The Wisdom of Crowds Read online

  “I hear old Marnavent took the long drop,” someone brayed carelessly.

  “So who’s running things at the patent office now?”

  “You assume there is still a patent office. Last I heard they were keeping pigs in the place.”

  “Count yourself lucky if it’s just your ideas that are stolen. Yoslund lost every stick of furniture in the uprising. They made off with his damn doors!”

  “At least during King Jezal’s reign one knew who to bloody bribe…”

  “Citizeness Savine!”

  “Citizeness Selest.”

  If simplicity was the fashion, Selest Heugen bucked the trend. Her look was bread-rioting grand duchess. Militant millionaire with a dash of top-end prostitute. Dark rubies spilled down her neck like blood from a slit throat and her black dress was artfully slashed to show Burner’s scarlet. Most women had stopped wearing swords. Having Leo’s wounds in her face had entirely killed Savine’s appetite for tools of death. Selest had gone the other way, with a genuine horseman’s axe dangling from her crimson sash.

  “You look… wonderful.” Savine had been aiming at earnest, but had not the history to pull it off, and Selest’s bosom heaved with offence. Probably there was nothing Savine could have said that would not have caused offence, and certainly nothing that would have stopped that bosom heaving.

  Selest gave Savine a sneering look up and down. “You look… motherly.”

  That would once have been an insult punishable by a slow social death, meticulously engineered. Now it hardly drew a shrug.

  “After the year I’ve had…” The aftermath of Valbeck, her marriage to Leo, their treason against the king, the mass violence of the battle at Stoffenbeck, the almost-hanging of her husband, the even greater violence of the Great Change, the birth of her children, the coming of Judge and the whole world slowly, painfully ripping apart. Savine realised she had put a hand to the well-powdered scar on her forehead and forced it back down. “I’m only surprised I look alive.”

  “I spend much of my time at the Court of the People these days. You really should see your husband address the Representatives. He still makes the ladies gasp, up in the balcony. Quite the man. Even if he is half a man now.”

  Savine smiled. “As tired as I am, half is more than I can manage.”

  “Fancy. And you used to have such an appetite.” Selest spun away, that ridiculous axe bouncing against her leg.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Savine muttered wearily at her back. “Everything is changed.”

  “Citizeness Brock!” A young man she did not know, with cheap clothes and the light of ambition in his eyes. “Would you have a moment to hear about a new type of mirror? Tougher, clearer, cheaper. We’ll put those swine in Visserine out of business—”

  “I fear you must do it without me.” She used to swoop on every hint of opportunity, hawk-eyed, eagle-taloned, every mark clawed up a point triumphantly scored against the world. Now the thought of profits made her sick. With a little guilt, when she thought of the bread queues, the homeless in the doorways, the dead in the frozen graveyards. With a lot of fear, when she thought of them rendered into accusations in the Court of the People, screamed from the benches, flung down from the public galleries.

  It was coming. She knew it was coming. They all would have their moment in the dock. She pressed a smile down on top of her dread like the lid on a box of snakes.

  “But, Citizeness—”

  “I wish you every success, but I am not seeking to make money. I am looking for opportunities to give it away.”

  A flicker of incomprehension, and the man drifted on.

  “All that effort to acquire it.” Curnsbick stood, shaking his head. “And now you’re simply giving it away. Do you really suppose charity will help, Savine?”

  “We can hope,” she said, pressing his hand.

  “We can.” He had lost weight. He looked a shadow of himself. “But, given where we are, it might be better if we didn’t.”

  “It was a very… carefully judged address this year.”

  “It was all shit. But what should I say? The truth? I’m no keener on climbing the Tower of Chains than anyone else. Though no one will need to climb soon.” He dabbed at his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief. “I’ve been commissioned to install a hoist.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The Burners can’t march the prisoners up the stairway fast enough. They cry, they faint, they beg for mercy. Judge wants me to build a steam-powered platform that can haul two dozen at a time.”

  Savine’s skin prickled under her dress. “Oh.” What else could be said to that?

