Last Argument Of Kings: Book Three (The First Law 3)

‘Bread.’ Dogman sniffed at it, but it smelled alright. ‘What the hell’s all that about?’ The man had a whole heap of loaves on a cart. He was handing them out to any soldier that came past, Union or Northman. ‘Who’s he, anyway?’

Grim shrugged. ‘A baker?’

There weren’t much time to think on it. They were all getting shoved together into a big space full of men pushing, and grumbling, and making mess. All kind of soldiers and some old men and women round the edge, starting to get tired of cheering. A well-clipped lad in a black uniform was standing on top of a cart in the midst of this madness and screeching like a lost goat.

‘Eighth regiment, towards the Four Corners! Ninth towards the Agriont! If you’re with the tenth you came through the wrong damn gate!’

‘Thought we were to the docks, Major!’

‘Poulder’s division are dealing with the docks! We’re for the north part of the city! Eighth regiment towards the Four Corners!’

‘I’m with the Fourth!’

‘Fourth? Where’s your horse?’

‘Dead!’

‘What about us?’ roared Logen. ‘Northmen!’

The lad stared at them, wide-eyed, then he threw up his hands. ‘Just get in there! If you see any Gurkish, kill them!’ He turned back towards the gate, jerking his thumb over his shoulder into the city. ‘Ninth regiment towards the Agriont!’

Logen scowled. ‘We’ll get no sense here.’ He pointed down a wide street, full of walking soldiers. Some great tall tower poked up above the buildings. Huge thing, must’ve been built on a hill. ‘We get split up, we’ll just aim at that.’ He struck off down that street and Dogman came after, Grim behind with Shivers and his boys, Red Hat and his crew further back. Wasn’t long before the crowds thinned out and they were marching down empty streets, quiet except for some birds calling, happy as ever, not caring a thing for there having been a battle just now, and caring even less that there was another one coming.

Dogman wasn’t giving it a lot of thought either, for all he had his bow loose in one hand. He was too busy staring at the houses down either side of the road. Houses the like of which he’d never seen in his life. Made of little square, red stones, and black wood filled in with white render. Each one of ’em was big enough for a chieftain to be happy with, most with glass windows in as well.

‘Bloody palaces, eh?’

Logen snorted. ‘You think this is something? You should see this Agriont we’re aiming at. The buildings they got there. You never dreamed o’ the like. Carleon’s a pigsty beside this place.’

Dogman had always found Carleon a good bit too built-up. This was downright ridiculous. He dropped back a way, found he was walking next to Shivers. He tore the loaf and held one half out.

‘Thanks.’ Shivers took a bite out of the end, then another. ‘Not bad.’

‘Ain’t nothing quite like it, is there? That taste o’ new bread? Tastes like . . . peace, I guess.’

‘If you say so.’ They chewed together for a while, saying nothing.

Dogman looked sideways. ‘I think you need to put this feud o’ yours behind you.’

‘What feud’s that?’

‘How many you got? The one with our new king up there. Ninefingers.’

‘Can’t say I haven’t tried.’ Shivers frowned up the road at Logen’s back. ‘But whenever I turn around, there it is beside me.’

‘Shivers, you’re a good man. I like you. We all do. You got bones, lad, and brains too, and men’ll follow you. You could go a long way if you don’t get yourself killed, and there’s the problem. I don’t want to see you start up something you can’t put a good end to.’

‘You needn’t worry then. Anything I start I’ll make sure I finish.’

Dogman shook his head. ‘No, no, that ain’t my point, lad, not at all. Maybe you come out on top, maybe you don’t. My point is neither one’s a victory. Blood makes blood, and nothing else. My point is it ain’t too late for you. It ain’t too late for you to be better’n that.’

Shivers frowned at him. Then he tossed the heel of bread away, turned his big shoulder and headed off without another word. Dogman sighed. Some things can’t be put right just with talk. Some things can’t be put right at all.

They came out from the maze of buildings and onto a river. It must’ve been as wide as the Whiteflow, only the banks on each side were made of stone. The biggest bridge the Dogman had ever seen spanned it, railings made of curly iron, wide enough to drive two carts across side by side. Another wall stood at the far end, even bigger than the one they came through first. Dogman took a few gawping steps forward, and he looked up and down the gleaming water, and he saw that there were more bridges. A lot more, and some even bigger, standing out from a great forest of walls, and towers, and soaring high buildings.

A lot of the others were staring too, eyes wide open like they’d stepped out onto the moon. Even Grim had a twist to his face that might’ve been surprise.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Shivers. ‘You ever see the like o’ this?’

Dogman’s neck was aching from staring round at it all. ‘They’ve got so much here. Why do they even want bloody Angland? Place is a shit-hole.’

Logen shrugged. ‘Couldn’t say. Some men always want more, I guess.’

‘Superior,’ he wheedled. ‘If I may, you did undertake to release me . . . I have upheld my side of the bargain. That door should open onto a square not far from the House of Questions—’

‘We shall see.’

One last splintering blow of the axe and the door shuddered back on its rusty hinges, daylight spilling into the narrow cellar. The mercenary with the tattooed neck stood aside and Glokta limped up and peered out. Ah, fresh air. A gift we so often take for granted. A short set of steps led up to a cobbled yard, hemmed in by the grubby backs of grey buildings. Glokta knew it. Just round the corner from the House of Questions, as promised.

‘Superior?’ murmured Longfoot.

Glokta curled his lip. But where’s the harm? The chances are none of us will live out the day in any case, and dead men can afford to be merciful. The only kind of men that can, in fact. ‘Very well. Let him go.’ The one-eyed mercenary slid out a long knife and sawed through the rope round Longfoot’s wrists. ‘It would be best if I didn’t ever see you again.’

