“Our magical friends are back in town.”

Severard lifted his mask and scratched behind it. “The Magi?”

“The First of the bastards, no less, and his bold company of heroes. Him, and his slinking apprentice, and that woman. The Navigator too. Keep an eye on them, and see if there’s a piglet we can separate from the herd. It’s high time we knew what they were about. Do you still have your charming house, by the water?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Perhaps for once we can get ahead of the game, and when his Eminence demands answers we can have them to hand.” And I can finally earn a pat on the head from my master.

“What shall we do with these?” asked Vitari, jerking her spiky head towards the corpses.

Glokta sighed. “The hogs will eat anything, apparently.”

The city was growing dark as Glokta dragged his ruined leg through the emptying streets and up towards the Agriont. The shopkeepers were closing their doors, the householders were lighting their lamps, candlelight spilling out into the dusky alleyways through chinks around the shutters. Happy families settling down to happy dinners, no doubt. Loving fathers with their lovely wives, their adorable children, their full and meaningful lives. My heartfelt congratulations.

He pressed his remaining teeth into his sore gums with the effort of maintaining his pace, sweat starting to dampen his shirt, his leg burning more and more with every lurching step. But I’m not stopping for this useless lump of dead meat. The pain crept up from ankle to knee, from knee to hip, from hip all the way up his twisted spine and into his skull. All this effort just to kill a mid-level administrator, who worked no more than a few buildings away from the House of Questions in any case. It’s a damn waste of my time, is what it is, it’s a damn—

“Superior Glokta?”

A man had stepped up, respectfully, his face in shadow. Glokta squinted at him. “Do I—”

It was well done, there was no denying it. He was not even aware of the other man until the bag was over his head and one of his arms was twisted behind his back, pushing him helplessly forward. He stumbled, fumbled his cane and heard it clatter to the cobbles.

“Aargh!” A searing spasm shot through his back as he tried unsuccessfully to drag his arm free, and he was forced to hang limp, gasping with pain inside the bag. In a moment they had his wrists tied and he felt a powerful hand shoved under each of his armpits. He was marched away with great speed, one man on each side, his feet barely scraping on the cobbles as they went. The fastest I’ve walked in a good long while, anyway. Their grip was not rough, but it was irresistible. Professionals. An altogether better class of thug than Morrow stretched to. Whoever ordered this is no fool. So who did order it?

Sult himself, or one of Sult’s enemies? One of his rivals in the race for the throne? High Justice Marovia? Lord Brock? Anyone on the entire Open Council? Or could it be the Gurkish? They have never been my closest friends. The banking house of Valint and Balk, perhaps, chosen finally to call in their debt? Might I have seriously misjudged young Captain Luthar, even? Or could it simply be Superior Goyle, no longer keen to share his job with the cripple? It was quite the list, now that he was forced to consider it.

He heard the footfalls slapping around him. Narrow alleys. He had no idea how far they had come. His breath echoed in the bag, rasping, throaty. The heart thumps, the skin prickles with cold sweat. Excited. Scared, even. What might they want with me? People are not snatched from the street in order to be given promotions, or confections, or tender kisses, more’s the pity. I know why people are snatched from the street. Few better.

Down a set of steps, the toes of his boots scuffing helplessly against the treads. The sound of a heavy door being heaved shut. Footsteps echoing in a tiled corridor. Another door closing. He felt himself dumped unceremoniously in a chair. And now, no doubt, for better or worse, we shall find out…

The bag was snatched suddenly from his head and Glokta blinked as harsh light stabbed at his eyes. A white room, too bright for comfort. A type of room with which I am sadly familiar. And yet it looks so much uglier from this side of the table. Someone was sitting opposite. Or the blurry outline of a someone. He closed one eye and peered through the other as his vision adjusted.

“Well,” he murmured. “What a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope.”

“I suppose we’ll see.” Carlot dan Eider had changed. And it would seem that exile has not entirely disagreed with her. Her hair had grown back, not all the way, perhaps, but more than far enough to manage a fetching style. The bruises round her throat had faded, there were only the very faintest of marks where her cheek had been covered in scabs. She had swapped traitor’s sack-cloth for the travelling clothes of a lady of means, and looked extremely well in them. Jewels twinkled on her fingers, and around her neck. She seemed every bit as rich and sleek as when they first met. That, and she was smiling. The smile of the player who holds all the cards. Why is it that I cannot learn? Never do a good turn. Especially not for a woman.

A small pair of scissors lay on the table before her, within easy reach. Of the type that rich women use to trim their nails. But just as good for trimming the skin from the soles of a man’s feet, for trimming his nostrils wider, for trimming his ears off, strip by slow strip…

Glokta found it decidedly difficult to move his eyes away from those polished little blades, shining in the bright lamplight. “I thought I told you never to come back,” he said, but his voice lacked its customary authority.

“You did. But then I thought… why ever not? I have assets in the city that I was not willing to relinquish, and some business opportunities that I am keen to take advantage of.” She took up the scissors, trimmed the thinnest scrap from the corner of one already perfectly-shaped thumbnail, and frowned at the results. “And it’s hardly as though you’ll be telling anyone I’m here, now, is it?”

“My concerns for your safety are all laid to rest,” grunted Glokta. My concerns for my own, alas, grow with every moment. A man is never so crippled, after all, that he could not be more so. “Did you really need to go to all this trouble just to share your travel arrangements?”

Her smile grew somewhat broader, if anything. “I hope my men didn’t hurt you. I did ask them to be gentle. At least for the time being.”

“A gentle kidnapping is still a kidnapping, though, don’t you find?”

“Kidnapping is such an ugly word. Why don’t we think of it as an invitation difficult to resist? At least I let you keep your clothes, no?”

“That particular favour is a mercy to us both, believe me. An invitation to what, might I ask, beyond a painful manhandling and a brief conversation?”

“I’m hurt that you need more. But there was something else, since you mention it.” She pared away another sliver of nail with her scissors, and her eyes rolled up to his. “A little debt left over, from Dagoska. I fear that I will not sleep easily until it is repaid.”

A few weeks in a black cell and a choking to the point of death? What form of repayment might that earn me? “Please, then,” hissed Glokta through his gums, his eyelid flickering as he watched those blades snip, snip, snip. “I can scarcely stand the suspense.”

“The Gurkish are coming.”

He paused for a moment, wrong-footed. “Coming here?”

“Yes. To Midderland. To Adua. To you. They have built a fleet, in secret. They began building it after the last war, and now it is complete. Ships to rival anything the Union has.” She tossed her scissors down on the table and gave a long sigh. “Or so I hear.”