“Citizen Sworbreck wants to set the people free,” murmured Brint, who by some magic had gone, within weeks, from lord marshal in the old regime, to imprisoned traitor, to general in the People’s Army. Those kinds of wild falls and rises were everywhere in Adua these days.

Broad thought of Valbeck. The streets strewn with rubbish. The mobs and the fires. Wallpaper being boiled for soup. “Folk want bread,” he said. “Then safety. Then shelter. Freedom’s far down the list, and principles far behind that.”

“Perhaps you should be a Representative.”

Broad raised his brows at the benches. There were some good folk on them. Honest folk with good ideas and good intentions. Shame they could hardly get a word in. The first day the Assembly sat there’d been this moment, when they all swore an oath to serve the people, then applauded loud enough to shake the dome and threw their hats in the air. Some bastard’s cap was still snagged on a bit of carving, just below the gallery. Broad had been sure then that things would get better. Better for everyone. But before the end of the session things were turning sour. Even when they could agree on what the people wanted, they couldn’t agree on how to get there. Ever since, they’d been mired like a wagon with a horse at each corner.

Broad folded his arms over the breastplate they’d given him. “I’ve a shitty enough job as it is, General, thanks all the same.”

“Good men must stick together,” said Brint. “Try to contain this madness.”

If that was the aim, it looked to Broad like they’d already failed. “Can’t make you any promises.”

“Best you don’t. No one’s keeping the damn things anyway.”

“We should dismantle the House of the Maker!” a man with a huge beard was squawking out, shaking a great sheaf of papers. His plans for the future, maybe. There was no shortage of those. “It’s a regressive symbol!”

“The House o’ the Maker ain’t our problem,” roared a great big fellow with an anchor tattooed on his cheek, “or the statues, or the bloody walls.” He took a great breath, nostrils flaring. “It’s the fucking foreigners!”

Broad winced. Everyone was furious all the time. Everyone looking for someone to blame. Everything teetering on the brink of violence. He felt like he had in Styria, in the war. A clenched fist, itching to strike. And the worst thing about it—he wasn’t sure he didn’t like the feeling.

“Citizens, please, we must stand together!” A bony fellow with a shock of wild white hair had jumped up, something desperate in his voice that made everyone fall silent. “I have been administering charity in the Three Farms for these past twelve years, and I swear to you things have never been worse. Never.”

Some nods from the more ragged members of the commons. Some rolled eyes among the noblemen.

“We have wrested the reins of power from the Closed Council. I applaud it! They dragged our nation towards the abyss. But the granaries are emptier than they have ever been. Coal is in scarce supply. The injustices that led to this upheaval—the want, the scarcity, the degradation, the disease—they will not simply vanish because we remodel some statues. All the signs point to a harsh winter on the way. We must prepare, Citizens, we must be ready!”