Neither Boris nor Hobb uncovered the author of the note in the Crown Prince’s bedchamber, nor news of its fate. The Prince himself gave no hint that he had ever seen it. As one week turned into two, and the demands of the National Assembly and the management of the nation nibbled at the dwindling cheese of his immediate attention, Hobb began to convince himself that the Prince truly remained ignorant of the vile missive. He watched, and he set extra Bureau men on young Leeland, and he waited for further developments.

  As the winter weather began to bite and the harvest season came to a close, there was little enough good news to brighten Hobb’s mood. Food was short, and Mr. Robe had to tighten the rationing. The fighting in the southeast settled down into an ugly stalemate, with a Brassen army encamped north of the Green River for the winter, and the Carolese content to raid the north bank without making any serious effort at invasion. The National Assembly passed a new war tax, but Mr. Robe reported that more collectors were needed to make good on it. Shortages of coal and fuel wood presaged a miserable winter ahead. And the irritating campaign of anonymous pamphlets, stuck about the city like pimples on the face of a teenaged body politic, continued to swell painfully against Hobb’s pride and patience. His own pamphlets, smuggled north to Green Bridge to be posted anonymously around the rival city, had so far failed to inspire the spontaneous uprising of revolutionary fervor that he desired. The standoff at the Old High Court dragged on, despite frequent visits from Mrs. Hunter.

  But the second week in December finally brought Hobb welcome tidings, of a sort. On the fifteenth of the month, Mr. Robe invited him back to Hoel to see a fresh demonstration of the Yute Device.

  As he stood in the cold, windy courtyard before the keep, Hobb drew his cloak and scarf tight around him. The grass was a mournful brown, and the long row of gallows against the outer wall of the keep stood out against the sky like pilings of some bridge to an unseen and forgotten world. The crossbeams were empty; they were not today’s vehicle for the delivery of justice. A small group of chained prisoners shivered by the wall of the keep, huddling out of the wind and under the watchful gaze of several armed guards.

  Hobb looked at the curious new machine closely. There was a simple bench, just as in the previous version, but there the similarities ended. A pair of stout wooden pillars stood on either side of the bench, with a heavy, sharp blade suspended between them by a rope. The blade was set on rails so that it would run down to just beyond the end of the bench.

  Mr. Robe, Chancellor Pearsy, and another man who Hobb did not recognize stood nearby. Robe and Pearsy puffed out their chests proudly, but the third man looked rather crestfallen. He had a fringe of snowy white hair around an otherwise bald head, a deeply lined face, and sad eyes. He wore a light, undyed wool coat, but shivered visibly in the piercing wind.

  “It is a marvel of simplicity,” expounded Chancellor Pearsy. “All the swiftness and force of the headsman, with none of the skill required. Most egalitarian. And there are no gears or torsion to be fouled. It simply . Whiz, squelch, plop. Brilliant! With a bit of planning one could process hundreds of men in an hour. The courts will never keep up.”

  Hobb nodded approvingly.

  “Indeed, it does look terribly simple. Is it a new design by Professor Yute?”

  Pearsy and Robe looked sheepishly at each other, and then down at their toes. Finally, both looked to the third man, standing nearby and shivering miserably.

  “Professor Yute will be credited as the inventor, of course,” said Pearsy with forced confidence. “It is only equitable that a man of his humble origins, from a class so long oppressed, be the inventor. It shall always be the Yute Device. But the design, er, originated with Professor Pie.”

  Hobb walked over to the white-haired professor.

  “Who is he, then?” asked Hobb dispassionately.

  Professor Pie remained resolutely silent.

  “Foulwart Pie is one of the great intellectual charlatans of Triad University,” supplied Pearsy. “An apologist of the Pretender. He was in the faculty of the College of Applied Mathematics, before he tried to flee to Carelon. We caught him at the border last week. The dungeons made for a suitable muse; after several hours hanging upside-down in the room across from the rack, he agreed to lend a hand with the design of the new machine.”

  Pie’s sad eyes looked up at Hobb, but still he said nothing.

