“So…” mumbled Jezal, not quite sure what to say, “are you alright?”

Logen’s eyes swivelled to his. “Oh, I’m grand,” he said, with heavy irony. “Never better. How the hell did you get that cart out of there?”

The apprentice shrugged. “The horses pulled it out.”

“Master Quai has a gift for understatement,” chuckled Longfoot nervously. “It was a most exhilarating ride to the city’s South Gate—”

“Fight your way out, did you?”

“Well, not I, of course, fighting is not my—”

“Didn’t think so.” Logen leaned over and spat sourly onto the mud.

“We should at least consider being grateful,” croaked Bayaz, the air sighing and crackling in his throat as he breathed in. “There is much to be grateful for, after all. We are all still alive.”

“You sure?” snapped Ferro. “You don’t look it.” Jezal found himself in silent agreement there. The Magus could not have looked worse if he had actually died in Aulcus. Died, and already begun to decompose.

She ripped off her rag of a shirt and flung it savagely on the ground, sinews shifting across her scrawny back. “Fuck are you looking at?” she snarled at Jezal.

“Nothing,” he muttered, staring down at the dirt. When he dared to look up she was buttoning a fresh one up the front. Well, not entirely fresh. He had been wearing it himself a few days ago.

“That’s one of mine…” Ferro looked up at him with a glare so murderous that Jezal found himself taking a hesitant step back. “But you’re welcome to it… of course…”

“Ssss,” she hissed, jamming the hem violently down behind her belt, frowning all the while as if she was stabbing a man to death. Probably him. All in all, it was hardly the tearful reunion that Jezal might have hoped for, even if he did now feel somewhat like crying.

“I hope I never see this place again,” he muttered wistfully.

“I’m with you there,” said Logen. “Not quite so empty as we thought, eh? Do you think you could dream up a different way back?”

Bayaz frowned. “That would seem prudent. We will return to Calcis down the river. There are woods on this side of the water, further downstream. A few sturdy tree trunks lashed together, and the Aos will carry us straight to the sea.”

“Or to a watery grave.” Jezal remembered with some clarity the surging water in the canyon of the great river.

“My hope is better. In any case, there are still long miles to cover westward before we think about the return journey.”

Longfoot nodded. “Indeed there are, including a pass through a most forbidding range of mountains.”

“Lovely,” said Logen. “I can hardly wait.”

“Nor I. Unfortunately, not all the horses survived.” The Navigator raised his eyebrows. “We have two to pull the cart, two to ride… that leaves us two short.”

“I hate those fucking things anyway.” Logen strode to the cart and clambered up opposite Bayaz in the back.

There was a long pause as they all considered the situation. Two horses, three riders. Never a happy position. Longfoot was the first to speak. “I will need, of course, to scout forward as we come close to the mountains. Scouting, alas, is an essential part of any successful journey. One for which, unfortunately, I will require one of the horses…”

“I should probably ride,” murmured Jezal, shifting painfully, “what with my leg…”

Ferro looked at the cart, and Jezal saw her eyes meet Logen’s for a brief and intensely hostile moment.

“I’ll walk,” she barked.

It was raining as Superior Glokta hobbled back into Adua. A mean, thin, ugly sort of rain on a hard wind off the sea, that rendered the treacherous wood of the gangplank, the squealing timbers of the wharf, the slick stones of the quay, all slippery as liars. He licked at his sore gums, rubbed at his sore thigh, swept his grimace up and down the grey shoreline. A pair of surly-looking guardsmen were leaning against a rotten warehouse ten paces away. Further on a party of dockers were involved in a bitter dispute over a heap of crates. A shivering beggar nearby took a couple of paces towards Glokta, thought better of it, and slunk away.

No crowds of cheering commoners? No carpet of flower petals? No archway of drawn swords? No bevy of swooning maidens? It was hardly too great a surprise. There had been none the last time he returned from the South. Crowds rarely cheer too loudly for the defeated, no matter how hard they fought, how great their sacrifices, how long the odds. Maidens might wet themselves over cheap and worthless victories, but they don’t so much as blush for “I did my best”. Nor will the Arch Lector, I fear.

A particularly vicious wave slapped at the sea wall and threw a cloud of sullen spray all over Glokta’s back. He stumbled forward, cold water dripping from his cold hands, slipped and almost fell, tottered gasping across the quay and clung to the slimy wall of a crumbling shed at the far side. He looked up and saw the two guards staring at him.

“Is there something?” he snarled, and they turned their backs, muttering and pulling up their collars against the weather. Glokta fumbled his coat tight around him, felt the tails snatching at his wet legs. A few months in the sun and you feel as though you’ll never be cold again. How soon we forget. He frowned up and down the empty wharves. How soon we all forget.

“Ome ageh.” Frost looked pleased as he stepped off the gangplank with Glokta’s box under his arm.

“You don’t much like hot weather, do you?”

The Practical shook his heavy head, half-grinning into the winter drizzle, white hair spiky with wet. Severard followed behind him, squinting up at the grey clouds. He paused for a moment at the end of the plank, then he stepped off onto the stones of the quay.

“Good to be back,” he said.

I only wish I could share your enthusiasm, but I cannot relax quite yet. “His Eminence has sent for me, and judging by the way we left things in Dagoska, I think it more than likely that the meeting will… not go well.” A spectacular understatement. “You had better stay out of sight for a couple of days.”

“Out of sight? I don’t plan to see outside of a whorehouse for a week.”

“Very wise. And Severard. In case we don’t see each other again. Good luck.”

The Practical’s eyes glinted. “Always.” Glokta watched him stroll off through the rain towards the seedier parts of town. Just another day for Practical Severard. Never thinking more than an hour ahead. What a gift.

“Damn your miserable country and damn its bloody weather,” Vitari grumbled in her sing-song accent. “I have to go and speak to Sult.”

“Why so do I!” cried Glokta with exaggerated glee. “What a charming coincidence!” He offered her his bent elbow. “We can make a couple, and visit his Eminence together!”

She stared back at him. “Alright.”

But the pair of you will have to wait another hour for my head. “There’s just one call I need to make first.”

The tip of his stick cracked against the door. No answer. Damn it. Glokta’s back was hurting like hell and he needed to sit down. He rapped again with his cane, harder this time. The hinges creaked, the door swung open a crack. Unlocked. He frowned, pushed it all the way. The door frame was split inside, the lock shattered. Broken open. He limped across the threshold, into the hall. Empty and frosty cold. Not a stick of furniture anywhere. Almost as if she moved out. But why? Glokta’s eyelid gave a twitch. He had scarcely once thought about Ardee his whole time in the South. Other matters seemed so much more pressing. My one friend gave me this one task. If anything has happened to her…

Glokta pointed to the stairs, and Vitari nodded and crept up them silently, bending and sliding a glinting knife out from her boot. He pointed down the hall and Frost padded off deeper into the house, pressed up into the shadows by the wall. The living room door stood ajar, and Glokta shuffled to it and pushed it open.