There was that little silence Zuri left to register her concern, pencil hovering over paper. “Playing the markets would be quite the risk in the current climate. Hoarders are being lynched, and I understand the Assembly plans to outlaw speculation—”

“I am not going to sell it.”

“Then—”

“My scripture teacher tells me that charity is the first of virtues.”

Zuri’s black brows were raised very high. “She sounds exceedingly wise.”

“She is. And my very good friend Honrig Curnsbick always tells me I have a generous heart. So I have decided to give it away. I want to go out into the poorest districts, and… give it away.”

Savine had always thought that people who were liked were simply not trying hard enough to be envied. But it had not been her money that saved them, when the People’s Army stormed the Agriont. It had been Leo’s popularity. It was high time she had some of her own. Perhaps she could even do some good, for whatever that was worth.

Zuri gently shook her head. “If you had told me a year ago we would be giving anything away…”

“There has been a Great Change, Zuri. We must change— Ah!” She gasped as Harod chewed at her nipple again, pulled him angrily away and he started to cry. That helpless, desperate cry that felt like nails hammered directly into her red-rimmed eyes.

“Fuck,” she snapped, pushing her sore breast back inside her dress and fumbling with the buttons on the other side, “and for the Fates’ sakes, find me a reliable nurse. I can’t manage them both alone.”

An Exhibit

“Really?” asked Orso as the plate was flung violently down in front of him. A piece of rancorous matter he did not dare describe as meat, some carrots virtually raw and some peas boiled to mush, all thoroughly cooled on the labyrinthine voyage from the kitchens to the remote corner of the palace which had become his prison.

The cook leaned down over him, her jaw jutting. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

“Rarely if ever,” squeaked Orso, shrinking back.

Of all the things he missed about before, it was his cook Bernille that gave him the sharpest pangs of loss. Those delicate soups. Those miniature pastries. The things she had done with shellfish! Positively indecent. He wondered what had become of her and her extensive staff. He remembered visiting the kitchens, a fragrant hive of good-humoured industry. Executed, or herded off to hard labour, or… most likely, now he thought about it, cooking for someone else. Orso frowned. Might they even be happier cooking for someone else? Might they have had no choice but to put on those sweaty smiles? Might that kitchen have been a prison to them?

“Enjoying your dinner, Your Majesty?”

Orso tried to ignore his audience entirely but, as usual, he couldn’t help glancing up. A few days before, they had opened the palace to tours. The people had paid for the place, Risinau had told the Assembly, with their blood and tears, so it belonged to the people, and they should be allowed to enjoy it. Even the miserable set of attics in which Orso was now confined, with its split floorboards, peeling wallpaper and rich festoons of cobweb, restlessly stirring in the constant chill draft. The Assembly evidently believed that the monarch was public property, too, and had determined to make an exhibit of him. Now a constant queue filed in through one door, gawped at him from behind a railing and filed out through another.