  “And is it an effective machine?” inquired Hobb softly, still looking at Pie’s face.

  “Just watch,” replied Mr. Robe. He gestured to the guards at the foot of the keep, who brought forward their line of prisoners. They unchained the first one and led him over to the Yute Device. Hobb recognized the man.

  “Well there, Hollen,” he said affably. “It’s to be neither the noose nor the axe for you today. I hope you appreciate the novelty of your execution.”

  Hollen looked at the deep blue sky overhead, and then down at the strange contraption that would end his life.

  “Is this all there is?” he asked, speaking past Hobb.

  Hobb shrugged. “It’s the only thing left to do,” he answered with a smirk, throwing the murderer’s own words back at him.

  Hollen nodded in agreement and lay down on the bench without prompting, facing downward. The guards positioned him so that his head extended off the end of the bench, and then stepped back. Mr. Robe walked over to where the rope holding the blade was tied, and undid the knots. He held one loop firmly around the cleat, then looked down at the condemned.

  “Any last words?” Robe asked.

  Hollen looked up at Hobb, craning his neck upward.

  “One day, you’ll lie here too,” he said.

  Mr. Robe let go of the rope, and the blade descended swiftly and surely on its rails.

  Whiz. Squelch. Plop.

  Chancellor Pearsy looked suddenly uncomfortable, and Professor Pie turned his eyes away and down. But Mr. Robe rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

  “Marvelous!” he exclaimed. “It will change the world.” He rubbed at the long, ugly scar across his face—a memento, Hobb recalled, of the first scuffle at the Old High Court.

  “I know a certain pretty lawyer,” Robe added, “whose appearance will be greatly improved by a visit to this device.”

  Before he left, Hobb went alone into the sub-basement and entered the abandoned cell block. Looking around carefully to ensure he hadn’t been followed, he descended the giant-sized stairs into the deep complex. A “Great Place of Change,” the Herald had called it; Hobb wondered what he meant by that. Pearsy had not yet delivered a copy of the Balthan translations, but Hobb itched to know what it might say.

  Walking carefully around the lip of the enormous circular pit, Hobb saw the vast array of tiny lights spread out below him. As he moved, he perceived that they were arranged in tall, cylindrical patterns. They described the shape of round, flat-topped towers. He descended the broad steps, and the towers rose up to his right. By the light from the pinpoints, Hobb could now see a vast array of strange shapes on the ground; some hulking and dark, others like long cables, neatly bundled in groups that ran among the towers. There was a whirring noise in the air around him, and he could feel air moving. Small dots of green and blue lit up the walls that comprised the bases of the towers, and stretched up into the vast emptiness above.

  There was no sign of the Giant-men.

  Hobb wandered alone in the dim light, keeping an eye behind him so as not to lose the way back to the stairs.

  “Herald?” he called out softly. There was no response.

  Then his eye caught a slightly brighter light, close to the floor and near at hand. It had a harsh, gray tone, but it was dim. He walked toward it, and then stopped suddenly.

  The Herald stood alone, his faced pressed tightly against the side of one of the great towers. His back was to Hobb, but his tall frame and the long, blond hair were unmistakable. He wore a sober coat and hose, of the sort that Hobb himself might have picked out of his own wardrobe. There was silence; the man’s body was utterly motionless, devoid even of the rise and fall of shoulders that would suggest breath. Hobb’s hand shook, and the light of his lantern made the shadows dance.

  “Herald?” he said again. There was still no response.

  He drew up next to the man and looked closely. The front of the head was pressed into some protrusion of dark metal that emerged from the sheer, smooth side of the tower. It wrapped around where the metal of his face would normally have been, gripping it like the sucker of a squid’s tentacle. A single thick cable of some black, flexible substance ran from just underneath the protrusion to the back of the Herald’s head, where it appeared to enter his skull.

  Then the head moved. It drew back slowly from the protrusion that held it, and separated from the orifice. The cable detached from the back of the head and dangled from the tower. There was no glint of metal from the face; instead, where there had previously been a smooth surface, there was a concave patch of darkness punctuated by irregular shapes and shadows. Hobb started back, lost his balance, and fell. The lantern and its light rolled away.

