“My thanks.”

“Thanks?”

“I think you might have loosened my neck up just a fraction.” Glokta smiled, showing her his few bloody teeth. “For two years I was a captive of the Gurkish. Two years in the darkness of the Emperor’s prisons. Two years of cutting, and chiselling, and burning. Do you think the thought of a slap or two scares me?” He chuckled bloody laughter in her face. “It hurts more when I piss! Do you think I’m scared to die?” He grimaced at the stabbing through his spine as he leaned towards her. “Every morning… that I wake up alive… is a disappointment! If you want answers you’ll have to give me answers. Like for like.”

She stared at him for a long moment, not blinking. “You were a prisoner of the Gurkish?”

Glokta swept a hand over his twisted body. “They gave me all this.”

“Huh. We have both lost something to the Gurkish, then.” She slid down onto crossed legs. “Questions. Like for like. But if you try to lie to me—”

“Questions, then. I would be failing in my duties as a host if I did not allow you to go first.”

She did not smile. But then she does not seem the joking type. “Why are you watching me?”

I could lie, but for what? I might as well die telling the truth. “I am watching Bayaz. The two of you seem friendly, and Bayaz is hard to watch these days. So I am watching you.”

She scowled. “He is no friend of mine. He promised me vengeance, that is all. He has yet to deliver.”

“Life is full of disappointments.”

“Life is made of disappointments. Ask your question, cripple.”

Once she has her answers, will it be bath-time again, and this time my last? Her flat yellow eyes gave nothing away. Empty, like the eyes of an animal. But what are my choices? He licked the blood from his lips, and leaned back against the wall. I might as well die a little wiser. “What is the Seed?”

Her frown deepened by the smallest fraction. “Bayaz said it is a weapon. A weapon of very great power. Great enough to turn Shaffa to dust. He thought it was hidden, at the edge of the World, but he was wrong. He was not happy to be wrong.” She frowned at him for a silent moment. “Why are you watching Bayaz?”

“Because he stole the crown and put it on a spineless worm.”

She snorted. “There at least we can agree.”

“There are those in my government who worry about the direction in which he might take us. Who worry profoundly.” Glokta licked at one bloody tooth. “Where is he taking us?”

“He tells me nothing. I do not trust him, and he does not trust me.”

“There too we can agree.”

“He planned to use the Seed as a weapon. He did not find it, so he must find other weapons. My guess is he is taking you to war. A war against Khalul, and his Eaters.”

Glokta felt a flurry of twitches run up the side of his face and set his eyelid fluttering. Damn treacherous jelly! Her head jerked to the side. “You know of them?”

“A passing acquaintance.” Well, where’s the harm? “I caught one, in Dagoska. I asked it questions.”

“What did it tell you?”

“It talked of righteousness and justice.” Two things that I have never seen. “It talked of war and sacrifice.” Two things that I have seen too much of. “It said that your friend Bayaz killed his own master.” The woman did not move so much as an eyelash. “It said that its father, the Prophet Khalul, still seeks vengeance.”

“Vengeance,” she hissed, her hands bunching into fists. “I will show them vengeance!”

“What did they do to you?”

“They killed my people.” She uncrossed her legs. “They made me a slave.” She rose smoothly to her feet, looming over him. “They stole my life from me.”

Glokta felt the corner of his mouth twitch up. “One more thing we have in common.” And I sense my borrowed time is up.

She reached down and grabbed two fistfuls of his wet coat. She dragged him from the floor with fearsome strength, his back sliding up the wall. Body found floating in the bath…? He felt his nostrils opening wide, the air hissing fast in his bloody nose, his heart thumping in anticipation. No doubt my ruined body will struggle, as best it can. An irresistible reaction to the lack of air. The unconquerable instinct to breathe. No doubt I will thrash and wriggle, just as Tulkis, the Gurkish ambassador, thrashed and wriggled when they hanged him, and dragged his guts out for nothing.

He did his twisted best to stay up under his own power, to stand as close to straight as he could manage. After all, I was a proud man once, even if that is all far behind me. Hardly the end that Colonel Glokta would have hoped for. Drowned in the bath by a woman in a dirty shirt. Will they find me slumped over the rim, my arse in the air? But what does it matter? It is not how you die, but how you lived, that counts.

She let go of his coat, flattened the front with a slap of her hand. And what has my life been, these past years? What do I have that I might truly miss? Stairs? Soup? Pain? Lying in the darkness with the memories of the things I have done digging at me? Waking in the morning to the stink of my own shit? Will I miss tea with Ardee West? A little perhaps. But will I miss tea with the Arch Lector? It almost makes you wonder why I didn’t do it myself, years ago. He stared into his killer’s eyes, as hard and bright as yellow glass, and he smiled. A smile of the purest relief. “I am ready.”

“For what?” She pressed something into his limp hand. The handle of his cane. “If you have more business with Bayaz, leave me out of it. I will not be so gentle next time.” She backed slowly towards the doorway, a bright rectangle against the shadowy wall. She turned, and the sound of her boots receded down the corridor. Aside from the soft tip-tap of water dripping from his wet coat, all fell silent.

And so, it seems, I survive. Again. Glokta raised his eyebrows. Perhaps the trick is not wanting to.

The Fourth Day

He was an ugly bastard, this Easterner. A huge big one, dressed all in stinking, half-tanned furs and a bit of rusted chain-mail, more ornament than protection. Greasy black hair, bound up here and there with rough-forged silver rings, dripped with the thin rain. He had a great scar down one cheek and another across his forehead, and the countless nicks and pittings of lesser wounds and boils as a lad, nose flattened and bent sideways like a dented spoon. His eyes were screwed up tight with effort, his yellow teeth were bared, the front two missing, his grey tongue pressed into the gap. A face that had seen war all its days. A face that had lived by sword, and axe, and spear, and counted every day alive a bonus.

For Logen, it was almost like looking in a mirror.

They held each other as tight as a pair of bad lovers, blind to everything around them. They lumbered back and forward, lurching like feuding drunkards. They plucked and tugged, bit and gouged, gripped and tore, strained in frozen fury, blasting sour breath in each other’s faces. An ugly, and a wearying, and a fatal dance, and all the while the rain came down.

Logen took a painful dig in the gut and had to twist and wriggle to smother a second. He gave a half-hearted head-butt and did nothing more then scuff Ugly’s face with his forehead. He nearly got tripped, stumbled, felt the Easterner shift his weight, trying to find a set to throw him. Logen managed to dig him in the fruits with his thigh before he could do it, enough to make his arms go weak for a moment, enough so he could slide his hand up onto Ugly’s neck.

Logen forced that hand up, inch by painful inch, his stretched-out forefinger creeping over the Easterner’s pitted face while he peered down at it, cross-eyed, trying to tip his head out of the way. His hand gripped painful tight round Logen’s wrist, trying to haul it back, but Logen had his shoulder dipped, his weight set right. The finger edged past his grimacing mouth, over his top lip, into Ugly’s bent nose, and Logen felt his broken nail digging at the flesh inside. He crooked his finger, and bared his teeth, and twisted it about as best he could.