The Wisdom of Crowds Read online

  “So I could give power to the people. Not so I could seize it for myself. I never wanted to be in charge.”

  “Can I ask what you did want?”

  “The same as you. The same as all of us.” He did not smile. He did not frown. “A better world.”

  Opportunities

  Savine used to flit from one engagement to the next. Every day had been a mosaic of neatly kept appointments, an intricate dance to the music of the book and the watch, an endless, pearl dust-fuelled social whirl. Home had merely been a place to sleep and dress for the next function, occupations on which she had spent roughly equal time. Now, she was not sure how long it had been since she last left the house. Before the birth, certainly.

  She told herself it was because there was not a sniff of pearl dust to be found in the city. She had hunted through every box and drawer, rationed her dwindling supplies as best she could, but now she had run entirely dry, and without it she was twitchy and sluggish at once and had a constant headache.

  She told herself it had nothing to do with fear. There was no tide of sick dread when she considered stepping over the threshold. No swallowing the memories of the uprising in Valbeck, or the battlefield at Stoffenbeck, or the fall of the Agriont.

  She told herself she could leave whenever she pleased. But what for? She had everything she needed here.

  She smiled down at Ardee, fast asleep in her cot. She could watch them sleep for hours. Sit holding them for hours. Kiss the dark fuzz on their heads, over and over, and be delighted by the feeling every time. The smell of them. The softness of them. The unformed innocence of—

  The bell tinkled downstairs and she felt a stab of panic, whipping around, hand at her throat, mouth sour with terror. She hardly even knew what enemies to expect. She crept to the window, brushing back the curtain with a finger, peering towards the road that used to be the Middleway. She understood they were still arguing over its new name, in the Assembly.

  It was better not to mention things unless you were sure of the right language. Every day brought new wrong words to avoid. New ideas at odds with the Great Change. Everyone was free to say what they wanted now, of course. You just had to be careful in case it got you hanged.

  There was a heavy quiet, out there. Her hearing was constantly sharpened for that first hint of an angry crowd. That first warning of riot and violence. She had not been sleeping, that was all. The twins were so demanding. And not a sniff of pearl dust anywhere in the city. She let the curtain drop, then jerked around at Zuri’s voice.

  “I found two beggars wandering the streets,” she said, with the trace of a playful smile, “and my scripture teacher always told me that charity is the first of virtues, so I thought I would show them in…”

  Savine felt a flood of relief as Zuri pushed the door wide to reveal her two brothers. The Great Change did not appear to have changed them, at least. Haroon was as solid and serious, and Rabik as smooth-faced and smiling, as ever.

  Her first instinct was to rush over and hug them. She even took a step to do it before she remembered herself. “No one could be more welcome,” she said, and she meant it.

  Haroon bowed his head. “We are glad to be back with you.”

  “And to see you so blessed.” Rabik leaned over Harod’s cot, making little kisses, then peered beaming into Ardee’s. “So doubly blessed.”

  “I am sorry it took us so long to come. We tried to find you, after the battle—”

  “I should be the one apologising,” said Savine. “You came to the Union to escape the madness in the South, and now look.” She had to dab at her eyes with her wrist. “We have made our own.” When she was younger, she must have gone ten years without shedding a tear. Now she could hardly get through an hour without a weepy moment. “I can’t tell you what it means… to have friends around me I can trust. To have—”

  Downstairs the bell rang again and Savine felt that surge of panic. Nothing to worry about, of course, as Zuri slipped out to answer it, but Savine had to peel her hand away from her throat even so.

  “They say God puts us all where we are meant to be,” said Haroon, softly.

  “And you believe that?” Her voice sounded needy. With no beliefs of her own, she wanted at least to believe in someone else’s.

  “I used to think my faith was unshakeable. When I was a soldier…” Haroon gave the slightest wince, as though at an unpleasant taste. “I did things in the name of God and never doubted. Things… I have come to very much regret.”

  “We all have regrets,” murmured Savine. Haroon at least could blame God for his. She could only blame herself.

