“I’ll hope to be the exception,” said Shivers, still gawping up at the Thunderhead. “So that must be Harding Grim.”

“Uh,” said Grim, scarcely looking up from checking his shafts.

“And you’re Threetrees?”

“That I am,” said the old boy, hands on his hips.

“Well,” muttered Shivers, rubbing at the back of his head. “I feel like I’m in deep water now, and no mistake. Deep water. Tul Duru, and Black Dow, and… bloody hell. You’re Threetrees, eh?”

“I’m him.”

“Well then. Shit. My father always said you was the best man left in all the North. That if he ever had to pick a man to follow, you’d be the one. “Til you lost to the Bloody-Nine, o’ course, but some things you can’t help. Rudd Threetrees, right before me now…”

“Why’ve you come here, boy?”

Shivers seemed to have run out of words, so the Dogman spoke for him. “He says he’s got two score Carls following him, and they all want to come over.”

Threetrees looked Shivers in the eye for a while. “Is that a fact?”

Shivers nodded. “You knew my father. He thought the way you did, and I’m cut from his cloth. Serving Bethod sticks in my neck.”

“Might be I think a man should pick his chief and stick to him.”

“I always thought so,” said Shivers, “but that blade cuts both ways, no? A chief should look out for his people too, shouldn’t he?” Dogman nodded to himself. A fair point to his mind. “Bethod don’t care a shit for none of us no more, if he ever did. He don’t listen to no one now but that witch of his.”

“Witch?” said Tul.

“Aye, this sorceress, this Caurib, or whatever. The witch. The one who makes the mist. Bethod’s dabbling with some dark company. And this war, there’s no purpose to it. Angland? Who wants it anyway, we got land aplenty. He’ll lead us all back to the mud. Long as there was no one else to follow we stuck with it, but when we heard Rudd Threetrees might still be alive, and with the Union, well…”

“You decided to have a look, eh?”

“We’ve had enough. Bethod’s got some strange boys along. These easterners, from out past the Crinna, bones and hides men, you know, hardly men at all. Got no code, no mercy, don’t hardly speak the same language we do. Fucking savages, the lot of ’em. Bethod’s got some down in the Union fortress there, and they got all the bodies hung up on the walls, all cut with the bloody cross, guts hanging out, rotting. It ain’t right. Then there’s Calder and Scale tossing out orders like they know shit from porridge, like they got some names o’ their own besides their father’s.”

“Fucking Calder,” growled Tul, shaking his head.

“Fucking Scale,” hissed Dow, spitting on the wet ground.

“No bigger pair o’ bastards in all the north,” said Shivers. “And now I hear tell that Bethod’s made a deal.”

“What kind of a deal?” asked Threetrees.

Shivers turned and spat over his shoulder. “A deal with the fucking Shanka, that’s what.”

Dogman stared. They all did. That was some evil kind of a rumour. “With the Flatheads? How?”

“Who knows? Might be that witch found some way to talk to ’em. Times are changing, fast, and it ain’t right, any of it. There’s a lot of boys over there ain’t happy. That’s without getting started on that Feared.”

Dow frowned. “Feared? I never heard of him.”

“Where you lot been? Under the ice?”

They all looked at each other. “Pretty much,” said the Dogman. “Pretty much.”

Cheap at the Price

“You have a visitor, sir,” muttered Barnam. His face, for some reason, was pale as death.

“Clearly,” snapped Glokta. “That was them knocking at the door, I assume.” He dropped his spoon into his barely touched bowl of soup and licked sourly at his gums. A particularly disgusting excuse for a meal, this evening. I miss Shickel’s cooking, if not her attempts to kill me. “Well, who is it, man?”

“It’s… er… it’s…”

Arch Lector Sult ducked through the low doorway so as not to disturb his flawless white hair on the frame. Ah. I see. He swept the cramped dining room with a scowl, lip wrinkled as though he had stumbled into an open sewer. “Don’t get up,” he spat at Glokta. I wasn’t planning to.

Barnam swallowed. “Can I get your Eminence any—”

“Get out!” sneered Sult, and the old servant nearly fell over in his haste to make it to the door. The Arch Lector watched him go with withering scorn. The good humour of our previous meeting seems a vaguely remembered dream.

“Damn peasants,” he hissed as he slid in behind Glokta’s narrow dining table. “There’s been another uprising near Keln, and this bastard the Tanner was in the midst of it again. An unpopular eviction turned into a bloody riot. Lord Finster entirely misjudged the mood, got three of his guards killed and himself besieged in his manor by an angry mob, the halfwit. They couldn’t get in, fortunately, so they satisfied themselves with burning down half the village.” He snorted. “Their own damn village! That’s what an idiot does when he gets angry. He destroys whatever’s nearest, even if it’s his own house! The Open Council are screaming for blood of course. Peasant blood, and lots of it. Now we have to get the Inquisition going down there, root out some ringleaders, or some fools who can be made to look like them. It should be Finster himself we’re hanging, the dolt, but that’s hardly an option.”

Glokta cleared his throat. “I will pack for Keln immediately.” Tickling the peasantry. Hardly my choice of task, but—

“No. I need you for something else. Dagoska has fallen.”

Glokta raised an eyebrow. Not so great a surprise, though. Hardly enough of a shock, one would have thought, to squeeze such a figure as his Eminence into my narrow quarters.

“It seems the Gurkish were let in by a prior arrangement. Treason, of course, but at a time like that… hardly surprising. The Union forces were massacred, such as they were, but many of the mercenaries were merely enslaved, and the natives, by and large, were spared.” Gurkish mercy, who could have thought it? Miracles do happen, then.

Sult flicked angrily at a speck of dust on one immaculate glove. “I hear that, when the Gurkish had broken into the citadel, General Vissbruck killed himself rather than be captured.” Well I never. I didn’t think he had it in him. “He ordered his body burned, so as not to give the enemy any remains to defile, then he cut his own throat. A brave man. A courageous statement. He will be honoured in Open Council tomorrow.”

How wonderful for him. A horrible death with honour is far preferable to a long life in obscurity, of course. “Of course,” said Glokta quietly. “A brave man.”

“That is not all. An envoy has arrived on the very heels of this news. An envoy from the Emperor of Gurkhul.”

“An envoy?”

“Indeed. Apparently seeking… peace.” The Arch Lector said the word with a sneer of contempt.

“Peace?”

“This room seems rather small for an echo.”

“Of course, your Eminence, but—”

“Why not? They have what they want. They have Dagoska, and there is nowhere further for them to go.”

“No, Arch Lector.” Except, perhaps, across the sea…

“Peace. It sticks in the craw to give anything away, but Dagoska was never worth much to us. Cost us more than we made from it, if anything. Nothing more than a trophy for the King. I daresay we’re better off without it, the worthless rock.”

Glokta bowed his head. “Absolutely, your Eminence.” Although it makes one wonder why we bothered fighting for it.

“Unfortunately, the loss of the place leaves you with nothing to be Superior of.” The Arch Lector looked almost pleased. So it’s back to plain old Inquisitor, eh? I suppose I’ll no longer be welcome at the best social gatherings— “But I have decided to let you keep the tide. As Superior of Adua.”