“Gentlemen, if I may?” someone shouted.

“Citizens!” someone roared back.

“Citizens, of course, my profuse apologies!” The man looked terrified. There was a feeling that little mistakes were being noted down and would soon enough be counted against you. “I wished to speak of the walls! The city walls, the walls of the Agriont. They are, practically speaking, an impediment to the growth of the city. They are, symbolically, a reminder of monarchist oppression.”

Isher sprang up. The man could move fast, when he wanted to. Scurrying from the Battle of Stoffenbeck, for instance. Or scurrying back, once he saw something to gain.

“They’re damn useful for the defence of the city, though!” Leo thought he might be roughing up the clipped accent of the Midderland nobleman to sound more like a commoner. “There’ll be foreign enemies, jealous of our freedoms. There’ll be enemies in the provinces, keen to take us back into the past.” Isher pointed across at Orso, watching this performance with weary scorn. “There’ll be enemies among us, wanting to raise a king above our heads again.”

Those who’ve snatched power always fear it’ll be snatched away. There were murmurs of agreement, nods rippling through the benches. The public gallery was less enthusiastic, though. Not so much the message, Leo reckoned, as the messenger.

“Aristocrats!” someone bellowed from above. “Clinging to aristocratic symbols!” Insults were thrown down, and scraps of food, and crumpled pamphlets, and the king acknowledged them by raising his goblet and taking a lazy swallow.

“What does the Young Lion say?”

“Let’s hear from Brock!”

Risinau banged on the table for order and Leo flinched. The sound made him think of the cannon blast in Stoffenbeck. The shattered Guildhall. His horse falling across him. Antaup with bloody hands in his lap. Jin riddled with flatbow bolts.

He tried to wipe his face, greasy with cold sweat.

“You should say something,” muttered Isher, frowning up towards the jeering gallery.

The thought of standing terrified him, but there must still have been some stubborn remnant of the Young Lion, hidden deep inside. Better to do it, than live with the fear of it, the Dogman used to say. Leo might have lost a leg and an arm, but he’d show these bastards he still had his heart.

Heugen hauled him up while Isher wedged his crutch under his arm. Then they sat back, applauding his pluck. Not the man he was—he’ll never be the man he was—but the crippled curiosity can still raise a cheer or two.

Leg trembling, stump burning, Leo drew himself up, raised his chin, bellowed at the echoing hall they way he’d once bellowed at the cavalry of Angland, working them up to a charge.

“Citizens! We’ve changed the world! A Great Change!” For the massively worse, in his case. But he heard applause. Or he hoped it was applause, and not just the blood rushing in his splitting head. “But there’s still so much to do!”

Sweat tickled his scalp, trickled down his forehead. He paused to catch his breath, to think through the pain. All his life he’d been fixed on what he wanted to say. Never given a thought to what they wanted to hear before.