Judge snatched a lit torch from one of the guards, its flames dancing in the corners of her black eyes. “Can we begin?”
“I do not say we can.” Pike leaned towards her. “I say we must.”
“Ha!” Judge gave a delighted giggle as she danced up the steps towards the bank’s open doors.
“You must have had a long ride, Sister Victarine.” Risinau placed his soft hand on her knee. “Perhaps you should dismount?”
Vick glanced carefully around, more habit than anything else, but she wouldn’t get out of this by some mad dash on horseback. She swung her leg over the saddle and stepped down to the square.
“I called the like-minded people I gathered the Breakers,” said Pike, watching Judge set her torch to oil-soaked wood at the bank’s doors. “Not because we would break machines, though we have, but because we would break the Union. Break it, and rebuild it in a new way. A better way.” Pike watched the flames lick at Valint and Balk’s fine new stonework and the armed Breakers gathered in the square gave a great cheer. “The banks have twisted about the nation like ivy about a tree, choking all life from it, corrupting everything. So it is fitting that the destruction begins with this monument to exploitation. But it will not stop there.” He turned towards Vick. “The uprising the Closed Council so feared… has already happened.”
“Three days ago,” said Risinau, rubbing his hands delightedly, “while King Orso was winning his great victory against the rebels. They wanted us to distract the king’s men for them. Instead, they distracted the king’s men for us!”
“And not just here in Valbeck,” said Pike. “By now, Keln and Holsthorm and many of the smaller cities of the Union will be in the hands of the Breakers, too.”
“In the hands of their people!” frothed Risinau, wagging a fat finger. “And Adua will be next. Our day is finally come!” And the men cheered louder than ever.
Vick had smugly thought she knew how things really were. Simple as that, everything was turned upside down. “What the hell do you want from me?” she asked.
“You served Glokta faithfully,” said Pike. “Admirably, even. Because he was the one man who ever gave you anything. Even if it was only the chance to wear the boot, rather than having it ground into your face.” He did understand her, damn it. Maybe not better than she understood herself, but well enough. “I would like to offer you something more.”
The silence stretched out, broken by the laughter and whoops of the armed Breakers, the crackle of flames, the tinkle of shattering glass.
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” said Vick. Seemed to her she’d get nothing with meekness. She never had before. “What are you offering?”
“Join us,” said Pike. “Become a Breaker. Give the Union back to its people and shape the future. Commit yourself to a cause worthy of your loyalty.”
“I gave up on causes when I left the camps.”
“All the better.” Pike glanced at Judge, who was tossing her torch through the bank’s doors and backing down the steps, a thin, black figure against the rising flames with her fists thrust up in triumph. “A movement needs passionate believers. But it needs calculating sceptics, too.”
Vick glanced across the smiles of the armoured men on the steps, lit by the flickering fires above. No shortage of belief there. “And my other option?”
“Leave. Go back to King Orso. Serve his corrupt regime in its dying days. Or run to distant Thond, for that matter, where they worship the sun. Go with our blessing.”
Vick thought of the long line of hanged men Pike had left outside the city, a few months before. She’d thought him ruthless then. Now it turned out they’d been his own people. A man who’ll waste no time hanging two hundred of his friends… what might he do to his enemies? Smoke was already pouring from the windows of the bank, giving every breath the familiar char and fury stink of Valbeck she so well remembered.
Maybe he was telling the truth, and if she chose to stick with Orso they’d let her swan out of the city and off on her merry way. But she wasn’t about to bet her life on it.
If she’d learned one thing in the camps, it’s that you stand with the winners.
“I’m with you,” she said, simply. Why say any more?
Pike held out one burned hand towards her while behind him the Valbeck branch of Valint and Balk went up in towering flames for a second time. “Then come, Sister Teufel! There is much to be done if we are to give the people what they need.”
“Which is?”
“Change.” Pike put that hand on her shoulder and guided her away across the square. “A Great Change.”