The Wisdom of Crowds Read online

  In the clamour produced by Sworbreck’s latest offer of martyrdom, Representatives shouted over each other to be heard. It was noisy as a battle, and Leo watched the back and forth with the care of a general feeling out his moment to advance. A white-haired old merchant had kidnapped the floor now, his bass voice so powerful the benches seemed to vibrate.

  “If the attention of the Assembly might be steered to other matters?” Far too easily, if anything. “I move that Commissioner Pike presents himself to explain his recent actions!”

  “Hear, hear!” blustered that heavyset oaf who used to be one of Savine’s partners. Kort, was it? “The Commissioner’s private war against the banks is bad for business. We’re losing our advantage to the Styrians! It’s a war out there in the markets!”

  A foreman from the Three Farms shook a great fist. He was called, appropriately enough, Hefty, though Leo wasn’t sure whether it was a nickname or a surname. “There’s a real fucking war going on!” Whoops in the gallery. He turned red in the face. “Begging your pardon.” Laughter in the gallery. He turned redder. “But there’s royalist rebels to worry about in the east!”

  “Treacherous bastards set on raising the king up above us again!”

  “We couldn’t possibly have that,” drawled the king himself, whose gilded enclosure had become a wooden one, then a high dais, then a low dais, and finally a nursing chair with a rail around it.

  The usual rage, meanwhile, from above. Crumpled pamphlets were flung down. An apple core bounced from the shoulder of an ex-lord a few seats away and Jurand flinched.

  “Don’t worry,” said Leo. “They rarely throw anything hard.”

  “What’s the People’s Army doing?” someone howled.

  “I have men, but no leaders.” General Brint frowned from his chair beside Risinau’s. “I beg you, Citizens, allow me to bring in officers from the old King’s Own—”

  “How can we trust men who served the old regime?”

  “Who else were they supposed to serve? That was the only regime going!”

  “You have staunch patriots!” Hefty stabbed a finger at Broad, who looked more worried than staunch. “Men of good common stock!”

  “It’s not a question of birth, but of experience!”

  “Principle trumps pragmatism!” someone screeched.

  “Not on the battlefield!” growled Brint. “But the moment I need a grocer’s advice on running an army, yours will be the first address I call at!”

  Leo winced. Brint was a good enough man, but he didn’t understand the rules of this engagement.

  “Is it like this all the time?” murmured Glaward.

  “Most of it.”

  “How do they get anything done?”

  “They don’t.” Leo sensed the slightest lull in the melee, and he settled his stump in the socket of his iron leg, his crutch in his aching armpit. “Could you help me up?”

  “The Young Lion!” someone screeched as Glaward guided him to standing, and the hall fell silent. As close as it ever got, anyway.

  “Citizens!” Leo limped a few steps onto the tiled floor so that he stood alone. “Friends! Good men and women of the Union!” He aimed that at the public galleries and got a reassuring murmur of support. He’d found if he could bring the scum up there onto his side, the scum down here wouldn’t dare disagree. “We can’t afford to bicker! We’ve got enemies everywhere, keen to divide us!”

  Leo was careful not to name the enemies, of course. He let everyone fill in their own.

  “Bastard Styrians!” someone snarled.

  “Bloody Southerners!”

  “Aristocrats!”

  “We’ve won a great victory against tyranny,” he called. “We’ve won the chance to forge a Union that’s the envy of the world.” And he set himself so he could strike his crutch on the tiles with an echoing bang. “But we have to build bridges. We have to bring good men in. Like my old friends from Angland. Discord won’t help us. We need equality. We need loyalty. We need unity!”

  He hobbled to his seat with the applause ringing in his ears and dropped down wincing, shaking his leg to loosen it on his sore stump.

  Glaward looked more dumbfounded than ever. “You didn’t… say anything.” Perhaps he was faithful and diligent, like Savine said, but Leo had forgotten how slow he could be.

  “Only an idiot stands in front of this rabble to say something,” muttered Leo, wiping the fresh sheen of sweat from his forehead. “You shuffle a few of the right words together and make sure you look ’em in the eye.” He flashed the humble smile he’d been working on. Waved away the congratulations as men leaned from the benches behind to slap him on the shoulder. “You’re going for a feeling. Make them think you’re one of them. Prove the mob’s behind you. You want to get something done, you pick a few men to talk to behind closed doors.”

