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Commissar told him. “Low hab is choked with refugees. No more may be admitted. You camp here. Supplies will come in time.”
    “What’s your name?” Soric asked.
    “Commissar Bownome.”
    Soric paused, leaned awkwardly on his crutch, and wiped the ash from his supervisor’s badge with a hawk of spit.
    He held it up so the uniformed man could see. “Soric, plant supervisor, Smeltery One. We’ve just been bombed to gak and my workers need access to cover and treatment. Now, not in time.”
    “There is no way through. Access is denied. Make your people comfortable here.” The troopers behind Bownome raised their weapons as punctuation.
    “Here? In a stinking street with the works burning behind us? I don’t think so. Boy, Smeltery One is the property of Noble House Gavunda. We are all Lord Gavunda’s souls. If he hears of this—”
    “I answer only to House Sondar. As should you. Don’t threaten me.”
    “Where’s the gakking threat, you idiot?” Soric asked, looking round at his massing workers and getting a spirited laugh in answer. “A one-eyed cripple like me? Let us through.”
    “Aye, let us through!” bellowed a worker beside Soric. Ozmac, probably, but it was impossible to tell under the soot. Other workers jeered and agreed.
    “Do you understand what a State of Emergency is, old man?” Bownome asked.
    “Understand? I’m gakking living it!” Soric blurted. “Stand aside!” He tried to push past the VPHC officer, but Bownome pushed back and Soric fell off his crutch onto the debris-littered paving.
    There were shouts of disbelief and anger. Workers surged forward. Bownome backed away, pulled out his autopistol and fired into the approaching mass.
    Ozmac fell dead and another collapsed wounded.
    “That’s it! Enough! Be warned!” yelled the commissar. “You will all stay where—”
    Soric’s axe-rake crutch shattered Bownome’s skull and felled him to the ground. Before any of the troopers could react, the workers were on them like a tidal wave. All of the troopers were killed in a few seconds.
    The smeltery workers gathered up their weapons. Worker Gannif handed the commissar’s pistol to Soric.
    “I’ll see you right!” Soric barked. He waved for them to follow him down the transit channel. They cheered him and moved on, at his heels, into the city.
     
    “Marshal Gnide is dead,” High Master Sondar told the Legislature. The hall had remained silent as the High Master’s floating throne ascended to the main dais with its stone-faced VPHC vanguard. Sondar’s throne had locked into place above the High Legislator’s dais and the master of Vervunhive had spent a long moment looking out at the assembly before speaking. He was dressed in regal robes, his face masked with a turquoise ceramic janus.
    “Dead,” Sondar repeated. “Our hive faces a time of war — and you, noble houses, low houses, guilders, you decide it is time to usurp my position?”
    Silence remained.
    Sondar’s masked visage turned to look around at the vast swoop of the tiered hall.
    “We are one, or we are nothing.”
    Still the nervous silence.
    “I believe you think me weak. I am not weak. I believe you think me stupid. I am not that either. I believe that certain high houses see this as an opportunity to further their own destinies.”
    The High Master allowed Noble Anko to rise with a wave of his hand.
    “We never doubted you, High Lord. The Trade War fell upon us so suddenly.”
    You witless weakling, Chass thought. Sondar has led us to this blind and you reconcile sweetly. Where is the fervour that had us vote to take executive action this afternoon?
    “Zoica will be denied,” Sondar said. Chass watched the High Lord’s movements and saw how jerky they were. It’s not him, he thought. The wretch has sent another servitor puppet to represent him.
    “We have sent word to the Northern Foundry Collectives and to Vannick Magna. They will bolster us with garrison troops. Our counterattack will begin in two days.”
    There was delighted commotion from the commons pit