  “Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous… should always have doubts.”

  Rabik took Savine’s hand in both of his and smiled. Such an open, honest, beautiful smile. “We must have faith in each other,” he said simply. It was enough to make her smile herself.

  “Citizen Kort is here,” said Zuri, from the door.

  “Kort?” The name floated up from the distant past. As if a visit from great Juvens had been announced. Savine prodded ineffectually at her wig, trying to scrape together some shreds of her old self-assurance as Zuri’s brothers left the room. “Show him in… I suppose.”

  “Lady Savine!” Kort had prospered, that was clear. His clothes were simply cut, of course, since simplicity was the fashion, but she knew expensive cloth when she saw it, and the broken-chain pin he wore to show allegiance with the common man was set with little diamonds.

  “Citizeness Savine.” She used to be able to calibrate her smile with all the accuracy of a gunner ranging his cannon. Now it felt clumsy on her face, like a once-favourite pair of boots that no longer quite fit.

  His eyes flickered only briefly to the scar on her forehead, and his own smile did not slip at all. “Whichever it is, you are as beautiful as ever.” Nimbly done, since she wore a shapeless bag of a nursing dress, was bleary from lack of sleep and not painted or powdered at all. Her old clothes fit her no better than her smile. She had tried to squeeze her mother’s body into one of her looser dresses a few days before and could hardly believe how thin she must once have been.

  Kort took her hand in his slightly damp paw and kissed her warmly on one cheek. One would never have guessed that he had once tried to cheat her, while she threatened him with rumour, ruin and finally actual violence. But the warmth of their greeting only showed what excellent people of business they both were. One simply must forgive, after all, when there are profits on the table.

  “How is your husband?”

  “He is…” Crippled, struggling to find a place for himself, ground down by pain and burning with anger. “Adjusting to his injuries.”

  “Yet I’ve never seen him absent from the Assembly, rain or shine. He proves to be a fine speaker.” Kort smiled beneficently down. “And this is?”

  “My daughter, Ardee.” Savine felt absurdly proud of her children and delighted in showing them off, even to people whose opinions she could not have cared less about. “Named after my mother. And almost as demanding.”

  “I am an engineer, and don’t always see the appeal in babies, but this…” And he poked one thick finger at her. “This is a well-favoured infant!”

  Little Ardee had only just begun to focus her eyes, but she focused hers on Kort’s ruddy face now with her mouth suspiciously pursed. Evidently an excellent judge of character already.

  “And this is my son, Harod.” Savine led Kort to the other cot. “Named for Leo’s father.”

  “Not for the first King of the Union, then?”

  “I doubt that would be in keeping with the times.”

  “Certainly our most recent monarch finds himself short of support. Aside from a few die-hards in the east of Midderland, no one even bows to him any more, let alone kneels.”

  “We are all equal now…” Though it had not been long ago that Savine had knelt before the king to beg for her
husband’s life, and not long before that she had knelt before him in Sworbreck’s office for… other reasons.

  “I hear they have him shut up in six rooms of the palace, under constant guard,” Kort was crowing. “He has to ask permission to use the latrine. Imagine that!”

  Savine did not care to. Orso had shown mercy to her and her husband, however little they deserved it. More mercy than she would have shown, in his place. She wondered what the future held for him, as the Breakers tightened their grip. As people forgot the past. As they needed him less and less as a reassuring figurehead. Her brother, Orso.

  She winced, the way she always did when the thought occurred. She wondered what might happen if the secret somehow came out. If they learned her children were the grandchildren of King Jezal…

  Kort flicked out the tails of his coat to sit. “It seems that motherhood very much agrees with you.”

  “Somewhat to my surprise.”

  “Not to mine. I heard one Citizeness we both know wonder aloud whether you might give birth to a set of razors. I told her she was an idiot if she thought you wouldn’t excel at anything you put your mind to.”

