same.

There weren’t any.

Orso issued a heavy sigh. Sighing was one of his few remaining hobbies and, with all the recent practice, he flattered himself to think he had become quite accomplished. He wasn’t in his mother’s league, of course, but perhaps one day, if he really stuck at it. If he was given the time. But that was the question. How much time was he likely to get?

Leo dan Brock had stuck his son on the throne. Orso’s half-nephew, in fact, by his reading of the tortuous royal family tree. King Harod the Second, not even one year old, which, in practice, left the nation in the hands of his parents. It trampled over all the Union’s laws of succession, of course. But laws did not appear at all the rigid pillars they once had. If the Great Change had proved anything, it was that—with enough force, with enough fear—one could bend them into whatever knots one pleased.