“Slow and steady, Your Majesty” said Tunny around his pipe, very softly.

“You rather assume I am still a king.”

“It’ll take more than a room full of arseholes dropping a crown on a baby to change my mind on that score.”

“Or mine,” added Hildi, clambering to the edge of the hold and swinging her legs down.

“What would I do without you?” Orso watched the stained sheds of warehouses and manufactories slide by. “I hope Gorst got away.”

“He wasn’t planning to,” said Tunny.

“What?”

“All he wanted was to hold Brock and his bastards up long enough for you to get away.”

“What are you saying?”

“That he hoped to trade his life for yours, and considering his skills with a sword, I expect he’ll have succeeded.”

Orso stared off at nothing. “I never did a thing to deserve loyalty like that.”

“Sometimes loyalty’s an excuse for something else,” said Tunny, eyes fixed far off. “This is the way he always wanted it, I reckon.”

“And it might be you’re a better man than you think,” said Hildi, hopping down with an oiled tarp in her hands and dragging it over Orso’s head to make a foul-smelling hood. “Either way you need to stay out of sight. You can honour his sacrifice by making sure it doesn’t go to waste.”

“When the hell did you get so profound?” asked Orso.

“I’ve always been a fount of wisdom.” And she hopped back up on the barge’s roof, tucking a stray yellow curl out of sight inside her cap. “But you’ve been too self-absorbed to notice.”

“Sounds like me,” murmured Orso.

Tunny slipped out a battered flask and took a nip. “So where now?”

Orso had never expected to leave the Agriont again. Not alive, anyway. Now he started to see that escape might be far from the end of his problems. Indeed, it might scarcely be the beginning. He had to find somewhere he could hide, he supposed. Somewhere he could rebuild, gather his forces. Somewhere he could set about a plan to reclaim his throne. That was what deposed kings were supposed to do, wasn’t it? Even if they never wanted the damn thing to begin with? Even if it meant they’d bring trouble wherever they went? Trouble for themselves, trouble for their subjects, trouble for anyone who helped them…

Orso retreated into his tarp, working his back against the coal. He could not help wondering about a world in which he simply… let it go. Folded his hand and let the Young Lion have it all. Found some unregarded corner in which to live in harmless obscurity. No more fighting. No more deaths on his account. No more crushing responsibilities.

He was starting to smile. “You know, I think—”

But Tunny was frowning up at Hildi. “What is it?”

She had stood tall to get a better view. “Boats up ahead,” she muttered, a warning note in her voice.

“It is a canal.”

“But they’re not moving.”