Broad took a breath. He should never have got involved. He’d known it then and he knew it now. But he’d told himself things might change. Smashed his face against the wall again, sure that this time it wouldn’t hurt. For all his promises to be a new man, somehow he always made the same wrong choices.
‘Full pardons?’ asked a woman with a pinched-in grey face.
Heron nodded, though he didn’t look all that convinced. ‘So His Highness tells us.’
‘What did that bastard Pike have to say?’ asked Sarlby.
‘He didn’t like it,’ said Vick. ‘But he didn’t disagree.’
‘You trust Orso?’ asked Broad.
‘Best never to make a decision based on trust,’ said Vick, like trust was some fantastic beast only children believed in. ‘Just on what’s best for most.’
Malmer gave a sigh that sounded like it rose from the very dregs of a well of weariness. ‘Coming to something, when revolutionaries pin their hopes on the crown prince. He seems decent enough, though, considering. Far better than expected.’
‘Expectations could hardly have been lower,’ said Vick, frowning, as always. She’d some frown on her, that woman.
Malmer gave a helpless shrug. ‘Guess I trust him more than most of the royal family. But then, I trusted Risinau. Look where that got us.’
‘Truth is, we’ve no choice,’ said Heron. ‘We’re out of food. We didn’t do this to starve our own people.’
‘Sometimes I wonder why we did do it.’
Couple of months ago at those big meetings, folk would’ve fallen over themselves to list all the wrongs they’d die to put right. Now no one offered Malmer a reason. The causes had turned hazy, lately. Like far-off chimneys through the vapours, you could hardly tell if they were there or just a trick of your mind.
‘Then that’s it, I reckon,’ said Malmer. ‘Send word to everyone who’s still listening. We pull down the barricades. We open the city. We surrender.’
One by one, the others nodded their agreement. Mournful, like that nod cost a little piece of themselves. But no one could see another way. The uprising was done.
‘Sticks in my gullet,’ said Sarlby, ‘giving up.’
Broad clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Be thankful you’ve got something in your gullet.’
There was still a tang of old burning on the air outside. Of old burning and new rot. Ashes blew down the street, settling on the rubbish like little drifts of black snow. Not far off stood the shell of a gutted mill, blackened rafters sticking naked into the pale sky, blackened windows gaping empty.
‘And this was supposed to be our Great Change.’ Malmer slowly shook his white head. Broad could’ve sworn he’d turned whiter the last few days. ‘What a fucking disaster.’
‘I’m not crying for those owners lost their mills,’ snapped Sarlby. ‘I can tell you that.’
‘What about the jobs in those mills?’ asked Vick. ‘Daresay the rich folk whose investments went up in smoke will muddle through. What about the poor folk lost their livings?’
‘Thought we were doing good,’ said Malmer, worn face crunched up with wrinkled disbelief. ‘Sure we were doing good.’
‘Good and bad aren’t as easy to tell apart as you’d think,’ said Vick. ‘Mostly it’s a matter of where you look at ’em from.’
‘That’s the sorry truth,’ grunted Broad.
Malmer frowned towards that burned-out shell. ‘It’s the poor pay the price, again.’
Broad remembered Musselia after the sack. The slums looted and turned into smouldering ruins, corpses scattered in the streets. But the palace untouched on the high ground above the smoke. He worked his mouth and spat. ‘Always the poor pay the price.’
Folk poured out of Valbeck that night. Columns of them snaking past the abandoned barricades and across the fields. A few were Breakers, going to surrender their arms and take their chances at amnesty. Most were folk who’d heard there might be food.
The first to meet the wary queue of the filthy, hungry and dispossessed were smiling women, handing out loaves. You might’ve thought they had undiluted hope rather than bread in their barrows for the good humour they spread down the column. A few days before, folk couldn’t have found language harsh enough to describe Crown Prince Orso. A bit of bread in their bellies and they were frothing over with praise for him. Broad was no better than the rest as he caught that heavenly smell of baking, mouth watering up a rainstorm. Seeing May and Liddy’s smiles when they ate their share was a better gift even than the bread itself. Ardee didn’t smile. Broad didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile. Just chewed, staring at her shuffling feet, eyes big and damp in her thin, thin face.
Wasn’t long after the taste of bread faded that Broad was back to the worried old killer he’d been that morning. The sun slunk down towards distant woods and the cold came on and they reached a knot of blank-faced soldiers collecting weapons. There was a mismatched arsenal heaped up on either side of the road – old pikestaffs, rusted swords, butchers’ cleavers and gardener’s hatchets.
‘I’m a shoemaker,’ a man was grumbling as an officer looked over a set of gleaming blades. ‘How can I work without my knives?’
‘You want something, you have to give something up. On you go.’
Handing in a weapon had felt too close to an admission of guilt to Broad. He’d thrown his down a well before they left and been glad to see them go. Might be it’s people who kill people, but you can’t stab a man with a blade you haven’t got.
‘I’ve got nothing,’ he said to the officer in charge, shifting his lenses on his nose as if to imply he was a man of learning. ‘Wouldn’t know what to do with a blade.’
The officer looked him up and down as if that was a bit too rich for either one of them to swallow, but he jerked his head onwards.
Another hour of shuffling and the sky started to darken, the mood darkening with it. Folk muttered that the Inquisition were up ahead, asking questions. Pulling people from the column. Anyone who’d been tight with the Breakers. Soldiers on horseback prowled the fields to either side of the road, torches in gauntleted fists. Some wanted to think the best. Others were sure they’d all be hanged for treason on the spot. No one left, though. Like lambs queueing up for the slaughterman’s knife, they only huddled tighter together and kept plodding towards the bleak unknown.
‘Don’t like this,’ whispered Liddy.
Broad didn’t like it much, either. After what he’d done in Valbeck, and what he’d done on his farm, and what he’d done in Styria, could he really hope to wriggle free now? It’s coming to something when you reassure yourself with the thought that there’s no justice in the world.
A good score of soldiers were gathered where the road passed through a gate in a tumbledown wall, a good score of masked Practicals with them. All under the supervision of a black-coated Inquisitor, torchlight finding the hollows in his pale face and making him look quite the demon. While Broad was watching, two men were led away to the side and a kind of nervous moan spread through the column. He felt a sudden desire to run, glanced about for his best route of escape.
‘Calm yourselves!’ called the Inquisitor. ‘His Highness the crown prince has offered a full amnesty! There are some questions to be asked and some questions to be answered, that is all. No one will be hurt, you have my word, the word of Superior Pike and the word of Crown Prince Orso himself. There is soup for you all a little further on.’
That was what it came to. You might die, but you might get soup. Shame was, it more or less worked on Broad.
‘Got to trust ’em,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve come too far now.’
‘We could head back,’ hissed Liddy, forehead creased with worry.
‘They’d see us, think we’ve something to hide. Might be best if you two move away from me.’ Might’ve been best if they’d moved away from him a long time ago. But May wouldn’t hear of it.