Savine stood staring, beyond desperate, beyond exhausted. She was filthy as a pig. She was thirsty as a dog. She almost wanted to laugh. She almost wanted to cry. She almost wanted to join the dancers, and give up. She sagged against a wall, trying to breathe. Trying to think. But that mad music left no room for it.
Figures, black against the fires, shimmering with their heat. A tall man in a tall hat, pointing, screaming.
‘Rip it down!’ bellowed Sparks.
He was a fucking king, and this square was his kingdom, and he’d suffer no other king within its borders. ‘Rip it down!’
Might be he’d get a new statue up there in due course. A statue of him, wearing the tall hat he’d just stolen that made him look quite the fine article.
Sparks was scared of nothing. The more he said it, to everyone else and to himself, the more true it became. Acres had been scared of everything. Had hidden crying in the cupboard when men came to visit his mother. Sparks hated that weak little cringing bastard, scared of everything. So he’d shrugged him off like a snake sheds its skin. Sparks was scared of nothing.
He grinned at the dancers, waddling and lurching, variously stripped, whipped and humiliated. ‘Might be we should hang one o’ these bastards!’ He shouted it louder’n ever, so everyone could see nothing scared him. ‘Teach the others a lesson.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for Judge?’ asked Framer.
Sparks swallowed. He was scared of nothing, but Judge was something else … not only mad herself, but she had a way of turning other people mad. Like she was a match, and they were the kindling. And you never knew quite what she’d think. Might love what he’d done with the square. Might find it tasteless. Those black eyes of hers might slide towards him, pointed tip of her tongue showing between her teeth. ‘Ain’t this all a bit fucking tasteless, Sparks?’ she’d say, and everyone would be looking at him, and his mouth would get dry and his knees all trembly, like Acres’ used to, when he hid in the cupboard.
‘You what?’ he screamed. Like always, the fear made him angry. He grabbed Framer by his threadbare jacket. The idiot lacked even the presence o’ mind to steal better clothes from one of the gentleman callers. ‘I’m the fucking boss here, idiot! This is my fucking square, understand?’
‘All right, all right, it’s your square.’
‘That’s right! I’ll burn what I please!’ Sparks strutted up the heap of papers to the top of the pyre, threw his arm around the bastard they’d tied to the stake in the middle of it. ‘I’ll burn who I please.’ And he lifted his torch high, and the fire in the darkness made him feel brave again. ‘I’m the king o’ this fucking square! You understand?’
And he scrubbed the bastard’s hanging head with his hand and then, ’cause his hair was all full of wine and blood, had to wipe it on his bloody shirt front. Then he hopped down, and grabbed the bottle out of Framer’s hand, and took a pull. The spirits helped him feel brave. Helped him feel like Acres was far away, and the cupboard, too, and Judge even.
He grinned around at his handiwork. Hadn’t decided whether to burn that bastard yet. He’d been thinking not, but as night came on, he started to reckon a man on fire might make a nice centrepiece.
‘Help me …’ whimpered Alinghan.
But there was no one to help him. Everyone had gone mad, all mad. Smiles full of glistening teeth. Eyes full of pitiless fire. They were like devils. They were devils.
When they dragged him from his office, he had been sure the city watch would come. When he was tied to the stake, he had no doubt the Inquisition would arrive to deliver him. As darkness fell and the great riot became an orgy of destruction, he had still hoped that soldiers would tramp into the square and put an end to it.
But no one had come, and a great heap of legal papers, and engineers’ drawings, and official pronouncements, and lewd etchings, and broken furniture from the offices around the square had built up to his thighs.
A pyre.
He did not suppose they would actually light it. They could not possibly mean to light it. Could they?
He had wondered if it was a questionable neighbourhood in which to lease an office. But to be taken seriously, an engineer needs an office, and the rents in the better parts of Valbeck were out of all compass. They had said the Breakers were entirely under control. Had been taught harsh lessons. That the Burners were just a rumour spread by pessimistic moaners intent on talking down the city. They had pointed out the brand-new and thoroughly modern branch of Valint and Balk, and talked of gentrification.
Now flames spurted from the windows of the brand-new and thoroughly modern branch of Valint and Balk, ash and flaming promissory notes drifting down across the square, and the Burners had vomited forth from the shadows, in person, a demented legion, capering about him with their torches and their lamps.
Someone slapped him across the face, laughing, laughing. Why did they hate him? He had made the world better. More efficient. Countless small improvements to the machinery and operating practices at several manufactories. He had been steadily building a name for himself as a diligent worker. Why did they hate him?
‘What a day!’ someone was screaming. ‘The Great Change, come at last!’
He caught a choking waft of smoke, stared desperately about to see if his pyre had caught light, but no. So many bonfires, glimmering through the desperate tears in his eyes.
‘Help me …’ he muttered, to no one. All it would take was a stray torch. A stray burning paper on the capricious breeze. A stray spark. And the longer this went on, the wilder they became, the more likely his destruction.
A woman ripped down her dress and another poured wine over her bared breasts and a man shoved his face between them like a pig into a trough, all shrieking with desperate laughter, as if the world would end tomorrow. Perhaps it had ended already. The fiddle-player capered past, sawing discordant music, broken strings dangling from the neck of his instrument.
Alinghan closed his eyes. It was like some story of the Fall of Aulcus, chaos and debauchery on the streets. He had always thought of civilisation as a machine, cast from rigid iron, everything riveted in its proper place. Now he saw it was a fabric gauzy as a bride’s veil. A tissue everyone agrees to leave in place, but one that can be ripped away in an instant. And hell lurks just beneath.
‘Stack it up, you bastards!’ roared the one they called Sparks, the chief Burner, the chief demon, the temporary Glustrod of this square, and men and women flung more papers in Alinghan’s face, and they fluttered and curled and whirled on the hot breeze.
‘Help me …’ he whispered, to no one.
Of course they would come. The city watch. The Inquisition. The soldiers. Someone would come. How could they not?
But Alinghan was forced to concede, as he looked down in horror at the steadily growing heaps of paper about his legs, that they might come too late for him.
‘The Great Change!’ someone shrieked, cackling with mad delight. ‘What a day!’
‘What a day!’ bellowed that bastard with the squint. Mally could never remember his name. Nasty little bastard, she’d always thought. The sort that’s always peering in at windows, looking for something they can snatch.
‘We’re fucking free!’ he shrieked.
Mally wanted to be free. Who doesn’t? In principle. It’s a pretty dream, to go running through the flower garden with your hair down. But she didn’t want to be free of getting paid. She’d tried that, and it hurt like you wouldn’t believe. That’s how she’d ended up whoring in the first place. No one had forced her to it, exactly. It was just that a choice between whoring and hunger weren’t no choice at all.