Being dragged bodily from his bench by Bremer dan Gorst felt similar. The man’s strength defied belief. It felt as if he could’ve flung Leo from the chamber with one throw. He marched him up the aisle of the Lords’ Round, through the coloured splashes of light, past gaping lords, Leo’s feet kicking uselessly at the steps, tangled with his badly balanced commemorative sword.
“I’m going!” squawked Leo. “I’m going!”
But he might as well have complained to the tide. Gorst showed no emotion as he bundled Leo from the hall, across the antechamber, then out of the Lords’ Round into the daylight. He finally set Leo down with exaggerated care beside a statue of Casamir the Steadfast, feeling much the same sense of awe and relief as he had when the sea finally washed him up on that beach near Uffrith as a boy, but with an added helping of crippling embarrassment.
Gorst wasn’t even out of breath. “I hope you realise…” he squeaked, “that this was not personal, Your Grace.” He gave an awkward smile. “Please… pass my respects to your mother.”
“What?” muttered Leo, but Gorst was already striding back up the steps.
The doors were were shut on the Young Lion with a crash, and silence pressed in.
“Enough of this pantomime!” snarled Orso. The legs of his gilded chair gave a tortured shriek as he stood, obliging everyone in the chamber to wobble uncertainly onto their knees. He turned towards Wetterlant.
“I find you guilty of rape and murder,” he said, in the same icy tone his own mother might have used.
“But…” Wetterlant stared over at Isher, as though this was not at all what he had been expecting, but Isher had folded his arms and was meeting no one’s eye. “I am a member of the Open Council—”
“The members of this exalted body must be exemplars,” snapped Orso, glowering at the silent lords, “held to higher standards, not lower, and subject to the same justice as any other man. The king’s justice. My justice.” And he stabbed at his chest with a finger. “There is no question in my mind of your guilt. I have given you every chance to show remorse and you have slapped my hand away. I therefore sentence you to death by hanging. Take him down.”
“No!” shrieked Lady Wetterlant from above.
“You can’t do this!” her son wailed as he was dragged away. “I’m an innocent man! I was compelled!” He screeched over his shoulder, bucking and twisting, “Isher! Mother! You can’t let them do this!”
“Get rid of him,” hissed Glokta, and the Practicals bundled him through the side door and flung it shut with an echoing bang.
“You’ll pay for this!” Lady Wetterlant was screaming. “I’ll see you pay! Every one of you! Take your hands off me!” She was viciously beating at a guardsman with her fan as he struggled to manhandle her from the gallery.
Orso could not bear to stay a moment longer. He snatched up the crown by one pearl-studded prong, turned on his heel and strode disgustedly for the door. Caught by surprise, the Knights of the Body only had it open a crack when he got there, obliging him to wriggle through sideways.
He flung the crown angrily over his shoulder and left one of his footmen juggling the damn thing, stomped out into the daylight and off towards the palace, shocked bystanders scraping out of his way, his entourage clattering after.
Bruckel’s gown flapped at his ankles as he hurried to catch up. “Well, Your Majesty. That was—”
“Don’t!” snapped Orso.
They walked in silence, one of the wheels of Glokta’s chair catching on every turn with a regular squeak, squeak, squeak which might as well have been a saw applied directly to Orso’s nerves.
He wished he had some honest men beside him. He wished he could have given Malmer a seat on the Closed Council. But he had hanged Malmer, and two hundred others, and fully earned the scorn and distrust of every commoner in Midderland. Now, in trying to find a compromise, he had somehow made enemies of the entire nobility, too, with the Union’s most celebrated hero foremost among them.
And that was without even touching on the man’s forthcoming marriage to the woman Orso quite evidently still loved.
“What a fucking disaster!” he snarled.
The high justice tried to smile but it ended up a wince. “I suppose… It could have been… worse?”
“How, exactly?”
The Arch Lector raised one brow. “Well, nothing’s on fire.”
Savine hurried down the steps as fast as her shoes would allow.
“Leo!” she called.
Gorst had left him upright, at least, for all he was leaning against a statue’s pedestal, face twisted with evident pain and his jacket in some disarray.
“What the hell were you thinking, you thick shit?” was what she was burning to ask, but instead she stuffed her voice with concern. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurt? I was bloody humiliated!”
“You humiliated yourself, dunce, and me by association,” was what she wanted to say. The happy news of their engagement was entirely overshadowed now, but she bit her lip and waited for him to blow himself out.
“The whole thing was a mockery! And your father—”
“I know.” She spoke as softly as she could, for all she wanted to slap some sense into him. People were starting to emerge from the Lords’ Round, eager for more scandal. She should have been parading the square like a peacock. Instead she was scurrying to limit the damage.
“We should get out of the way.” She came close to tug his jacket smooth. “Before it gets busy out here.”
He nodded, then winced, all his weight on one leg. His old wound was clearly troubling him far more than he pretended. “I left my cane in the chamber.”
“That is why you have me.” She took his elbow, one hand draped on top while the other held it firmly underneath, so she could hold him up while it looked as if she were leaning upon him, and steer him away from the Square of Marshals towards the quieter ways while it looked as if he were steering her. “This is politics.” She smiled at passers-by as if this was the most wonderful afternoon of her life. “You have to be subtle. There is a way to do things.”
“So I should just sit there?”
“That’s why they have seats in the Open Council.”
“Watch a man convicted just because of who he is—”
“I have it on good authority he couldn’t be guiltier,” said Savine, but Leo was not listening.
“That high-handed bastard! To have the Lord Governor of Angland dragged out like a beggar—”
“What did you expect?” she snapped, digging her fingers into his arm. “You gave him no choice.”
“You’re taking his side? We’re supposed to be—”
“Leo!” She turned his face towards her so he had to look into her eyes. She spoke to him without fear or anger. With simple authority. The way one speaks to a dog that has soiled the carpet. “Sides? Think about what you are saying. He is the High King of the Union! His is the only side that counts! He cannot allow himself to be defied before the foremost noblemen of the land. Men have ended up in the House of Questions for less.”
He stared at her, breathing hard. Then suddenly all the defiance drained out of him. “Shit. You’re right.”