  “There has been a Great Change.” Savine frowned towards the window, sure she had heard something outside. She waited a moment, but there was nothing. “We must change, too.”

  “I could not agree more.” Kort’s bulk had subsided into his chair, but now he eased it earnestly towards her. “And the greater the change, the greater the opportunities. Commissioner Pike seems fixed on crushing the banks. Between the lack of credit, the price of bread, the interruption in coal supplies from Angland… through nothing but buying and selling shrewdly, fortunes can be made in a day! And for those who know the right people, see the right openings, those who can actually bring goods into Adua… Selest dan Heugen—”

  “There are no ‘dans’ any more, remember?”

  “Whatever her name is, she’s adjusted to the new reality like lightning. She’s dispensed with the wigs, it’s all about honesty now, apparently, and she’s not even a redhead, would you believe?”

  “I am astonishment itself.”

  “But she wears a red sash! In sympathy with the bloody Burners, and talks as though she’s been arguing for the Great Change for years while she’s making an absolute fortune buying flour in the provinces. They say the weather will only get colder, and the royalists are about in the east, burning crops. Lord Marshal Forest and his men, refusing to lay down their arms. Everything will get scarcer. With our canal, we—”

  “No.”

  “No? Motherhood has changed you.”

  “On the contrary, I have always been extremely careful about which opportunities I take, and which I turn down.” She lowered her voice, glancing towards the window again. “When they have hanged all their enemies, do you think they will stop? Things will unravel and they will need people to blame. Do you read the pamphlets? They print more than ever! Attacking aristocrats, and foreign agents, and speculators and hoarders and profiteers. Attacking everyone!” She thought of the mob, the clawing arm slithering through her broken carriage window. “I will not be making myself conspicuous. I strongly advise you to do the same.”

  Kort stared at her, his mouth ajar. “I never supposed that you, of all people, would lack the nerve to seize what is right in front of you. Lady Savine—”

  “Citizeness Savine.”

  “There are such opportunities—”

  “Haroon will see you out.”

  Zuri’s older brother had eased silently into the room. His head was respectfully bowed, his smile almost apologetic, but there was something in the set of his broad shoulders, in the way one strong hand clasped the other, that made it clear it was time to go. He was almost as good as his sister at saying it all without saying a word.

  Kort blinked at him, then gave a sigh, and heaved himself to his feet. “I fear you will regret this.”

  “I have so many regrets, I doubt this one will figure much.”

  Harod had woken now and started to mew, and Savine bent over the cot to attend to him, so she hardly even noticed Kort leave. She frowned as she sank down, unbuttoning the flap of her dress so she could scoop out one sore, sticky breast.

  “Damn it,” she growled as he chewed at her. You would never imagine they had no teeth for the pain they could thoughtlessly inflict.

  She had been the most envied woman in the Union. Now here she was, trapped in a few rooms like the prisoner-king, milking herself like a farmer milks a cow. For the benefit of these two thankless little monsters, she had made herself a supporting character in her own life. Had the room always been this hot? She felt suffocated.

  There was a crash outside and she gasped, nearly jumped up, staring towards the window, half-straightened legs trembling. Voices out there. Shouts. Then laughter, dying away. Disturbed in his feeding, Harod had started to cry. She settled herself, put him back to her breast, his head fishing desperately for what was right in front of him.

  Savine found herself wondering what her parents would have said, if they could have seen her now. Making no plans. Taking no steps. Exerting no grip. Kort was hardly the shrewdest social operator, but even he had seen it at once. She had lost her nerve. Inevitable, perhaps, given all she had been through. But headaches or not, pearl dust or not, fears or not, she could not afford to hide away here, smiling wanly at her sleeping babies. Fretting over what would happen to Orso. Living in a drowsy, deadened, milk-smelling fug while the world collapsed around her. Then wetting herself with fright at every noise.

  That was not protecting herself. That was not protecting her children. That was not caution, it was cowardice. It was surrender.