  The Herald turned to face Hobb—if he could be said to ‘face’ anything—and in the dim gray light Hobb looked squarely into his unmasked visage. The skinless lumps of flesh and bone were just visible, though there were no eyes. Mixed among them were dark wires and nubs of some substance that Hobb could not begin to fathom. There was a smell of blood and raw meat and iron. Hobb wanted to shuffle backward on the floor, but found that his limbs could not move.

  The Herald did not advance on Hobb, but rather reached to his own waist and withdrew the metal mask from some pocket, raising it slowly to his face and placing it there. It affixed itself to his head without any binding; it simply remained where he had put it. There was, for a moment a faint sucking sound. And then he was once again a man with a metal face.

  “Walk with me, Hobb the Wise,” said the Herald.

  He stopped and picked up the lantern, then offered Hobb a hand and helped him to his feet again. Then he retrieved from the floor a cloth bundle, which Hobb had not noticed before.

  The Herald silently led Hobb back to the stairs, and the two ascended.

  “Where are we going?” asked Hobb, panting slightly, when they had come to the upper reach of the stair. The climb was long, and the Herald moved swiftly.

  “We are going to visit your palace,” replied the Herald, leading him around the narrow lip of the great chasm.

  “You can’t go there,” blurted Hobb.

  “I think you’ll find that I can,” answered the Herald, without changing his conversational tone.

  “You must not!” protested Hobb. “I can’t have people seeing you. It would be a disaster.”

  “They will not see me,” replied the diplomat. “Their eyes will be veiled.” Then he opened the cloth bundle and shrugged on a long, dark robe, with a hood that he flipped over his face and wore low, obscuring his metallic features. The robe was bound around his waist by a simple length of rope.

  “If anyone asks,” said the Herald with a sardonic tinge to his voice, “simply tell him that I am your personal priest.”

  In the event, no one did ask Hobb about the hooded man who emerged with him from the dungeons of Hoel. He instructed Robe and Pearsy to return to the city in another vehicle, and ensconced the Herald in his personal coach.

  “Why are you coming back to Uellodon with me?” asked Hobb petulantly, once they had rolled out beneath the stern, gray gatehouse of the fortress. “There is nothing for you or your Giant-men there. If you expose yourself to the public, both our roles will grow more difficult. Most of my countrymen are not as tolerant as I of…”

  He trailed off before he finished the sentence.

  “You are correct,” agreed the Herald, his voice suddenly deadly quiet. “Your countrymen do not tolerate what I am, and never have.”

  “Then why –"

  “There is someone I need to see there,” interrupted the Herald shortly, and would then say nothing more. Hobb gave up on conversation with his obscure passenger and sat quietly for the hour it took to return to the city. The Herald turned his faceless gaze out the window of the coach, apparently content to look, in his way, at the little villages and the broad, rolling river beyond them to the south. Beneath the robe, his shoulders and back were hunched forward uncharacteristically, giving the impression of a man with heavy weight on his mind.

  The sun had set when the coach returned to Palace Naridium, and the streets were dark. Hobb hurriedly escorted the Herald through the halls of the palace, glowering ferociously at any servant or soldier who unwisely met his gaze. He deposited the diplomat in the small audience chamber, instructed the Guardsmen at the door to permit no one in or out, and then went to find Boris and arrange discreet quarters for his unwelcome guest.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  This done, he set out to return to the audience chamber. He walked alone. Robe had not yet arrived in the other carriage, and Boris had the night off. He walked across the back wall of the Grand Ballroom and ascended the stairs to Begley Gallery.

  His nose detected a faint whiff of the sewers in the air, and he made a mental note to have one of the staff check and clean the loos in the basement.

  Hobb passed into Begley Gallery. The broad hall was nearly pitch-black, lit only by a dim light shining through one of the doors out onto the balconies of the Grant Ballroom. Hobb was reminded, to his intense displeasure, of the Midsummer’s Ball last year, when Cyrus Stoat and his accomplices had slipped through Hobb’s fingers, swinging on a chandelier across the crowded ballroom in an offensively improbable act of defiance against good order and good taste.

