“Where is this money now?”

“Gone! I spent it! On women… and on wine, and, and, on anything!”

Glokta clicked his tongue. “Tut, tut.” Greed and conspiracy, injustice and betrayal, robbery and murder. All the ingredients of a tale to titillate the masses. Saucy, but hardly relevant. He worked his hand around the pincers. “It is the Superior himself, not his money, that interests me. Believe me when I say that I grow tired of asking the question. What became of Davoust?”

“I… I… I don’t know!”

True, perhaps. But hardly the answer I need. “Not good enough.” Glokta squeezed his hand and the metal jaws bit cleanly through flesh and met in the middle with a gentle click. Harker bellowed, and thrashed, and roared in agony, blood bubbling from the red square of flesh where his nipple used to be and running down his pale belly in dark streaks. Glokta winced at a twinge in his neck and stretched his head out until he heard it click. Strange how, with time, even the most terrible suffering of others can become… tedious.

“Practical Frost, the Inquisitor is bleeding! If you please!”

“I’th thorry.” The iron scraped as Frost dragged it from the brazier, glowing orange. Glokta could feel the heat of it even from where he was sitting. Ah, hot iron. It keeps no secrets, it tells no lies.

“No! No! I—” Harker’s words dissolved into a bubbling scream as Frost ground the brand into the wound and the room filled slowly with the salty aroma of cooking meat. A smell which, to Glokta’s disgust, caused his empty stomach to rumble. How long is it since I had a good slice of meat? He wiped a fresh sheen of sweat from his face with his free hand and worked his aching shoulders under his coat.

An ugly business, that we find ourselves in. So why do I do this? The only answer was the soft crunch as Frost slid the iron carefully back into the coals, sending up a dusting of orange sparks. Harker twisted, and whimpered, and shook, his weeping eyes bulging, a strand of smoke still curling up from the blackened flesh on his chest. An ugly business, of course. No doubt he deserves it, but that changes nothing. Probably he has no clue what became of Davoust, but that changes nothing either. The questions must be asked, and exactly as if he did know the answers.

“Why do you insist on defying me, Harker? Could it be… that you suppose… that once I’m done with your nipples I’ll have run out of ideas? Is that what you’re thinking? That your nipples are where I’ll stop?”

Harker stared at him, bubbles of spit forming and breaking on his lips. Glokta leaned closer. “Oh, no, no, no. This is only the beginning. This is before the beginning. Time opens up ahead of us in pitiless abundance. Days, and weeks, and months of it, if need be. Do you seriously believe that you can keep your secrets for that long? You belong to me, now. To me, and to this room. This cannot stop until I know what I need to know.” He reached forward and gripped Harker’s other nipple between thumb and forefinger. He took up the pincers and opened their bloody jaws. “How difficult can that be to understand?”

Magister Eider’s dining chamber was fabulous to behold. Cloths of silver and crimson, gold and purple, green and blue and vivid yellow, rippled in the gentle breeze from the narrow windows. Screens of filigree marble adorned the walls, great pots as high as a man stood in the corners. Heaps of pristine cushions were tossed about the floor, as though inviting passers-by to sprawl in comfortable decadence. Coloured candles burned in tall glass jars, casting warm light into every corner, filling the air with sweet scent. At one end of the marble hall clear water trickled gently in a star-shaped pool. There was more than a touch of the theatrical about the place. Like a Queen’s boudoir from some Kantic legend.

Magister Eider, head of the Guild of Spicers, was herself the centrepiece. The very Queen of merchants. She sat at the top of the table in a pristine white gown, shimmering silk with just the slightest, fascinating hint of transparency. A small fortune in jewels flashed on every inch of tanned skin, her hair was piled up and held in place with ivory combs, excepting a few strands, curling artfully around her face. It looked very much as if she had been preparing herself all day. And not a moment was wasted.

Glokta, hunched in his chair at the opposite end with a bowl of steaming soup before him, felt as if he had shuffled into the pages of a storybook. A lurid romance, set in the exotic south, with Magister Eider as the heroine, and myself the disgusting, the crippled, the black-hearted villain. How will this fable end, I wonder? “So, tell me, Magister, to what do I owe this honour?”

“I understand that you have spoken to the other members of the council. I was surprised, and just a little hurt, that you had not sought an audience with me already.”

“I apologise if you felt left out. It seemed only fitting that I saved the most powerful until last.”

She looked up with an air of injured innocence. And a most consummately acted one. “Powerful? Me? Vurms controls the budget, issues the decrees, Vissbruck commands the troops, holds the defences. Kahdia speaks for the great majority of the populace. I scarcely figure.”

“Come now.” Glokta grinned his toothless grin. “You are radiant, of course, but I am not quite blinded. Vurms’ budget is a pittance compared to what the Spicers make. Kahdia’s people have been rendered almost helpless. Through your pickled friend Cosca you command more than twice the troops that Vissbruck does. The only reason the Union is even interested in this thirsty rock is for the trade that your guild controls.”

“Well, I don’t like to boast.” The Magister gave an artless shrug. “But I suppose that I do have some passing influence in the city. You have been asking questions, I see.”

“That’s what I do.” Glokta raised his spoon to his mouth, trying his best not to slurp between his remaining teeth. “This soup is delicious, by the way.” And, one hopes, not fatal.

“I thought you might appreciate it. You see, I have been asking questions also.”

The water plopped and tinkled in the pool, the fabric rustled on the walls, the silverware clicked gently against the fine pottery of their bowls. I would call that first round a draw. Carlot dan Eider was the first to break the silence.

“I realise, of course, that you have a mission from the Arch Lector himself. A mission of the greatest importance. I see that you are not a man to mince your words, but you might want to tread a little more carefully.”

“I admit my gait is awkward. A war wound, compounded by two years of torture. It’s a wonder I got to keep the leg at all.”

She smiled wide, displaying two rows of perfect teeth. “I am thoroughly tickled, but my colleagues have found you somewhat less entertaining. Vurms and Vissbruck have both taken a decided dislike to you. High-handed was the phrase they used, I believe, among others I had better not repeat.”

Glokta shrugged. “I am not here to make friends.” And he drained his glass of a predictably excellent wine.

“But friends can be useful. If nothing else, a friend is one less enemy. Davoust insisted on upsetting everyone, and the results have not been happy.”

“Davoust did not enjoy the support of the Closed Council.”

“True. But no document will stop a knife thrust.”

“Is that a threat?”

Carlot dan Eider laughed. It was an easy, open, friendly laugh. It was hard to believe that anyone who made such a sound could be a traitor, or a threat, or anything other than a perfectly charming host. And yet I am not entirely convinced. “That is advice. Advice born of bitter experience. I would prefer it if you did not disappear quite yet.”