“And committed outrages against his person?”

“Luckily for him, I got in the way.”

“You, as far as I can tell, remain unhanged.”

“Luckily for me, there were some Breakers there who knew how to break heads as well as chains.”

“Then make sure you take some with you next time.”

“That’s your solution? Armed men on the streets? Wasn’t that the problem with the old regime?”

“We cannot blame everything on the old regime. Some problems, and some solutions, are simply… the way people are. We can have no illusions, after what we have seen, you and I, about the way people are.”

“Isn’t the point of all this to make them better?”

“In time, Inspector. By degrees. We must not be distracted. There is still so much work to do. In the bureaucracy. In the banks.”

“Really?”

“Corruption has eaten into every part of Union society. No one can be truly free until it is burned away. Replaced with… pure institutions.”

“Is there any such thing?”

Pike gave that twitch of his mouth that passed for a smile. “So cynical, Inspector. It is what makes you such a fine investigator. But we are changing the world. There were bound to be… teething pains.”

“We’re talking about dead shopkeepers. Not teeth. There are parts of the city we don’t go into at night. There are parts of the city we have to ask the Burners’ permission to go into at all.”

Pike let a breath sigh away, as though dead shopkeepers were an inconvenient by-product, like the slag from a foundry. “You never struck me as a worrier, Inspector Teufel.”

“Then when I worry you should take me seriously.”

“I would take your solutions more seriously still.”

That gave Vick pause. In all those years she’d worked for Glokta, she’d never once been asked for a solution.

Pike stared back at her, eyes flinty hard. “You should feel free to speak your mind.”

“Without consequences?”

“Without consequences, a solution is merely an opinion.” He curled his lip in the direction of the Commons’ Round. “Of those, we have a surfeit.”

“Risinau has to go!” Vick blurted out, smashing Pike’s desk with her sore hand. Breaking all her rules, maybe, but there was no going back now. “He’s got no grip. He blathers on about making people free like that’s the answer to every problem. But all he’s done is give them the chance to kill whoever they blame.”

“Someone must lead, Inspector. Who would you put in the chair instead?”

She knew she couldn’t say what she was starting to think—that the Great Change was in danger of becoming a change for the greatly worse and that King Orso was beginning to look a paragon of leadership. She settled for second best. Or for second least worst, maybe. “You’re the Weaver. You started this.”

“So I could give power to the people. Not so I could seize it for myself. I never wanted to be in charge.”

“Can I ask what you did want?”