There was nothing of it left now but a great claw of burning wreckage, sending up a thick plume of brown smoke. Papers fluttered down. Like the flower petals at her wedding, so long ago. Bodies were fanned out from the engine in rows. Mangled, tangled. Bodies still and bodies vaguely moving, twisting, crawling. A man wandered drunkenly. His shirt appeared to have been torn off.
There were people coming through the bodies. Not helping. Stepping over the corpses. People in dark clothes, with dark masks over their faces. One held a hatchet. One a long knife. One pointed towards the royal box with a sword. Where was Orso? By the Fates, where was Orso?
Beside her! He was beside her, staring, blood on his face. He had drawn his sword. A king should never have to touch his sword, let alone draw it. She tried to put herself between him and the assassins, but he brushed her away, pushed her back. He was so much stronger than she had expected. Had some part of her thought he was a snivelling toddler, still helpless in her arms?
Faint through the burbling in her ears she heard him speak: “Get behind me, Mother.”
Sofee came blundering through the murk, gripping her sword so tight her hand ached, hardly able to breathe even with the cloth over her face, and stumbled to an uncertain stop.
Bodies everywhere. Bodies and parts of bodies. More and more revealed as the breeze snatched the smoke away. Things dropped. A walking stick. A hat. A broken picnic hamper, spilling broken crockery. A glove.
No. It was a hand.
The pamphlets they’d made fluttered down. The explanations, the excuses, the justifications. One fell near Sofee’s boot, and began to soak up blood at one corner, and turn red. She’d been a governess for a year, before she was married, so she’d been very particular about the wording of that pamphlet. She’d wanted to convince people. To show them the truth.
Someone shoved her, near knocked her over. One of the other Burners, desperate to begin the killing. Wasn’t that what she came for? All she’d wanted, for so long. To kill them. Tear them with her bare hands. Bite them with her teeth. Now she wondered who “them” was. Whose enemy was the little boy with a fluttering pamphlet stuck across his face and his guts hanging out? She felt sick.
Brevan had been the kind of man everyone liked the moment they met him. The day they were married had been the happiest of her life. Suddenly special, when she’d been nothing since the day she was born. After they hanged him, left the crows picking at him above the road to Valbeck, it was like the sun went out for her. Such a gloom she couldn’t even lift a finger. Judge had given her purpose. Lit a fire in the ashes. But now that helplessness came flooding back.
“Come on!” screeched Gus, dragging at her, and he half-pulled her over, left her kneeling in the dirt as he charged on. Charged on with the rest of them, all with a thirst for blood that would never be satisfied.
Judge had promised her she’d feel better, after this. Cleansed by righteous fire. But she saw now there was no feeling better, and for damn sure no cleansing. All she’d done was what was done to her.
Sofee had dropped her sword. She left it where it was. All those bodies. All those injured. Even if she’d wanted to help them, where would you start?
Brevan had been such a good man. Everyone loved him the moment they met him. Would he have wanted this?
She put a hand over her mouth.
What had she done?
Curnsbick’s terror, when he struggled up with his hat blown off, was not for his own safety, but that he might be responsible. Or, at any rate, that he might be blamed.
“Oh, my,” he whispered. Carnage where the cheering onlookers had stood. Bodies strewn everywhere. It was as bad as that day in Crease. Worse, because then he had not been responsible. Could not possibly have been blamed.
Among engineers and investors there were many embittered failures, and he knew they must gaze enviously at him and think how wonderful it must be, to be Curnsbick. They had no idea of the pressure. Ever since his patent portable forge, with every success the weight of expectation grew heavier. For every world-changing idea there were a million duds, and until they were thoroughly tested and explored, the two could be surprisingly hard to tell apart. That was why he had founded the Solar Society, really. As a great sounding board for his worse notions. That, and he simply could not say no to Savine dan Glokta.
Someone clutched hold of him. Queen Terez? He wanted to blubber some ridiculous apology, but his voice utterly failed him. All he could do was put his hands over his face, stare between his fingers like a child at some horror and murmur, “Oh, my.”
So when he saw the Burners coming, his first feeling was an improbable flood of relief. Someone to blame! The villains of the piece, custom made for the purpose! Then came the sickening concern for his own safety. There were a great number of black-clothed assassins down there. They had dispatched the disorganised guards, were converging on the royal box. They had a Knight of the Body on his knees! Were smashing at him with hammers!
“Oh, my.” Men can be brave in some ways, not in others. Curnsbick could face the unknown and summon new things into being. Could stand before a crowd of hundreds and make them believe. Could take responsibility for millions of marks and never falter. But when it came to physical danger, he had always been a hopeless coward. He missed Majud terribly, then. Brave, stingy Majud. Missed him as he had every day these past ten years. But Curnsbick had made his choices. All that remained was to live with them. Or perhaps die with them.
“If I may, Your Majesty?” That man Sulfur. He was brushing the king aside. Went smiling towards a dozen well-armed fanatics as they mounted the steps. What the hell was he about?
A Knight of the Body came stumbling from the direction of the royal box. He was stunned by the explosion, tangled with his purple cloak, and the Burners had come prepared. Judge had loved the notion of pouring Gurkish sugar through their visors and setting a match to it, but Gus had a more practical solution.
Briar threw a net and pinned his sword-arm, then Rollow and Laws, two beefy ex-diggers, went at him with hammers, aiming for knees and elbows. Once they brought him down, Gus stepped up, swung his pick high and neatly punched it right through the top of his helmet. It was some time since he had thought of himself as an engineer, but he could still take pleasure in a well-executed design.
He had been a wheelman once. A specialist in the design of waterwheels, that was. A surveyor of slopes and flows. A connoisseur of dams and sluices. His scheme for the river-driven mill at Sharnlost had been much admired. But for the important work, one had to go to Adua. So he had set out to study at the University, hoping to wear the robes of an Adeptus Mechanical himself one day, perhaps. What petty ambitions.
Gus charged through the scattering mass of panicked humanity, people running, begging, blubbing, bleeding, towards the royal box, waving his comrades forward. “For the people!” he roared. “For the Great Change!”
The lecture theatres of the University’s grand new buildings had contained only dry whispers and dated ideas. The inspiring speeches were given in the teahouses and jerry shops on the borders of the poor districts, where the intellectuals would spring onto the tables to hold forth on the injustice of the current system, lay out bold fantasies for what could replace it, compete with each other to make the most outrageous pronouncements on behalf of the noble and oppressed commoner. The commoners themselves, it hardly needed to be said, could scarcely get a word in. Gus still remembered the excitement of those heady days. It was the first time he had ever believed in something greater than himself. Belonged to something greater than himself.