  He paused at the portrait of Horace II, now hanging somewhat more straightly thanks to Boris’s compulsive meddling, and regarded the ancient monarch in the near-dark. It was done in the formal, stylized mode that was in vogue eight hundred years ago, and historians regarded the pose and form of the body as largely aspirational. It was how a king was to look, rather than a true representation. Still, the artist couldn’t avoid capturing some of the sneering cruelty of the man who had ordered the murder and exile of thousands of priests.

  “What would you have done now?” Hobb muttered quietly to the angry old king.

  There was a noise behind him in the dark, and Hobb started to turn his head.

  But just then a door slammed somewhere in the vast pile of Palace Naridium. And, as if to answer Hobb’s question, the portrait of Horace II fell cleanly off the wall, crashing to the ground in a ruin of splinters and torn fabric. Hobb danced just out of the way before it fell over on him. He looked up in astonishment, first at the wall where the frame had hung, and then at the shattered remains of the artwork. Then he turned and stalked away toward the small audience chamber, muttering angrily at the negligence of the gallery curator.

  At the small audience chamber, he entered and shut the door behind him.

  “What do you want from us?” he demanded, turning to scan the room for the Herald.

  But the chamber was empty.

  ???

  The next morning, the Crown Prince was gone from the palace.

  At first, Hobb was convinced that young Leeland was playing another game with him, and resisted rousing the palace staff into an uproar. When a limited search turned up nothing, though, he gave orders for the palace to be turned upside-down again. But Hobb only discovered the Prince’s location when Mr. Robe came with a message from General Watt. Hobb read the message, and then ascended the long stairs of the Rose Tower to peer with his own eyes through field glasses from the observatory.

  There was Crown Prince Leeland, future monarch of Uelland and symbol of nationhood, on the roof of the Old High Court. He was seated in a chair at a small, round table with two companions. They appeared to be drinking tea.

  Hobb was not given to intellectual violence, and so he did not curse. He put the field glasses down carefully in their case and took a deep breath. He descended the stairs down to the palace slowly, a new thought entering his brain with every step.

  When he reached the base of the tower, he immediately sent for Mrs. Hunter, and also sent instructions for Mr. Robe to proceed with all haste to Hoel.

  “Were you involved?” he asked bluntly when Hunter arrived.

  She denied it, unconvincingly.

  “Come with me, Mrs. Hunter,” he said. And he stalked out of the room.

  He took her to the stables, and had a coach prepared. They took the coach and passed out of the city, with Mrs. Hunter looking increasingly uncomfortable. Hobb continued to breathe deeply, and to focus on each moment as it came and went.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, keeping her tone neutral and inquisitive.

  “We are going to Hoel,” answered Hobb shortly.

  When they arrived at the fortress, Hobb smiled thinly at his guest.

  “Have you ever been to Hoel, Mrs. Hunter?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then you’re in for a treat. It is an ancient structure, of great historical significance. For nearly four centuries it has housed the worst criminals of the Kingdom of Uelland. And, coincidentally, it is also where we conduct executions.”

  He instructed Mr. Robe to fetch ten economic criminals, including Hector Quimble. The Yute Device was undergoing maintenance, having jammed up after about the first hundred executions, and so the traditional method would be necessary. The condemned were brought out to the gallows, and Mr. Robe came to stand by Hobb and Mrs. Hunter, giving a shallow bow in greeting.

  “What are their crimes?” asked Merrily, tension in her voice.

  “Economic crimes,” answered Mr. Robe. “The worst sort. A burglar or a murderer might hurt one or two people, or perhaps even more, if he is quite prolific. But a man who breaks the laws that govern prices, quantities, the quality of goods—those transactions that we

  rely on to live safely, and to preserve order—that man attacks the Revolution itself, and tears at the flesh, not merely of one or two individuals, but of the entire People. He must be made to deter other jackals by the consequences of his crimes.”