  “When I was a boy,” muttered Curnsbick, “patriotism was kissing the flag and pretending to love the king. Now, suddenly, it’s spitting on the king and having poor furniture. One must keep a close eye on the current definitions. To be unpatriotic would be terrible. To be patriotic in the wrong way could be fatal. I feel I can admit to you, as an old friend, that since the Great Change… I am constantly terrified.” He gave a little laugh, but she could see tears on his cheeks. He removed his lenses and wiped them on the back of his sleeve.

  Savine put a gentle hand on his arm. “I hardly think you are alone in that.”

  “I freely admit that I have never been a brave man. Once, out in the Far Country, I met a fellow called Lamb, who had travelled hundreds of miles, facing down Ghosts and mercenaries and Dragon People and every danger searching for his children. Whatever the odds, he simply… would not be cowed. I think about him often. I wish I was more like him, but every day out there, I was scared. I am—”

  “You are an inventor.” She took his hot, limp, sticky hand between hers. “You have done more good in the world than a thousand warriors. Show me someone who denies it and I’ll spit in their eye.”

  He gave a brittle smile. “I believe you would.”

  “Citizeness Brock.” The speaker had curly hair and was unremarkable apart from his different-coloured eyes. “I was hoping I might see you here.”

  “Citizen Sulfur… is that the right term of address for a magus?”

  “I hardly know the right terms for anything these days. Even if I did, I fear they would be the wrong ones by tomorrow morning.”

  “What brings you back to the Solar Society?”

  “I have a great deal of money to invest, in fact.”

  “Then you will not be short of friends here. Commissioner Pike’s tireless crusade against the banks has made investment hard to come by.”

  “I understand you are providing bread and coal to the poor. Perhaps we might do some good together? Would you consider accepting a loan…?”

  Savine felt a coldness on the back of her neck. She remembered her father’s words. About magi. About Bayaz. About Valint and Balk. She made sure she kept smiling, but she made sure she was firm. “I am afraid I cannot help you.”

  “Ah, what a shame. I remember the last time we met, on the docks of Ostenhorm, before your rebellion against the Crown. You could not help me then, either. That proved a rather notable mistake.”

  Holding on to her smile took some effort. “Far from the only one I have made. Even so. You understand a woman must not put herself in too much debt.”

  “She must take care over the partners she chooses.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But even more over those she turns down.” The softer he talked, the more worried she became. “A woman with secrets, especially.”

  She wished she had a fan now, so she could brush him off with it. “We all have secrets, Master Sulfur.”

  “We are not all bastard offspring of a king.”

  Her smile crumpled. Time seemed to slow. She felt cold and burning hot at once. The foyer was an overbright whirl of faces. Keen ears. Judging eyes.

  “Perhaps… you might reconsider?” Sulfur had drifted very close. “The crown has become an awful weight to carry.” The back of his hand brushed her arm. “And since King Orso has no heir, perhaps one of your chi
ldren might inherit it?” His lips curled back to show sharp teeth. “Now tell me, which popped out first? The boy, or the—”

  “I’ll fucking kill you!” she snarled in his face, catching his jacket in her trembling fist. “Threaten my children? I’ll see you dead!”

  He looked far less surprised than she was. And only for a moment. Then he let his head drop on one side. “You really would have been my master’s first choice. But in my experience, and yours, too, I daresay, one never has to go far to find someone who will take your money. Or your secrets. Citizeness Heugen!” He brushed off her limp hand and stepped away into the crowd. “A moment of your time!”

  Savine saw Selest’s eyes dart over, as keen for any trace of opportunity as her own had once been. She tried to smile, but the muscles in her face would not work the way they used to. She could not see Zuri. The blood was pulsing behind her eyes.

  Her instinct was to run. To the docks. Then Angland. Styria. Distant Thond, for that matter. But she knew she was watched. She would not get far with two babies. And to run would be to admit her guilt. Of what, she hardly knew.

  They would think of something.

  Conspiracies

  “A conspiracy typical of those that riddle Adua!” thundered Sworbreck. “Just as maggots will riddle a harvest if left unchecked!”

