Savine narrowed her eyes. “You will beat me at left-handed darts before you do that. You should know that I have made comprehensive arrangements. Try to seize power and the coal will stop coming, and the bread will stop coming, and the money will stop coming. I’ll chain you up in strikes and riots. I’ll bury you in a blizzard of pamphlets. Have you seen how popular I am these days? Threaten the Mother of the Nation? Depose the Darling of the Slums? You’d have another Great Change on your hands, supposing the army fought for you. But bear in mind, their oath isn’t to you, it’s to the king. And you are not king, Leo. You’re less king than I am.”

There was a brooding silence as they glared at one another down the length of that battered table, in the dingy, stuffy, faintly horse-smelling room that was the very pinnacle of power.

“So you’ve stabbed me in the fucking back.” His voice had a wounded whine to it. “My own wife. I should have left you to the Burners.”

It was his bad luck that this reinvention of the past coincided with a particularly savage cramp, as if there was a fist clenching around her guts. She jerked forwards, showing him her teeth. “You fucking did, you treacherous shit! And then you seized the throne against my wishes, and then you killed my brother, and now I’ll make you pay the fucking bill!”

As she snarled the words his expression changed from fury, to amazement, and ended in a joyless bark of laughter. “Oh, so I’m the villain? Funny what we forget, isn’t it? Remember our rebellion? I wanted to change the Closed Council but leave Orso on the throne! That’s what you told me you wanted. And the Darling of the Slums wouldn’t lie to her own husband, would she?”

Savine swallowed, and said nothing.

Leo stabbed with a finger at Isher’s empty chair. “Because the flexible Lord Isher told me a different story. That you agreed with him Orso would be quietly shuffled off, so you could be queen. And that wasn’t the only deal you made behind my back, was it? I thought it was strange how Stour

just…” And he snapped his fingers. “Changed his mind about helping us! No wonder, since you offered him Uffrith!”

Savine had to stop herself grimacing. But her husband had not finished listing her crimes.

“When we hanged your precious brother, I didn’t hear you begging for his life. You knew it had to be done. You knew, but you wanted someone to blame. Do you believe your own lies, or just pretend to? The hypocrisy!” And he clutched at the tabletop, wrenched at it as though he’d rip it off. “How can you sit there with a straight face, talking of the horrors of the old regime? You were the old regime! It was your own father who carved those names into the Square of Martyrs! No one profited more than you and no one cared less! Now you dare to put on a white dress and preach to me that it can’t all be for nothing? Play the saint of Adua out there if you please, Savine,” he sneered at her, “but in here let’s not embarrass ourselves. You can call me treacherous. Call me ruthless. But ask who I learned it from.”