  Savine forced her shoulders down. Her chin up. The posture she used to have, when she ruled the Solar Society. Or as close as she could get to it. “Zuri?” she called, and her voice was harsh. Not the tone in which she cooed at her babies. The tone in which she once blackmailed her rivals.

  It only took a moment for Zuri to appear, opening the book and sliding her pencil from behind her ear. “What can I do?”

  “Could Rabik find out what dressmakers are still alive and in business? This…” and she looked down at the milk-stained flap of her dress, hanging open like torn sacking, “will not do. I need a proper face-maid, too. A clever one.”

  “One who can make the paint look like there is no paint.” And Zuri turned towards the door, scribbling a note. Savine brought her up short.

  “And I want you to talk to our agents. Those still in business. I want them to scour the marketplaces. Secure as much food as they can. Flour and livestock especially. Have Haroon see if we can buy some bakeries. I understand it is dangerous work these days. Lots of them selling up.” She was standing now, pacing up and down, rocking Harod and feeding him and thinking all at once. “Then I will talk to Leo about coal. See if he can bridge his mother and the Assembly, open up the supply from Angland again.”

  There was that little silence Zuri left to register her concern, pencil hovering over paper. “Playing the markets would be quite the risk in the current climate. Hoarders are being lynched, and I understand the Assembly plans to outlaw speculation—”

  “I am not going to sell it.”

  “Then—”

  “My scripture teacher tells me that charity is the first of virtues.”

  Zuri’s black brows were raised very high. “She sounds exceedingly wise.”

  “She is. And my very good friend Honrig Curnsbick always tells me I have a generous heart. So I have decided to give it away. I want to go out into the poorest districts, and… give it away.”

  Savine had always thought that people who were liked were simply not trying hard enough to be envied. But it had not been her money that saved them, when the People’s Army stormed the Agriont. It had been Leo’s popularity. It was high time she had some of her own. Perhaps she could even do some good, for whatever that was worth.

  Zuri gently shook her head. “If you had told me a yea
r ago we would be giving anything away…”

  “There has been a Great Change, Zuri. We must change— Ah!” She gasped as Harod chewed at her nipple again, pulled him angrily away and he started to cry. That helpless, desperate cry that felt like nails hammered directly into her red-rimmed eyes.

  “Fuck,” she snapped, pushing her sore breast back inside her dress and fumbling with the buttons on the other side, “and for the Fates’ sakes, find me a reliable nurse. I can’t manage them both alone.”

  An Exhibit

  “Really?” asked Orso as the plate was flung violently down in front of him. A piece of rancorous matter he did not dare describe as meat, some carrots virtually raw and some peas boiled to mush, all thoroughly cooled on the labyrinthine voyage from the kitchens to the remote corner of the palace which had become his prison.

  The cook leaned down over him, her jaw jutting. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  “Rarely if ever,” squeaked Orso, shrinking back.

  Of all the things he missed about before, it was his cook Bernille that gave him the sharpest pangs of loss. Those delicate soups. Those miniature pastries. The things she had done with shellfish! Positively indecent. He wondered what had become of her and her extensive staff. He remembered visiting the kitchens, a fragrant hive of good-humoured industry. Executed, or herded off to hard labour, or… most likely, now he thought about it, cooking for someone else. Orso frowned. Might they even be happier cooking for someone else? Might they have had no choice but to put on those sweaty smiles? Might that kitchen have been a prison to them?

  “Enjoying your dinner, Your Majesty?”

  Orso tried to ignore his audience entirely but, as usual, he couldn’t help glancing up. A few days before, they had opened the palace to tours. The people had paid for the place, Risinau had told the Assembly, with their blood and tears, so it belonged to the people, and they should be allowed to enjoy it. Even the miserable set of attics in which Orso was now confined, with its split floorboards, peeling wallpaper and rich festoons of cobweb, restlessly stirring in the constant chill draft. The Assembly evidently believed that the monarch was public property, too, and had determined to make an exhibit of him. Now a constant queue filed in through one door, gawped at him from behind a railing and filed out through another.