‘Why, what a pompous crowd they are. Beyond a point I passed long ago, I don’t even care about money.’ Savine flicked the brim of her hat in farewell. ‘But how else is one to keep score?’
A Little Public Hanging
‘I hate bloody hangings,’ said Orso.
One of the whores tittered as if he’d cracked quite the joke. It was the falsest laugh he had ever heard, and when it came to false laughter, he was quite the connoisseur. Everyone was false in his presence, and he the worst actor of all.
‘I guess you could stop it,’ said Hildi. ‘If you wanted.’
Orso frowned up at her, perched on the wall with her legs crossed and her chin propped on one palm.
‘Well … I suppose …’ Strange how the idea had never occurred to him before. He pictured himself springing onto the scaffold, insisting these poor people be pardoned, ushering them back to their miserable lives to tearful thanks and rapturous applause. Then he sighed. ‘But … one really shouldn’t interfere with the workings of the judiciary.’
Lies, like everything that left his mouth, engineered to make him appear just a touch less detestable. He wondered who he was trying to fool. Hildi undoubtedly saw straight through it. The truth was, when it came to stopping this, as with so much else, he simply couldn’t be arsed. He took another pinch of pearl dust, his heavy snorts ringing out as the Inquisitor in charge stepped to the front of the scaffold and the crowd fell breathlessly silent.
‘These three … people,’ and the Inquisitor swept an arm towards the chained convicts, each held under the armpit by a hooded executioner, ‘are members of the outlawed group known as the Breakers, convicted of High Treason against the Crown!’
‘Treason!’ someone screeched, then dissolved into coughing. It was a still day, so a bad one for the vapours. Not that there were many good days for the vapours lately, what with the new chimneys sprouting up all over Adua. People at the very back must have been struggling to see the scaffold through the murk.
‘They have been found guilty of setting fires and breaking machinery, of incitement to riot and sheltering fugitives from the king’s justice! Have you anything to say?’
The first prisoner, a heavyset fellow with a beard, evidently did. ‘We’re faithful subjects of His Majesty!’ he bellowed in a hero’s voice, all manly bass and quivering passion. ‘All we want is an honest wage for honest work!’
‘I’d sooner take a dishonest wage for no work at all,’ grunted Tunny.
Yolk burst out laughing while swigging from his bottle and sprayed a reeking mist of spirits, which settled over the wig of a well-dressed old lady just in front.
A man with spectacular grey side whiskers, presumably her husband, clearly felt they were not treating the occasion with appropriate gravity. ‘You people are a damn disgrace!’ he snapped, rounding on them in a fury.
‘That so?’ Tunny pushed his tongue into his grizzled cheek. ‘Hear that, Orso? You’re a damn disgrace.’
‘Orso?’ muttered the man. ‘Not—’
‘Yes.’ Tunny showed his yellow grin and Orso winced. He hated it when Tunny used him to bully people. Almost as much as he hated hangings. But somehow he could never bring himself to stop either one.
The side-whisker enthusiast had turned pale as a freshly laundered sheet, something Orso had not seen in some time. ‘Your Highness, I had no idea. Please accept my—’
‘No need.’ Orso waved a lazy hand, wine-stained lace cuff flapping, and took another pinch of pearl dust. ‘I am a damn disgrace. Notoriously so.’ He gave the man a reassuring pat on the shoulder, realised he had smeared dust all over his coat and tried ineffectually to brush it off. If Orso excelled at anything, after all, it was being ineffectual. ‘Please don’t concern yourself over my feelings. I don’t have any.’ Or so he often said. The truth was he sometimes felt he had too many. He was dragged so violently in a dozen different directions that he could not move at all.
He took one more pinch for good measure. Peering down through watering eyes, he noticed the box was getting dangerously empty.
‘Hildi!’ he muttered, waving it at her. ‘Empty.’
She sprang down from the wall and drew herself up to her full height. Which put her about on a level with his ribs. ‘Again? Who shall I go to?’
‘Majir?’
‘Y’owe Majir a hundred and fifty-one marks. Said she can’t give you more credit.’
‘Spizeria, then?’
‘Y’owe him three hundred and six. Same story.’
‘How the hell did that happen?’
Hildi gave Tunny, Yolk and the whores a significant glance. ‘You want me to answer that?’
Orso racked his brains to think of someone else, then gave up. If he excelled at anything, after all, it was giving up. ‘For pity’s sake, Hildi, everyone knows I’m good for it. I’ll be coming into a considerable legacy one of these days.’ No less than the Union, and everything in it, and all its unliftable weight of care, and impossible responsibility, and crushing expectation. He grimaced and tossed her the box.
‘You owe me nine marks,’ she muttered.
‘Shoo!’ Orso tried to wave her away, got his little finger painfully tangled in his cuff and had to rip it free. ‘Just get it done!’
She gave a long-suffering sigh, jammed that ancient soldier’s cap down over her blonde curls and stepped off into the crowd.
‘She’s a funny little thing, your errand girl,’ warbled one of the whores, dragging too heavily on his arm.
‘She’s my valet,’ said Orso, frowning, ‘and she’s a fucking treasure.’
On the scaffold, meanwhile, the bearded man was bellowing out the Breakers’ manifesto with ever more emotion. The noise from the crowd was growing but, much to the upset of the Inquisitor, he was starting to strike a chord. Calls of support were breaking through the mockery.
‘No more machines!’ the bearded man roared, veins bulging in his thick neck. ‘No more seizure of common land!’
He seemed a useful fellow. More useful than Orso, certainly. ‘What a bloody waste,’ he muttered.
‘The Open Council shouldn’t just be for the nobles! Every man should have a voice—’
‘Enough!’ snarled the Inquisitor, waving one of the executioners forward. The prisoner kept trying to speak as the noose was pulled tight, but his words were drowned by the rising anger of the crowd.
It was a riddle. This man, born with no advantages, believed in something so much he was willing to die for it. Orso, born with everything, could scarcely make himself get out of bed of a morning. Or, indeed, an afternoon.