Among the newly elected there were labourers, merchants, printers, lens-makers, clock-makers, candle-makers, even a couple of maids and a belligerent laundress, but also a disproportionate number of artists, poets and that most nebulous of designations: intellectuals. Risinau clearly considered himself to be artist, poet and intellectual combined, though in his labyrinthine speeches Orso perceived little artistry, only the cheapest kind of poetry and no intellect whatsoever.

“I have been considering a written constitution!” Whiskers, again, leaning over the parchments on the High Table, pen in inky hand. It finally came to Orso who he was: Spillion Sworbreck, that bloody writer in whose office he used to meet Savine. In spite of everything, the memory brought a rare smile to his face. “I was thinking something along the lines of… we consider these facts to be self-evident—”

There was instant opposition from among the great thinkers. “What? Nothing is self-evident!”

“Pretentious! Presumptuous!”

“Asking for trouble.”

“Terrible first line.”

There was the scrape of a nib crossing out. “Thorny, isn’t it, once you start drafting? Not at all like fiction.”

Judge delivered one of her explosive snorts of scorn. She was draped over a chair with one bare foot up on the High Table, its dirty sole directed at the Chairman, her lip permanently twisted and her eyes forever narrowed. Her followers, the Burners, had taken to dyeing parts of their clothes red. You could see a few of them on the benches. Red hats. Red sleeves. Red trouser legs. As if they had been dipped in blood. Perhaps they had.

“Let us skip over the first line for now.”

“The first line? And already we’re skipping over?”

“Don’t writers always say you should write the first line last?”

“Just the sort of bloody rubbish writers would say…”

This was the way of it. Business was steered by Risinau’s whims, or whoever could shout loudest. Halfway through discussing one thing they’d be dragged onto another. It was the most dispiriting display of mismanagement Orso had witnessed, indeed, since the last time he sat in this room, before the Great Change. He leaned sideways, holding out his goblet. “Don’t suppose you could fill me up again, Hildi?”

The day the Agriont fell she had melted into the crowd as ordered, then melted straight back when he was not immediately torn to pieces. He had admonished her sternly for her disobedience, but in truth was pathetically grateful for this one undeserved shred of loyalty. They had confiscated her old cap—leading to a flood of swearing which had still not quite dried up—but otherwise allowed her to stay in post, wearing an absurd livery. This was typical of the new regime. Some things they furiously tore down. Others they let stand, even tearfully celebrated. All without apparent pattern or purpose.

“You sure?” she muttered through tight lips.

“Worried they’ll take a dislike to my drinking? They took enough of a dislike to me already to overthrow the monarchy. They’ve given me wine. Bad wine, but still. Might as well make use of it.”