  Orso did not doubt it was typical. In that it was a total fantasy.

  Sworbreck stalked past the dock, pointing out the accused one by one, finger vibrating with righteous rage. “A banker… a miller… a baker… and a Styrian agent!”

  It sounded like the start of a bad joke, but there had been little to laugh at since Judge had her predecessor tossed from the Tower of Chains. Risinau had swapped the old liars on the benches for new ones, ripped out the stained glass and turned the Lords’ Round into the Commons’ Round. Judge had installed clumsy boxes, docks, rails of rough-sawn wood, splattered the marble walls with slogans and turned it into the Court of the People. In the morning, Representatives wrestled over the details of government every bit as ineffectually as they had before. From the moment Judge flung herself into the chair where Risinau used to sit, her dirty feet propped on the High Table, court was in session and the people’s enemies should tremble.

  “The banker lent the money,” bellowed Sworbreck, “so the miller could adulterate his flour, so the baker could sell bread at inflated prices, causing hunger and discord in the service of a Styrian plot to manipulate the markets and undermine the Great Change!”

  Shrieks of horror from the overflowing public galleries. Grumbles of upset from the Representatives’ benches. Orso wondered how the accused had been picked. What terrible roll of the dice had nudged them over the invisible line from being the people to being enemies of the people? Citizen Brock was carefully silent, Orso noted. He had developed a fine sense for when to speak and when not to. What to say and what not to. It was coming to something when one wished one could have the Young Lion’s good judgement, as well as his wife. Orso frowned. Had he really just thought that?

  “I never met them!” the Styrian woman was wailing, wringing her hands. “I never even met them before now!”

  Orso winced at her strong accent, which drew instant jeers from above. Any hint of difference aroused suspicion. Be watchful! screamed one slogan hacked into the wall in letters twice the height of a man. Freedom means Punishment, roared another in streaky red. Conspiracies are everywhere! Gurkish Eaters sent by the Prophet Khalul to debase the coinage. Imperial ruses to weaken the People’s Army and annex the Near Country. Styrian plots to spread the rot through infected whores. Even Angland, Starikland and Westport were filthy with regression, royalism and treachery against the Great Change.

  Orso had intimate personal experience of government and felt petty selfishness, incompetence and bad luck were far more likely explanations for its shortcomings than intricate webs of malice spanning the Circle of the World. But then they were far less satisfying explanations, too. He rather wished the wilder theories were true. Had there been half as many secret monarchists as people claimed he would never have been deposed. Then he might have been sitting in that gilded chair presiding over his own, more polite brand of rank injustice. The crowned puppet for Bayaz to dangle before the nation with one hand while he picked its pocket with the other. The grinning figurehead of a ship crewed by ruthless torturers like Old Sticks, self-serving embezzlers like Lord Isher, brutal users like Lord Wetterlant.

  Orso winced and rubbed at the bridge of his nose.

  Sworbreck was dealing with the baker first. He was a chubby man, which made him look guilty of eating well, and he was sweating profusely, which made him look guilty of being warm, both of them capital crimes in this lean winter of the Great Change.

  “I been a baker twenty years,” he was saying. “My father was a baker.”

  “Hoarders!” someone screamed.

  “Take ’em to the Tower!”

  “Take ’em all!”

  The Styrian woman clutched her face with her hands as if she wanted to crush it between them. “Mercy!” she blubbed. “Mercy!”

  The court was not without it. Judge was the voice of the mob. She was their bitter rage, their envy and their greed, but she was also their sentimental forgiveness. When the mood turned for some well-spoken old man, some innocent-looking young woman, first Judge’s chin would crinkle, then her lower lip would tremble, then her black eyes would well with tears. Sometimes she would vault from behind the High Table, kiss the accused, clasp their head to her rusted breastplate. Then they would be embraced by weeping guards, applauded on their way out of the hall while songs were sung and slogans chanted, free Citizens and Citizenesses, enemies no more!

