“Exceptionally cock-eyed notions, as it happens. Sult wanted to return to an imaginary past where everyone kept their place and always did as they were told, and Marovia? Hah! Marovia wanted to piss power away to the people. Votes? Elections? The voice of the common man?”

“He aired some such notion.”

“I hope you aired the suitable level of contempt. Power for the people?” sneered Bayaz. “They don’t want it. They don’t understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.”

“Someone like you, I suppose?”

“Who better suited? Marovia thought to use me in his petty schemes, and all the while I made good use of him. While he tussled with Sult over scraps the game was already won. A move I had prepared some time before.”

Glokta slowly nodded. “Jezal dan Luthar.” Our little bastard.

“Your friend and mine.”

But a bastard is no use unless… “Crown Prince Raynault stood in the way.”

The Magus flicked a piece over and it rolled slowly from the board and rattled to the table. “We talk of great events. There is sure to be some wastage.”

“You made it seem that he was killed by an Eater.”

“Oh, he was.” Bayaz watched smugly from the shadows. “Not all who break the Second Law serve Khalul. My apprentice, Yoru Sulfur, has long been partial to a bite or two.” And he snapped his two rows of smooth and even teeth together.

“I see.”

“This is war, Superior. In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice. But only look who I am lecturing. You need no lessons in ruthlessness.”

“No.” They cut them into me in the Emperors prisons, and I have been practising them ever since.

Bayaz nudged one of the pieces gently forward. “A useful man, Sulfur. A man who long ago accepted the demands of necessity, and mastered the discipline of taking forms.” He was the guard, weeping outside Prince Raynault’s door. The guard who vanished into thin air the next day…

“A shred of cloth taken from the Emissary’s bed-chamber,” murmured Glokta. “Blood daubed on his robe.” And so an innocent man went to the gallows, and the war between Gurkhul and the Union blossomed. Two obstacles swept neatly away with one sharp flick of the broom.

“Peace with the Gurkish did not suit my purposes. It was sloppy of Sulfur to leave such blatant clues. But then he never expected you to care about the truth when there was a convenient explanation to hand.”

Glokta nodded, slowly, as the shape of things unfolded in his mind. “He heard of my investigations from Severard, and I received a charming visit from your walking corpse, Mauthis, telling me to halt or die.”

“Exactly so. On other occasions Yoru took another face, and called himself the Tanner, and incited a few peasants to some rather unbecoming behaviour.” Bayaz examined his fingernails. “All in a good cause, though, Superior.”

“To lend glamour to your latest puppet. To make him a favourite with the people. To make him familiar to the nobles, to the Closed Council. You were the source of the rumours.”

“Heroic acts in the ruined west? Jezal dan Luthar?” Bayaz snorted. “He did little more than whine about the rain.”

“Amazing the rubbish idiots will believe if you shout it loudly enough. And you rigged the Contest too.”

“You noticed that?” Bayaz’ smile grew wider. “I am impressed, Superior, I am most impressed. You have fumbled so very close to the truth this whole time.” And yet so very far away. “I wouldn’t feel badly about it. I have many advantages. Sult groped towards the answers, in the end, but far too late. I suspected from the first what his plans might be.”

“Which is why you asked me to investigate?”

“The fact that you did not oblige me until the very last moment was the source of some annoyance.”

“Asking nicely might have helped.” It would have been refreshing, at least. “I regret that I found myself in a difficult position. A case of too many masters.”

“No longer, though, eh? I was almost disappointed when I found out how limited Sult’s studies were. Salt, and candles, and incantations? How pathetically adolescent. Enough to put a timely end to that would-be democrat Marovia, perhaps, but nothing to pose the slightest threat to me.”

Glokta frowned down at the squares board. Sult and Marovia. For all their cleverness, for all their power, their ugly little struggle was an irrelevance. They were small pieces in this game. So small they never even guessed how vast the board truly was. Which makes me what? A speck of dust between the squares, at best.

“What of the mysterious visitor to your chambers the day I first met you?” A visitor to my chambers too, perhaps? A woman, and cold…

Angry lines cut across Bayaz’ forehead. “A mistake made in my youth. You will speak no more of it.”

“Oh, as you command. And the Great Prophet Khalul?”

“The war will continue. On different battlefields, with different soldiers. But this will be the last battle fought with the weapons of the past. The magic leaks from the world. The lessons of the Old Time fade into the darkness of history. A new age dawns.”

The Magus made a careless movement with one hand and something flickered into the air, clattered to the centre of the board and spun round and round until it lay flat, with the unmistakable sound of falling money. A golden fifty-mark piece, glinting warm and welcoming in the lamplight. Glokta almost laughed. Ah, even now, even here, it always comes down to this. Everything has a price.

“It was money that bought victory in King Guslav’s half-baked Gurkish war,” said Bayaz. “It was money that united the Open Council behind their bastard king. It was money that brought Duke Orso rushing to the defence of his daughter and tipped the balance in our favour. All my money.”

“It was money that enabled me to hold Dagoska as long as I did.”

“And you know whose.” Who would have thought? More first of the moneylenders than First of the Magi. Open Council and Closed, commoners and kings, merchants and torturers, all caught up in a golden web. A web of debts, and lies, and secrets, each strand plucked in its proper place, played like a harp by a master. And what of poor Superior Glokta, fumbling buffoon? Is there a place for his sour note in this sweet music? Or is the loan of my life about to be called in?

“I suppose I should congratulate you on a hand well played,” muttered Glokta bitterly.

“Bah.” Bayaz dismissed it with a wave. “Forcing a clutch of primitives together under that cretin Harod and making them act like civilised men. Keeping the Union in one piece through the civil war and bringing that fool Arnault to the throne. Guiding that coward Casamir to the conquest of Angland. Those were hands well played. This was nothing. I hold all the cards and always will do. I have—”

I tire of this. “And blah, blah, fucking blah. The stench of self-satisfaction is becoming quite suffocating. If you mean to kill me, blast me to a cinder now and let’s be done, but, for pity’s sake, subject me to no more of your boasting.”

They sat still for a long moment, gazing at each other in silence across the darkened table. Long enough for Glokta’s leg to start trembling, for his eye to start blinking, for his toothless mouth to turn dry as the desert. Sweet anticipation. Will it be now? Will it be now? Will it be—“Kill you?” asked Bayaz mildly. “And rob myself of your winning sense of humour?”

Not now. “Then… why reveal your game to me?”

“Because I will soon be leaving Adua.” The Magus leaned forwards, his hard face sliding into the light. “Because it is necessary that you understand where the power lies, and always will lie. It is necessary that you, unlike Sult, unlike Marovia, have a proper perspective. It is necessary… if you are to serve me.”