  Jurand looked almost admiring. A happy hint of the way he used to look at Leo before… all this. “I thought you were a blunt soldier?”

  “I’m still a soldier.” Leo shifted his useless arm in his jacket and saluted the gallery. “It’s just a different battlefield.”

  “When did that fucker get eloquent?” grumbled Orso, slumping into his ridiculous little chair. He had half a mind to applaud himself. “Equality? He must be the most privileged bastard in here.”

  “Other than you,” murmured Hildi.

  “Other than me, yes, thanks for that, Hildi. His family’s had a seat in this bloody chamber for centuries. His grandfather was almost elected king himself and betrayed the Union when he lost the vote. Like grandfather like grandson, eh?”

  “You can’t deny folk warm to him, though.”

  “Oh, yes. People have always loved the Young Lion.” He still seemed to be the same honest Anglander, none of Sworbreck’s flowery style, but these days he was playing the mob like his own personal orchestra and leading the nervous ex-lords wherever he pleased. Now he had a dozen virile young heroes of Angland on the front benches ready to nod along at his every utterance as though it fell from the mouth of Euz himself. Orso was starting to think he was far more dangerous now than he had been with all his limbs.

  “An appeal for loyalty, can you imagine? A few months ago he was leading his own rebellion!”

  The hypocrisy was breathtaking. But the public appetite for hypocrisy appeared insatiable. Isher, who not long ago had enriched himself beyond the dreams of avarice by evicting impoverished tenants from common land, had risen to preach thrift in the most conspicuously humble, dirt-coloured clothes one could imagine.

  “Citizens, please!” Risinau was struggling vainly, as he had been for weeks, to impose order on this shambles. “Our constitution!”

  And Orso started to laugh. A little snigger at first. He tried to hold it in, but it burst out again. An explosive giggle. Every face he noticed made it worse. The monstrously wealthy traitor Isher, hiding in an honest man’s feast-day clothes. The turncoat loser Brock, cheered to the rafters for his patriotism and prowess. The cowardly fantasist Sworbreck, posing as the common man’s fearless champion. The onslaught of overblown preaching, sentimental one-upmanship, angry stands on shifting principles, tearful declarations of shifting loyalty. The worst of mankind jammed into the sockets where the best should have been. A crown of turds.

  “You all right?” muttered Hildi, looking worried.

  Orso was shuddering with mirth now, laughter echoing about the chamber. No one else looked amused. The Chairman especially.

  “Perhaps His Majesty might explain what he finds so amusing?”

  “What don’t I?” Orso’s eyes swam with tears. “Your grand experiment? Your wondrous new system? Believe me, no one liked the old way of doing things less than I, but my forebears ran the Union for six centuries. You’ll be lucky if you make it six months.”

  “Captain Broad! We cannot have this cavalier disrespect for our Assembly!”

  Broad wearily nudged his lenses up his nose and began to trudge towards the royal enclosure.


  Orso jumped up. “Are we not all equal here?” He addressed the public gallery in a wailing mockery of Sworbreck’s overwrought delivery. “Does not every Citizen deserve an equal chance to speak? Even so base a creature as a king?”

  “Let him talk!” someone shouted.

  “Let him talk himself into a noose!”

  “I begin to wish you’d follow through on your threats!” called Orso. Bravery had descended inexplicably upon him, as it had at Stoffenbeck. Bravery born of fear, boredom, frustration and at least a little drunkenness. Far from heroic ingredients, to be sure, but no one asks what went into the pie so long as the results taste well. “You’ve hanged a good many decent people already! I’d rather join them than suffer this chorus of flatterers, thugs and hypocrites.”

  “How dare you?” But Risinau’s voice was more plaintive whine than outraged roar. “We are shaping the future!”

  Orso almost sympathised. “Take it from a man who’s been there, you’re the figurehead on a ship of fools. I daresay there are good people here, and good intentions. You had a chance to make things better and, believe it or not, no one looked forward to seeing it more than I did. But you haven’t achieved a damn thing. I know this is rich coming from me, but… you’re simply poor quality. You’re a worthless bag of bluster. A spent match.”