  “This can’t be right,” said Merrily, looking sick.

  “Can’t it, Mrs. Hunter?” asked Hobb. “Do you think that the punishment of death is disproportionate, perhaps, to the crime of selling fish at too high a price? Does it violate some sense of principle? Consider that it is civilization itself that is attacked, when a man violates the law casually. If we permit these black marketeers to go about their vile business, gnawing at the ropes that bind us together as a society, then what law will next be ignored? The prohibition against theft, perhaps? Or rape? Or murder? Where next will the chaos spread? At any rate, that was the finding of fact by the National Assembly; and the punishment to be applied here—”

  Hobb was interrupted as an executioner on the nearest gallows loudly proclaimed the name of a man. Then he pulled the lever, and the floor dropped out below the condemned, and the rope snapped taught. The man’s neck jerked into a horrible angle, and he hung limply.

  “—is the will of the People,” Hobb finished. “Well measured,” he added, eyeing the limp form. “No suffering at all; a quick snap, and the criminal pays his debt.”

  Hector Quimble was next. At a sign from Hobb, the executioner shortened the rope. Mr. Quimble’s neck did not break, and he took several minutes to strangle to death.

  “If the Crown Prince does not return to Palace Naridium by nightfall, Mrs. Hunter,” he said, “we shall be obliged to retrieve him, and everyone else in that courthouse will share the fate of Mr. Quimble.”

  ???

  Hobb’s ultimatum failed to produce the desired outcome. However, an unexpected windfall saved the night from total frustration.

  The Crown Prince did not emerge from the Old High Court. Hobb did not expect him to, and did not want him to, quite yet. He gave Major Bisking instructions that, he hoped, were inescapably clear.

  “Do not kill or unnecessarily injure the Crown Prince,” he said. “Use whatever force is necessary to subdue the courthouse and retrieve him, but do not kill its defenders unless you must. I prefer they suffer publicly the legal consequences of their treason.” He imagined a long row of Yute Devices, discharging just punishment in beautiful coordination.

  Then he sent an order, signed and sealed by King Leeland, summoning General Hyden and General Watt. The two military men met Hobb at dusk in the observatory atop the Rose Tower, where he sat comfortably in one of the high-backed, overstuffed chairs. A fire roared in the fireplace, but all the men wore heavy fur cloaks against the chill December air.

  “Join me, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing at the other chairs. Hyden and Watt, both wearing their formal dress uniforms beneath the cloaks, sat down rather stiffly. General Hyden was a tall, burly soldier with an outrageous mustache and deep red hair that was graying at the temples. General Watt, of the King’s Eyes, was thin, almost slight, with trim dark hair and a clean-shaven face.

  “Why are we here?” asked General Hyden rather bluntly.

  “To observe, with me, the lancing of a pustulous boil on the body politic,” said Hobb cheerfully, “and to direct your forces to participate if I should require it.”

  General Watt cleared his throat carefully. “The King’s Heavy Arms,” he said, “take orders directly, and only, from the King.”

  Hobb produced another piece of paper from his pocket. It, too, was signed and sealed by King Leeland.

  “Here are his orders,” said Hobb, handing it over. “You will find that he has instructed you to henceforth follow orders, as his delegate.”

  The two men looked suspiciously at the paper, and General Watt held it near the fire, examining the seal by the light of the flames. Then he straightened up. His thin, wiry frame looked even more stiff than it had before. He did not turn. Hobb knew both men, and knew that they would throw their lives away before breaking their oath to the King.

  “Now,” he said. “Make yourself comfortable, Generals, and let’s watch the festivities. Oh—and you can instruct your signal men upstairs to bring us regular updates.”

  It was difficult to make out the action on the ground under the cover of night, but the general movements of the Republican Guard could be discerned from the torches they carried. Hobb and the generals watched as the battering ram made its way to the doors of the courthouse, and heard the rhythmic thumping begin. And then they saw the torches stream away from the door, as faint, shadowy flickers descended on them from above.

