The moment he lost his position, all three years of stored-up silence converted, in a single evening, into its true form, which was contempt, and it lined both sides of his walk to the doors.

I did not arrange that.

I could not have arranged it.

It was simply the truth of how those two hundred people had felt about him all along, finally made visible because they were no longer afraid to show it.

There is a lesson in that which I have carried into how I run things since: the silence of people who fear you is not the same as the respect of people who trust you, and a leader who cannot tell the difference is standing on ground that will disappear the day his power does.

Lucan learned that lesson at the worst possible moment, walking through a corridor of people who had finally stopped being afraid.