  Perhaps Judge liked seeing the hope in the eyes of the accused, so she could see it crushed. Perhaps she truly believed she was doing the good work and rejoiced in those righteously acquitted as much as those rightfully convicted. Perhaps—surely the most terrible possibility of all—she was doing the good work, and somehow he could not see it.

  The baker was trying to defend himself, but how to prove false what was self-evidently absurd? “I charged the lowest prices I could and still stay in business! But flour’s gone up so high—”

  “And so we come to you!” roared Sworbreck at the miller. He was bony and severe, with a habit of peering up shiftily from under his brows that did him no favours.

  “There was a poor harvest!” he barked out. “Now the cold weather’s frozen the canals, snarled up the roads. It’s hard to get goods into the city.”

  “Ah, so the government is to blame?” Sworbreck spread his arms towards the benches behind the dock, where the Representatives gravely shook their heads at such a slander. “And since the government consists of those chosen by the people…” Sworbreck leaned back, raised his arms to the balconies. “The people are to blame?”

  “It’s not a question of blame!” shouted the miller, hardly heard over the insults pouring from above. “It’s about facts!”

  But it was not about facts at all and was very much a question of blame as far as the public galleries were concerned. Someone threw something. A coin? It missed the miller and hit the Styrian woman on the forehead. She gave a shriek, slumping in the dock.

  “Who fucking threw that?” screamed Judge, veins bulging from her rashy neck. Captain Broad, who’d been lurking behind the High Table sipping from a hip flask, now burst forth, flinging a chair out of his way and sending it bouncing across the tiled floor, making everyone within twenty strides, including Orso, shrink back.

  “Who fucking threw that?” he roared, the tendons starting from his great fists, made furious by Judge’s fury as surely as a dog by its master’s. In the guilty silence that followed, the banker’s efforts at a defence could finally be heard.

  “I merely worked for the Banking House of Valint and Balk, I never profited personally from any—”

  “Usurer!” someone screeched. No doubt there were profiteers and speculators everywhere. Bef
ore the Great Change they had simply called that business, and the worst offenders had been celebrated as society’s greatest successes.

  The banker’s cracked lenses flashed as he glanced nervously upwards. “As you see…” He balanced a heavy ledger on the rail so the densely written numbers were angled towards Sworbreck. “The loans I handled were mostly to mining interests, mineral exploration, some foundries.”

  Representatives craned forwards to squint at the figures. Judge wrinkled her nose. Evidence in general was of little interest to her, but paperwork she treated with particular disdain.

  “This one typical, you see, six thousand marks—”

  “The court has not the time to indulge in this trivia,” grumbled Sworbreck, waving it away.

  The man began to look alarmed. He had clearly considered this a cast-iron defence. “But… these ledgers prove my innocence—”

  “Bastard!” someone shouted. “Liar!”

  “Enough numbers,” snarled Judge. “Get rid of the bloody books!”

  The thin Burner, Sarlby, seized the ledger. He and the banker wrestled over it, paper ripping.

  “But the numbers prove— Ah!”

  Sarlby finally tore the book free and started to beat the banker over the head with it. His co-defendants stared in horror, but the public gallery was thoroughly entertained.

  “Make him eat it!” Someone screeched with laughter. “Make him eat it!”

  “Order in the fucking court!” roared Judge.

  Sarlby flung the ledger away, pages flapping, and it spun across the tiled floor. The banker stood gasping, eye-lenses skewed, collar torn, blood running from a gash on his scalp. “The numbers…” he breathed, astonished, “prove…”

  Orso put his hands over his face and watched from between his fingers. The poor man had it backwards. Whatever the question, the Great Change was the answer. That was a fact none dared challenge. So the scarcity, the failures, the defeats, must be caused by profiteering, betrayal and conspiracy. If you could only purge all the disloyal, all the unfaithful, all the foreign agents, then there would be victory. Then there would be plenty. That the prescription was killing the patient could only mean that not enough had been administered. It was not a rational argument. Facts were useless against it. It was an argument based on faith. It belonged in a temple, not a court. The irony, of course, was that the Burners had burned the temples. So they had turned the Lords’ Round into a temple and called it a court.