  “Defensive projectiles,” remarked Hyden calmly, staring through field glasses. “Books, by the look of it. I should have thought your crews would have come with a cap for their ram.”

  Hobb glared at him in irritation, but quickly regained his composure.

  “The night is young, General,” he said. “If they can’t go through the front door, they’ll go over the walls.”

  “Do you have any idea how costly a scaling assault will be?” asked General Watt. “And how terrifying for the men involved? One hopes your Guardsmen have a few veterans among them to lead by example.”

  In the event, the assault on the walls, too, was repulsed. The torches of the Guardsmen could be seen falling from the rooftops or streaming backward across the dark open space. In the streets beyond Justiciar Square, large crowds could be seen, watching the action.

  “Generals,” said Hobb, “it is time for you to contribute to this law enforcement action. Order your garrison in the city to bring up a siege engine to knock a hole in those walls.”

  “First Minister,” protested General Hyden, “the King’s Heavy Arms have never been used in this way. Our soldiers are not policemen. Their oaths are to the King and constitution of Uelland; they will not turn their weapons against a civilian population.”

  Hobb scowled. “Your King orders it,” he said.

  Hyden and Watt looked at each other, and then Hyden sullenly called up to the signal flaggers on the rooftop observation deck.

  “Message to Captain Dove,” he shouted. “Send an onager and crew to Justiciar Square. They are to open a hole in the wall of the courthouse. The order is confirmed by General Hyden under Protocol Nine.”

  General Watt looked up sharply from where he sat, but said nothing.

  “What is Protocol Nine?” asked Hobb curiously.

  General Watt, still seated, shrugged. “The highest level of authority available from a senior officer other than the King,” he replied. “We use it when there is a risk the authenticity of an order might be questioned.” He said no more, and Hobb turned back to his own field glasses. He had little interest in the military’s obscure command structure. It would all be swept away soon enough, he reminded himself.

  Hours passed, and a servant brought a late supper.

  “Where is your siege engine, General Hyden?” asked Hobb waspishly.

  “It takes time to mobilize an onager and its shot, First Minister,” replied the general smoothly. “But it will arrive soon, I think.”

  The crowd in the streets beyond the square continued to grow. Hobb, beginning to feel nervous about its size, sent a message to Major Bisking, instructing him to disperse the people. But as he watched in frustration, the crowd went nowhere.

  Eventually Hyden, looking through the field glasses, announced: “The crew has arrived.” Hobb took the glasses and looked for himself; he could make out very little in the dark, but a path had indeed opened in the street beyond the square.

  “Well, tell them to get to it!” demanded Hobb.

  “They have their orders,” replied General Hyden. “No good is served by repeating them.”

  There was a long pause, during which no stones were flung at the obdurate walls. Eventually, there was a faint movement describing a low arc, faintly visible against the torchlight around the square. There was a thud from the paving stones in front of the courthouse, and a burst of flame sprang up.

  “Finding the range, I expect,” said Hyden laconically.

  “Always best to start with burning pitch,” added Watt. “Helps to see by.”

  Finding the range took longer than Hobb would have expected. The crew switched to stones, and numerous shots went flying over the courthouse, causing cringe-inducing sounds of destruction from the other side. Others landed short in the square. But eventually a few shots impacted the walls, causing a terrific and satisfying noise.

  “They’ll have it down any time now,” said Hobb, rubbing his hands.

  The crew then inexplicably switched back to pitch. Although the barrels impacted the walls and burned merrily, the stone stubbornly refused to catch fire.

  Evidently, someone then had the idea to move the onager’s aim upward to the roof, but the crew aimed too high. When a barrel of burning pitch sailed over the Old High Court and landed on the other side, it turned out to be the last shot.

  “What happened!” demanded Hobb in frustration. “Why aren’t they shooting anymore?”

  General Hyden ascended to the rooftop, and came back several minutes later.

  “Out of ammunition,” he said ruefully.

  “WHAT!” bellowed Hobb. “This is the military headquarters for the entire Republic! How can they be out of ammunition?”

