They laughed, and pointed, and Orso acknowledged them with a weary smile. “One humiliation after another,” he murmured, flicking open his napkin, tucking it ever so delicately into his collar, and letting Hildi nudge the little table towards him. She had to slip a dog-eared political pamphlet under a loose leg to stop it wobbling.

“Thank you, Hildi. Everyone else might have forgotten themselves, but there’s really no need to let one’s own standards slide.”

“Couldn’t agree more.” Hildi leaned close to whisper, “Managed to get you some of the good bread today.” And she slipped a slice onto his plate.

“Hildi, you absolute treasure.”

“Don’t flatter me too much, you owe me two marks for the loaf.”

“Bloody hell!” Orso had rarely indeed been called upon to spare much thought for the price of things, but that struck even him as steep. “Our tab must be soaring.”

“Everything’s dear these days.”

“Especially to kings,” he murmured, forking over that slice of bread and starting to carve it up. Somehow it tasted better if he treated it with the same ceremony as one of Bernille’s wonderful cuts of beef.

“He should fucking dance for us.”

Orso couldn’t help glancing up, yet again. A man with a tall hat perched at a ridiculous angle leaned on the railing to leer at him, an overpainted woman giggling as she clung to his elbow.

“Good one, Shawley!”

Orso gave that weary smile again. Or at any rate it was still clinging to his face from last time. “A very good one,” he said. “But I only dance with countesses and above, I’m afraid.”

“We don’t have lords or ladies here no more,” said Shawley.

“Then unless you’re foreign nobility I fear you’re out of luck.” And Orso raised his glass to them. “Cheers.”

Some of the onlookers chuckled. Shawley decidedly did not. “We’ll see who’s out of luck, I reckon, in the end.”

“Step back from the railing,” grunted one of the guards. A man called Halder, blessed with even less sense of humour than the cook. No one seemed to have much sense of humour these days. Or perhaps they were simply no longer obliged to be merry in his presence.

Shawley looked even more put out. “I’ll move when I’m ready—”

“You’ll move when I say,” said Halder. One of the other guards pulled out his heavy stick. “Or we’ll move you to the House o’ Truth.”

Shawley tipped his hat so far, the brim was virtually touching his sneer and slouched away with bad grace, the woman glaring balefully back over her shoulder.

“Thank you so much for visiting!” called Orso, waving his fork at them. “Watch you don’t catch your cock in the door on your way out!”

Biting into his meat cured him of any sense of triumph. It was like biting into a boot sole. “I’m a bloody sideshow curiosity,” he murmured as he struggled to chew and retain his teeth at once. “The heir to the throne of Harod the Great, with a clear bloodline from Arnault himself, made into a zoo animal.”