Brint watched the crowd cheer as they bounced Brock on their shoulders. “The Union will need men like you in the days to come. Someone will have to restore order.”

“My family needs me. That’s what matters.”

“Of course,” said Brint. “But… you may serve them best by serving here.”

Broad slowly hooked his lenses over his ears, carefully settled them into that familiar groove on the bridge of his nose and gave a heavy sigh. He’d sworn to keep away from trouble, but here was the problem.

Trouble wouldn’t keep away from him.

Bring Out the King

Orso stared down from the palace gatehouse, hardly able to believe the evidence of his own senses.

What could only be described as a horde of people had boiled from the Kingsway and into the park, past the commanding statues of his father, of the First of the Magi, and of a still-unfinished Arch Lector Glokta, surging towards the palace gates in an apparently endless flood.

“Where did they come from?” he muttered. A fool’s question to which he already knew the answer. They came from Valbeck, from Keln, from Adua, from every corner of Midderland. They were the Union’s citizens. They were his subjects. Or they had been, at any rate. It appeared his grand tour of the country was no longer necessary.

It had come to him.

He watched in stunned horror as Union flags were torn down, vandals dancing in triumph on the roofs. A few buildings remained in loyal hands, but they were islands in a stormy sea, hopelessly besieged. Here and there, bloody little dramas unfolded. Tiny figures chased down a street. Tiny figures tumbling from a window. Tiny figures hanged from trees.

The palace was its own well-guarded fortress within the fortress of the Agriont, but the Breakers were crowding in against its gates, swarming more thickly with Orso’s every faintly wheezing breath.

“Master Sulfur, would it be possible…?” He was sure the magus had been right beside him, but when Orso turned, Sulfur was nowhere to be seen. It appeared there would be no spectacular magical rescue today. Saving the king from a dozen Breakers was one thing. From countless thousands was clearly quite another. There comes a time, Orso supposed, when even such mighty creditors as the Banking House of Valint and Balk must cut their losses.

“Bring out the king!” someone screeched, their voice somehow rising above the sullen murmur. There was a surge through the crowd, a shriek as someone fell in the midst, crushed underfoot. Did he hear the heavy gates creak under the pressure? Something shattered against the parapet, not far away, and Orso ducked back on an instinct.

“Your Majesty?” asked one of the officers. His face looked very pale above his crimson collar. “Should we shoot?”

“No!” Orso struggled to put some authority into his voice. “No one shoots! I won’t kill my own people. No more… of my own people,” he added lamely, memories of the mass graves at Stoffenbeck floating up unbidden.