She could hear crying. High and wild and desperate. Like a wounded cat. Very loud. Was it in the room? Was it her? There were a lot of people crying lately. Making an exhibition of your emotions was in fashion. Ranting them at a crowd, even more so. But she supposed people had a lot to cry over. Some more than others.

There was the odd absence, of course, among her circle. Those with particularly bad relations with their workers, or those with particularly bad luck. She heard the most appalling stories. Such-and-such was found drowned in the canal, by the way. And what’s-his-face knifed and stripped in a sewer, did you hear? She pretended they were nothing more than stories. She pretended she could not recall the faces of those people, laughing at some function before the Great Change.

There was chaos, of course, in the Agriont. The Closed Council suddenly snuffed out, the bureaucracy wobbling on like a chicken with its head cut off. The Breakers had ripped out most of the machinery of government; now Risinau and his stooges waggled the levers around, apparently never realising they were no longer connected to anything. She asked Leo how things were in the Assembly of Representatives. He said he had lost battles and never seen a mess like that.

But, at the same time, things carried on. Over in the Arches and across the Three Farms, the furnaces still burned. Most of them. The wheels still turned. Most of them. Goods were still made and prices still paid and business still done. In hushed tones, perhaps, with heads shaken over the state of things. Actors still strutted on the stages of Adua, though they had rushed out new pieces in praise of the common man, and asked for applause for Chairman Risinau when the curtain went up, rather than for His Majesty.

So Savine heard. She had not been out of doors recently herself. She was not sure how she would be received. With boos and jeers, like the villain in a street play? With the cheers her husband always enjoyed, for doing nothing more than whatever he pleased? Or with fists and sticks and nooses from a warehouse jib, like some of her more unpopular business partners during those bloody first days?

She had spent her life making an exhibition of herself. But there are times when it is only good sense to take a tasteful absence from the public stage.

“It is a boy,” said Zuri.

Savine had been drifting on the edge of sleep. Lamplight sparkled in her wet eyes as she opened them. Zuri stood over her, offering something out. A clean white bundle, carefully wrapped, like a present. A white bundle with a tiny, squashed-in face.

Savine gave a kind of sob, right from her guts.

She reached for it. She hardly had the strength to lift her arms, but she wanted to hold it so badly. She hardly even knew why. She was blubbing, snot clicking in her nose and her sore mouth hopelessly twisted. She pressed the little bundle to her chest and made noises at it.