  “Never thought I’d agree with His fucking Majesty.”

  There was a rustling as the Representatives turned to stare towards the top of the aisle. One could make many criticisms of Judge, but never that she didn’t make an entrance. She came stalking down the steps between the benches with all the swagger of a champion to the fencing circle, her stolen chains scraping her breastplate, her red hair greased into a flaming crest, the flinty point to a spearhead of grim-faced, hard-handed, red-clothed men. Her black eyes swept the benches with the kind of burning purpose the Assembly had been sorely lacking, but Orso felt far from relieved as her gaze fell upon him.

  “Sit down, Citizen Orso,” she said.

  Orso sat.

  Judge stopped before the High Table, hands on hips and her bare feet planted wide. “I have watched the fucking pantomime in this ill-behaved nursery with growing disgust,” she said.

  “Aye!” growled the Burners, in echoing unison.

  “You were meant to put things right, but all you’ve done is spill a sea of talk. One might almost say,” she leaned towards Risinau, planting her clenched fists on the tabletop, “that those who have allowed this state of affairs to develop,” lips curling back from her teeth, “are, through intent or omission,” spraying spit as she snarled the words, “guilty of betraying the Great Change.”

  “We are the Great Change!” Risinau pointed his chin at her, the wattle beneath his jowls wobbling. “We hear your carping, Citizeness, but no reason for your attendance!”

  Judge grinned. A skull grin that got nowhere near her eyes. “Oh, I’m here to arrest the perpetrators.”

  One of the secretaries set down her pen to hurry around the High Table, one ink-stained finger wagging. “With respect, you have no warrant here—”

  “You sure? Brother Sarlby, could you produce our credentials?”

  “With pleasure.” A rat-faced Burner with a red-spattered cap stepped forward, sliding his hand into his jacket pocket. He brought it out in front of the secretary. There was nothing there but his fist. He smashed it into her face and knocked her down, her head bouncing on the tiles. She was left gazing up in amazement with blood running from her broken nose.

  There was a stunned silence in the Commons’ Round. Orso had the sense that, in that moment, all the rules had changed. Again.

  Then Judge burst out laughing. “You fools have got as coddled as His Majesty used to be. As useless as the Open Council used to be. What is it about some folk, that power makes ’em weak?”

  Risinau had turned very pale. “I am still Chairman of this Assembly!” He gripped the gilded arms of his chair as though to prove it to himself, but the echoes of his voice had become scared squeaks in the high space of the dome above. “Captain Broad! See this woman removed forthwith!”

  Broad frowned towards the doors. He’d been doing it ever since Judge strutted in. She hadn’t been the last person through. Dozens of folk wearing red had slipped into the chamber. Red caps, red sleeves, red rags tied around their heads. Some with their hands behind their backs, or hidden by their sides, or wedged in their jackets. One grinning little girl carried a great dripping pot of paint, scattering red dots across the dirty marble.

  Burners.

  There were splashes of red everywhere. Broad lifted his head so he could peer through his lenses and saw red flatbows at the rail of the public gallery.

  “Captain Broad?” Brint had an odd tone, suddenly. Less of an order than a wheedle.

  “No, no, no,” purred Judge, the ragged train of her dress hissing across the dirty tiles towards Broad, those black eyes fixed on him all the way, and she reached up, and touched his face with her fingertips. The gentlest touch, just under his ear, sliding down his jaw till she held his chin, and it made his flesh crawl and his heart pound both at once.

  He could’ve shoved her away. Bony as she was, he could’ve backhanded her across the hall. But all he did was stand there, helpless. Helpless as he’d been tied to a chair in a Valbeck cellar with her sitting astride him. “Captain Broad and I understand each other,” she said, softly.

  And she was right, Fates help him. Judge was trouble made flesh. The monster off the leash. She was madness, and fire, and violence, and all the things he’d told himself he didn’t want.

  But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

  The little girl held up the paint pot and Judge stuck her hand into it. Drops spattered the tiles as she smeared four streaks across Broad’s breastplate with her red fingers. “You’re one of us now.” She went up on her tiptoes to whisper, “But we know you always were.”

