Valint and Balk. Debts, and blackmail, and betrayal. How horribly banal it all is. That’s the trouble with answers. They’re never as exciting as the questions, somehow. Glokta’s lips twitched into a sad smile. “No choice. I know exactly how you feel.” He lifted the cleaver again.

“But—”

Bang! The heavy blade scraped against the table-top as Glokta swept four more neat slices of flesh carefully out of the way. Severard screamed, and gasped, and screamed some more. Desperate, slobbering screams, his face screwed up tight. Just like the prunes I sometimes have for breakfast. He still had half his little finger, but the other three were nothing more than oozing stumps. But we cannot stop now, not after we have come so far. We cannot stop for anything, can we? We must know it all.

“What about the Arch Lector?” asked Glokta, stretching his neck to the side and working his stiff shoulder. “How did he know what went on in Dagoska? What did you tell him?”

“How did he… what… I told him nothing! I told him—”

Bang! Severard’s thumb flew off, spinning across the table, leaving behind a spiralling trail of bloody spots. Glokta worked his hips back and forth, trying to wriggle out of the aches down his legs, the aches up his back. But there is no escaping them. Every possible position, a little worse than the one before. “What did you tell Sult?”

“I… I…” Severard stared up, his mouth hanging open, a long string of drool dangling from his bottom lip. “I…”

Glokta frowned. That is not an answer. “Tie it off at the wrist and get the other hand ready. We’ve nothing left to work with here.”

“No! No! Please… I didn’t… please…” How I tire of the pleading. The words “no” and “please” lose all meaning after half an hour of this. They begin to sound like a sheep bleating. We are all lambs to the slaughter, in the end. He stared at the pieces of finger scattered across the bloody table. Meat for the butcher. Glokta’s head hurt, the room was too bright. He put the cleaver down and rubbed at his sore eyes. A draining business, mutilating your closest friends. He realised he had smeared blood across his eyelids. Damn it.

Frost had already tightened a tourniquet round Severard’s wrist and manacled the bloody remains of his left hand back to the chair. He unfastened his right arm and guided it carefully to the table. Glokta watched him do it. All neat, and business-like, and ruthlessly efficient. Does his conscience nag at him, I wonder, when the sun goes down? I doubt it. I give the orders after all. And I act on orders from Sult, on advice from Marovia, on the demands of Valint and Balk. What choice do any of us have, in the end? Why, the excuses almost make themselves.

Frost’s white face was dusted with bloody red specks as he spread Severard’s right hand out on the table, just where the left one had been. He did not even struggle this time. You lose the will, after a while. I remember. “Please…” he whispered.

It would be so very nice to stop. Most likely the Gurkish will burn the whole city and kill us all, and then who will care who told who what? If by some miracle they fail, no doubt Sult will finish me, or Valint and Balk will collect their debt in my blood. What will it matter when I am floating face-down in the docks whether certain questions were ever answered? Then why do I do this? Why?

The blood reached the edge of the wood and started dripping to the floor with a steady tap, tap, tap. No other answer. Glokta felt a flurry of twitches run up the side of his face. He took hold of the cleaver again.

“Look at this.” He gestured at the pieces of bloody flesh scattered across the table. “Look what you’ve lost here, already. All because you won’t tell me what I need to know. Do you not value your own fingers? They’re no use to you now, are they? They’re no use to me, I can tell you that. They’re no use to anyone, besides a hungry dog or two, maybe.” Glokta bared the yawning hole in his front teeth, and ground the point of the cleaver into the wood between Severard’s outspread fingers. “One more time.” He pronounced the words with icy precision. “What… did you tell… his Eminence?”

“I… told him… nothing!” The tears ran down Severard’s hollow cheeks, his chest shuddered with sobs. “I told him nothing! Valint and Balk, I had no choice! I’ve never spoken to Sult in my fucking life! Not a word! Never!”

Glokta looked into his Practical’s eyes, his prisoner’s eyes, for a long moment, trying to see the truth. All was silent except for Severard’s gurgling, agonised breath. Then Glokta wrinkled his lip and tossed the cleaver down rattling on the table. Why give up your other hand, when you have confessed already? He gave a long sigh, reached out and gently wiped the tears from Severard’s pale face. “Alright. I believe you.”

But what then? We are left with more questions than before, and nowhere to look for the answers. He arched his back, wincing at the aches in his twisted spine, down his twisted leg, through his toeless foot. Sult must have gained his information elsewhere. Who else survived Dagoska, who else saw enough? Eider? She would never dare reveal herself. Vitari? If she wanted to spill her guts she could have done it at the time. Cosca? His Eminence would never work with a man that unpredictable. I only use him myself because I have no other choice. Then who?

Glokta’s eyes met Frost’s. Pink eyes, unblinking. They stared at him, bright and hard as pink gemstones. And the wheels clicked into place.

I see.

Neither one of them spoke. Frost reached out, without much haste, his eyes never leaving Glokta’s, and wrapped both his thick arms around Severard’s neck. The ex-Practical could only stare, helpless.

“What’re—” Frost frowned slightly. There was a sharp crunching sound as he wrenched Severard’s head sideways. As simple and careless as killing a chicken. Severard’s skull flopped backwards as Frost let him go, and far past backwards, unnatural knobbly shapes sticking from the pale skin of his twisted neck.

The albino stood up, between Glokta and the door, hanging ajar. No way out. Glokta winced as he stumbled backwards, the tip of his cane scraping against the floor. “Why?” Frost came on, slowly and surely, his white fists clenched tight, his white face expressionless behind his mask. Glokta held up one hand. “Just tell me why, damn it!”

The albino shrugged. I suppose some questions have no answers, after all. Glokta’s twisted back hit the curved wall. And my time is up. Ah well. He took a long breath. The odds were always stacked against me. I do not mind dying, so very much.

Frost raised his white fist, then grunted. The cleaver sank deep into his heavy shoulder with a dull smack. Blood began to leak out from it into his shirt. Frost turned. Ardee stood behind him. The three of them stared at each other for a moment. Then Frost punched her in the face. She reeled away and crashed into the side of the table, slid limp to the floor, dragging it over on its side, Glokta’s case clattering down beside her, instruments tumbling, blood and bits of flesh scattering. Frost started to turn back, the cleaver still wedged in his flesh, his left arm hanging limp.

Glokta’s lips curled away from his empty gums. I do not mind dying. But I refuse to be beaten.

He set his feet as best he could, ignoring the pain that stabbed through his toeless foot and up his front leg. He brought up his cane and jammed his thumb into its hidden catch. It had been made to his precise instructions by the same man who had made the case for his instruments. And is an even finer piece of craftsmanship.

There was a gentle click as the wood sprang open on secret hinges and dropped away revealing a two-foot needle of mirror-bright metal. He let go a piercing shriek.