  “An onager is not a defensive weapon,” explained Hyden patiently. “We don’t keep large stores of throwing stones in the city. Most of our supplies are staged in depots in the countryside, where we can move them quickly to where they’re needed.” And he seemed very sincere in his explanation. Hobb fancied, though, some silent message was passed by look between the two senior officers.

  Hobb pounded his fist on the table in frustration, and then immediately felt embarrassed at the cliché. He sent a message to Major Bisking of the Republican Guard, ordering another assault, which was not to abandoned until the courthouse was taken.

  The final assault eventually came in the hour before dawn. Dozens of ladders went up, and the light of torches showed hundreds of men ascending. Some were pushed away, but many Guardsmen reached the rooftop.

  Hobb watched in agony. He could see nothing from the rooftop, but the sounds of fighting and dying there were loud and fierce and painful, even from the top of the Rose Tower. Men, and parts of men, dropped from the battlements to the yard below. At the gate, the ram broke through, and the whole group of red-clad Guardsmen seized their hand weapons and rushed into the portal.

  There came, from within, the sudden noise of twanging crossbows, and of many more screams. Hobb remembered that the passage inside the door ended in a heavy inner portcullis. The cries abruptly ended, and none of the Republican Guard re-emerged from the front door.

  Hobb gripped the field glasses tightly, and peered at Justiciar Square.

  An odd quiet settled over the courtyard, and the fortress-like Old High Court. The fighting on the rooftop had died down, but in the darkness Hobb could make out no details that would tell him which side had prevailed. He waited, shivering in the high tower, for dawn to come.

  As the faint light around him turned gray and began to strengthen, there was movement in the street below. Hobb looked down, and saw, to his great surprise, that the crowd that had been kept outside the barricades was moving in a great mass toward the courthouse. They came deliberately, without rushing, without violence. The few Republican Guards remaining at posts around the courtyard shouted and threatened, but they were too few to hold back the crowd, who simply flowed around them. The people carried torches and crude, improvised weapons, and were dressed warmly now against the slushy snow. Some bore large packs. They passed under and around the two statues of Justice, and made their way across the courtyard littered with bodies and the detritus of war.

  “What’s going on?” asked Hobb frantically, turning back to the two generals. General Hyden and General Watt looked at each other grimly.

  “It appears a civilian element has obstructed the battlefield,” said Watt, the intelligence officer. “Makes a dreadful mess of military operations.”

  “Well, clean them out!” demanded Hobb. “Go down there, and roust your men out of their barracks, and clean those people out of the square!”

  Watt and Hyden looked at each other again, and something seemed to pass between them again. They both stood at the same time, and without another word walked to the stairway down from the observatory.

  Hobb watched eagerly, waiting for heavily armed, black- and silver-clad professional soldiers to force their way into the square to disperse the crowd with fire and sword. But the hours passed, and no force arrived. Major Bisking sent word that the Republican Guard lacked the manpower to disperse the crowd; the King’s Heavy arms sent no word at all.

  Hobb put his head in his hands.

  Eventually he left the observatory and wandered down to his apartment. He felt tired to his bones, and weary to the depths of his spirit from carrying the weight of the Republic and its uncaring citizenry on his shoulders.

  “Let them have chaos,” he said to the empty room, lying down in his bed without changing clothes. “Let them have tyranny, and let them be slaves to the merchants. Let their voices be silenced, let the powerful rule them, and let the rich eat them. I don’t care.”

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Go away!” shouted Hobb.

  “It’s me, First Minister—Mr. Robe,” came a muffled voice.

  Hobb wearily got back out of bed, left the bedroom, and crossed the study to open the door for Mr. Robe. His deputy’s face was bright with excitement.

  “What is it, Robe,” muttered Hobb. “I’ve had enough disappointment for an entire year.”

  “We’ve found them!” blurted Robe. “Spoon, and his collaborators! We got a tip, and we’ve arrested them!”

  Hobb’s eyes lit up. Strength and hope returned to his limbs and his spirit.

  “Prepare a coach,” he instructed. And he smiled deeply.