“Shouldn’t it be hidden?” asked Tallow. “Underground or something?”

“The whole point is that no one who comes in can miss it. They all have to imagine how much money sits behind a door as big as that. How much power.” She nodded Matterno towards the brass wheel. “Open it.”

The senior over-clerk for loans spoke in a very small voice. “I don’t have the authority, Inspector.”

Vick planted her hands on her hips again. “Don’t make me wheel that bloody cannon in here.”

“It’s a two-foot thickness of Angland steel. You’ll barely scratch it with a cannon.”

Vick looked him right in the eye. “It’s you I was going to point it at.”

Matterno swallowed, and slipped a key from his pocket, and offered it out. A very long, thin, delicate key for such an immensity of door, wards so complex they looked like a tiny maze. “I only have one. You need the other.”

“Don’t tell me. The manager has it.”

Ever so slowly, Matterno spread his palms. “I… think?”

“Arrest him,” said Vick. “And the others. Seal this place up.”

“But… Inspector!” Two Constables caught the disbelieving senior over-clerk for loans under the armpits and started manhandling him away. “It’s Valint and Balk!”

“You can explain it to Commissioner Pike!” Vick called after him. “Get them all to the House of Questions.”

“House of Truth,” corrected Tallow.

“Whatever.” She winced as she rubbed at her stiff hip. Damn thing always started niggling as the weather turned colder. “Lots of empty cells up there these days.”

“Aye.” Tallow gave a faraway sigh. “I suppose it’s high time we filled ’em up again.”

Citizens

“The deeper question…” Risinau sank back, the ornate chair that was once Orso’s creaking under his bulk, to consider the gilded dome above. “Is what are we now?”

Orso considered that one of the best questions of recent times. A few tiles were cracked, a few benches broken, and one of the glorious stained-glass windows had been smashed and badly boarded up so a chilly draft occasionally swept through the hall, but otherwise the Lords’ Round was much as it had been. They called it the Commons’ Round now, though. They’d turned the cushions over so the embroidered suns of the Union didn’t show, and the unruly gathering who sat upon them was no longer the Open Council, but the Assembly of Representatives.

There had been votes in the districts of Adua, apparently. Votes from every Midderland-born man, no matter how mean and ignorant, resulting in a body of representatives, as far as Orso could tell, every bit as mean and ignorant as they were. Votes. He could only imagine his mother’s reaction to that. The tyranny of the majority. Representatives would be elected in other cities of the Union in due course, but those benches were still empty while the Assembly argued over the rules. They argued even more than the Open Council had, if that was possible. They argued every point. They argued the order of the points. They argued the method of argument.