“Well?” he said, firmly and plainly. A little sternly, even. The voice of a disappointed father. A tone his own father had often been called on to use. “Here I am.” His eyes came to rest on an elderly woman in a patched dress and stained apron, sleeves rolled up even in the cold to show heavy pink forearms. “Might I ask your business, madam?”

She snapped her open mouth shut and eased back, saying nothing.

Orso raised one brow at a balding man with a faceful of broken veins and an old hatchet. “Might I enquire as to your purpose, sir?”

He glanced left and right, and his lower lip wobbled, and perhaps the faintest croak emerged from his grizzled throat, but no more.

Orso took a step forwards and the crowd shuffled away. Once, at a meeting of the Solar Society Savine had persuaded him to attend, he had seen iron filings moved by magnetic repulsion. The effect was similar.

That tension in his throat was only getting worse. He worked his shoulders, suddenly annoyed at, of all things, the delay. “Come, come, let’s get to it!”

But rather than falling on him like hungry wolves, the silent mob parted, revealing a man in a simple, dark suit of clothes. A hairless man, his face hideously burned, and at his side a hard-looking woman with a hard-looking frown.

Orso could only stare in amazement. “Arch Lector Pike?” he whispered.

“I think we should consider this my formal resignation, Your Majesty. Though you see that, in truth, I have never been your servant.”

Pike was no captive of the crowd. By the way they treated him, he had their respect. Their obedience, even. By the Fates, he was their leader. The realisation was almost a comfort. It seemed plain now that there was nothing he could have done. There had been a traitor beside him all along.

“You’re the Weaver?” whispered Orso.

“I have used the name at times.”

“I never had an inkling.” Orso raised a brow at Teufel. “Did you have an inkling? You always struck me as the woman with all the inklings, if there’s ever been one.”

Teufel’s eyes slid to Pike. “No,” she said, simply. Her feelings on the whole business were, as ever, impossible to judge.

“Well. I surrender the palace, I suppose. I ask that you show mercy to my guards and retainers. They have only tried to serve me.”

“There has been enough bloodshed,” said Pike, but added rather ominously, “for today.”

There was a pause. Faint cheering was still coming from the direction of the Square of Marshals. Angrier noises from the direction of the House of Questions. But no one appeared to be hacking him to pieces on the spot.

“So…” Orso rather awkwardly cleared his throat. “What happens now?”

“The people will decide,” said Pike.

Orso glanced about him. At the people. “Really?” He gave a puzzled smile. “Are they equipped for that?”

All the Cards

A wind blew through the tall windows of Skarling’s Hall, chilly with mist from the river. It shook the trees across the valley, made the hanging over the great fireplace, stitched with the design of the Long Eye, flap and rustle. Rikke drew her cloak tight around her, and huddled into her hood, and watched the grey water churning, far below, and thought about what had to be done.