“What are we?” one of Risinau’s cronies pronounced, with great emphasis. “Or… what should we be?” Everything was said with great emphasis. The most banal observations became profound revelations, tear-tracked protestations, chest-thumping declarations.

“A republic?”

“How?” Someone frowned towards Orso. He looked vaguely familiar. Impressive whiskers. “We still have a king.”

“A regrettable state of affairs.” Orso could not tell who had said that. Probably everyone thought it. He had long been thinking it himself, after all. He was not at all sure why the Breakers had not done away with him on the day of the Great Change. Perhaps they could not quite shrug off some vestige of deference to the monarch. Perhaps they thought his presence might lend proceedings a patina of legitimacy. Perhaps they preferred him as a contemptible prop than a martyr to be avenged. More likely they feared to smash the past all in one go, and were holding him back for a spectacular finale.

Whatever the reasons, they had built an absurd little enclosure to contain the royal person, halfway between a theatre box and a dock for the accused, splattered in cheap gilt, already peeling. He felt like the ridiculous peacock some Southern ambassador had once given his mother. She had kept it in a silver cage as a curio for visitors. It had looked deeply unhappy, produced an astonishing quantity of dung and not lived very long.

It would have helped at least a little if all the old denizens of the Open Council had lost their places in the Great Change, but a smattering of Orso’s worst enemies had managed to cling to their seats. Lord Isher had slithered from hiding, Lord Heugen had slipped out of prison and the Young Lion sat in the front row along with several other surviving aristocratic rebels. Those few noblemen who had stayed loyal to the Crown were languishing in cells beneath the House of Truth. The world was turned upside down, indeed. Traitors were patriots, turncoats were loyalists, corruption was purity and the truth a lie.

Aside from the reduced Lord Brock there were no delegates from Angland. Lady Finree was back in charge there, carefully considering her options. Starikland was not represented, either. Lord Governor Skald had denounced the Great Change and, if Orso knew his brother-in-law at all, would even now be wondering how he could twist it to his advantage. The only representatives from beyond the shores of Midderland were a few alarmed Aldermen of Westport, no doubt regretting their decision to remain inside the Union more with every passing day. Orso wondered absently if he might get a message via them to his mother and sister in Sipani. Just to let them know he was well. Reassuring lies had always been the glue that held his family together, after all.

“The Union is and has always been a monarchy,” came Risinau’s endlessly overemphasising voice. Chairman Risinau, he was calling himself. Appropriate, for a man forever sitting down. “We must acknowledge the past even as we shape the future. But we are a new variety of monarchy and must devise new terminology!” Nothing pleased him more than to tinker with terminology. The man was a positive manufactory of verbiage. “You might call it a representative, or perhaps a constitutional monarchy…”