  No one did a thing as the Burners brought out chains and started to shackle the men and women gathered around Risinau. Not the king, sitting meekly on his little chair. Not the Young Lion, watching warily from among his Anglanders. Not the artists and the thinkers Risinau had brought to the Assembly. Even the rowdies in the public galleries had swallowed their tongues.

  And Broad was quietest of the lot. He knew a lost cause when he saw one.

  “You can’t do this!” Risinau clung to his chair as Sarlby caught him under the arm, dragging it squealing over the tiles. “I will go to the Weaver—”

  Judge’s red-rimmed eyes slid sideways to him. “Who d’you think gave me the keys to the chamber, you fat fool?”

  Risinau gaped at her as he was finally bundled from his chair and Sarlby snapped manacles shut around his wrists. “But… we need a new constitution—”

  “What we need is purpose,” sneered Judge. “What we need is purity. What we need is a fresh start.”

  “Shall we hang ’em?” asked Sarlby.

  “Hang ’em? No. Wouldn’t send at all the right message.” Judge dropped into Risinau’s chair and swept some of his papers off onto the floor to clear a space. “The bright future’s come at last.” And she propped one bare foot up on the polished table and crossed the other one on top of it, their soles grey with dirt. “Don’t want to usher it in with a hanging, do we?” Broad took a sharp breath. Only realised then that he’d been holding it the whole time. Mercy was the last thing he’d expected from Judge.

  “We need to kill these bastards with more guts,” she said. “We need something spectacular. Anyone got any ideas?”

  Not mercy, then. Its very opposite. There was a brittle silence. The Representatives glanced at each other, at Risinau and his underlings being chained, at all the well-armed Burners, no one wanting to stand out from the crowd.

  Then Ramnard cleared his throat. “I suppose… there’s always beheading?”

  And now those very same bastards who’d competed for Risinau’
s notice that morning competed to dream up the most savage way to kill him in the afternoon.

  “I thought Curnsbick’s hanging machine was a great improvement.”

  “Boring!” sang Judge.

  “Hanged and emptied?”

  “The methods of the old regime,” sneered Judge.

  “In the North I hear they sometimes crush miscreants with rocks.”

  “Meh,” grunted Judge.

  “Boiling alive?”

  “Impalement?”

  “Execution by cannon?”

  “If I may?” Sworbreck had risen, eyes shining with barely contained excitement. “The situation calls for something unforgettable. Something that will serve as lesson and deterrent. Something representative of the crime.”

  Judge narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes.”

  “Might I suggest that those who have fallen short of the principles of the Great Change… should themselves fall! In full view of the Citizens they have failed. From the top of the Tower of Chains, perhaps?”

  A murmur ran around the hall. Fear? Awe? Excitement? All three mixed up? “By the Fates,” whispered Brint. A Burner had closed a cuff on the one wrist the general had but was scratching his head over what to do with the other one.

  “Huh.” Judge tipped her head back so she could gaze up towards the gilded dome, scratching gently at her rashy neck with the backs of her broken fingernails. Slowly, the smile spread across her face. “My thanks, Citizen Sworbreck, and the nation’s thanks.” She jerked her head towards the door. “Take ’em up the Tower of Chains. And push ’em off.”

  One of the arrested gave a little whimper. Another sagged against the High Table.

  “No trial?” It was the king, and he wasn’t laughing now. His throat shifted as he nervously swallowed.

  Judge grinned back at him. “The trial can be on the way down. The ground can give the verdict. You go with ’em, Broad. Make sure they all take the drop. Sarlby?”

  “Judge?”

  “Make sure he makes sure.”

  Broad nudged his lenses down to rub at the sore bridge of his nose, then nudged them back into place and started rolling up his sleeves. Slowly. Carefully. Helps to have a routine, after all. Then he calmly set about it, like it was any other task. Or maybe his body set about it, without the need for him to be involved at all. They organised the dozen prisoners who’d been behind the table into a line, Brint near the front, Risinau near the back, Burners around ’em with weapons drawn. Then they shuffled across the tiled floor to the aisle, and up it, between the silent benches. Everyone watched. No one spoke.