The Navigator had the ghost of a grin on his face. ‘Don’t worry, Superior. I was only this moment thinking the very same thing.’ He hobbled back the way they had come, down the dank stairway towards the sewers, rounded a corner and was gone.

‘Tell me you brought the things,’ said Glokta.

‘I’m untrustworthy, Superior. Not incompetent.’ Cosca flicked a hand at the mercenaries. ‘Time, my friends. Let’s black up.’

As a unit they pulled out black masks and buckled them on, pulled off their ragged coats, their torn clothes. Every man wore clean black underneath, from head to toe, with weapons carefully stowed. In a few moments a crowd of criminal villains was transformed into a well-ordered unit of Practicals of his Majesty’s Inquisition. Not that there’s too much of a leap from one to the other.

Cosca himself whisked his coat off, pulled it quickly inside out and dragged it back on. The lining was black as night. ‘Always wise to wear a choice of colours,’ he explained. ‘In case one should be called upon to change sides in a pinch.’ The very definition of a turncoat. He took off his hat, flicked at the filthy feather. ‘Can I keep it?’

‘No.’

‘You’re a hard man, Superior.’ He grinned as he tossed the cap away into the shadows. ‘And I love you for it.’ He pulled his own mask on, then frowned at Ardee, standing, confused and exhausted in a corner of the store-room. ‘What about her?’

‘Her? A prisoner, Practical Cosca! A spy in league with the Gurkish. His Eminence expressed his desire to question her personally.’ Ardee blinked at him. ‘It’s easy. Just look scared.’

She swallowed. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’

Wandering through the House of Questions with the aim of arresting the Arch Lector? I should say not. Glokta snapped his fingers. ‘We need to move.’

‘Nobody seems to know, sir.’ Brint tried to push his horse further, but they were squashed in by a grumbling throng. Spears waved, their points flailing dangerously close. Soldiers cursed. Sergeants bellowed. Officers clucked like frustrated chickens. It was hard to imagine more difficult terrain than the narrow streets behind the docks through which to manoeuvre an army of thousands. To make matters worse there was now an ominous flow of wounded, limping or being carried, in the opposite direction.

‘Make some room for the Lord Marshal!’ roared Pike. ‘The Lord Marshal!’ He lifted his sword as though he was more than willing to lay about him with the flat, and men rapidly cleared out of the way, a valley forming through the rattling spears. A rider came clattering up out of their midst. Jalenhorm, a bloody cut across his forehead.

‘Are you alright?’

The big man grinned. ‘It’s nothing, sir. Caught my head on a damn timber.’

‘Progress?’

‘We’re forcing them back towards the western side of the city. Kroy’s cavalry made it to the Four Corners, as far as I can tell, but the Gurkish still have the Agriont well surrounded, and now they’re regrouping, counterattacking from the west. A lot of Kroy’s foot are still all caught up in the streets on the other side of the river. If we don’t get reinforcement there soon—’

‘I need to speak to General Poulder,’ snapped West. ‘Where the hell is bloody Poulder? Brint?’

‘Sir?’

‘Take a couple of these fellows and bring Poulder here, right away!’ He stabbed at the air with a finger. ‘In person!’

‘Yes, sir!’ Brint did his best to turn his horse around.

‘What about at sea? Is Reutzer up?’

‘As far as I’m aware he’s engaged the Gurkish fleet, but I’ve no idea how . . .’ The smell of rotting salt and burning wood intensified as they emerged from the buildings and onto the harbour. ‘Bloody hell.’

West could only agree.

The graceful curve of Adua’s docks had been transformed into a crescent of carnage. Near to them the quay was blackened, wasted, scattered with broken gear and broken bodies. Further off, crowds of men were struggling in ill-formed groups, polearms sticking up in all directions like hedgehog’s spines, the air heavy with their noise. Union battle-flags and Gurkish standards flailed like scarecrows in the breeze. The epic conflict covered almost the entire long sweep of the shoreline. Several warehouses were in flames, sending up a shimmering heat-haze, lending a ghostly air to the hundreds of men locked in battle beyond them. Long smears of choking smoke, black, grey, white, rolled from the burning buildings and out into the bay. There, in the churning harbour, a host of ships was engaged in their own desperate struggle.

Vessels ploughed this way and that under full sail, turning, tacking, jockeying for position, flinging glittering spray high into the air. Catapults hurled flaming missiles, archers on the decks loosed flaming volleys, sailors crawled high in the cobwebs of rigging. Other ships were locked together in ungainly pairs by rope and grapple, like fighting dogs snapping at one another, glinting sunlight showing men in savage mêlée on their decks. Stricken vessels limped vainly, torn sailcloth hanging, slashed rigging dangling. Several were burning, sending up brown columns of smoke, turning the low sun into an ugly smudge. Wreckage floated everywhere on the frothing water – barrels, boxes, shivered timbers and dead sailors.

West knew the familiar shapes of the Union ships, yellow suns stitched into their sails, he could guess which were the Gurkish vessels. But there were others there too – long, lean, black-hulled predators, each one of their white sails marked with a black cross. One in particular towered far over every other vessel in the harbour, and was even now being secured at one of the few wharves still intact.

‘Nothing good ever comes from Talins,’ muttered Pike.

‘What the hell are Styrian ships doing here?’

The ex-convict pointed to one in the very act of ramming a Gurkish ship in the side. ‘Fighting the Gurkish, by the look of it.’

‘Sir,’ somebody asked. ‘What shall we do?’

The eternal question. West opened his mouth, but nothing came out. How could one man hope to exert any measure of control over the colossal chaos spread out before him? He remembered Varuz, in the desert, striding around with his huge staff crowding after him. He remembered Burr, thumping at his maps and wagging his thick finger. The greatest responsibility of a commander was not to command, but to look like he knew how to. He swung his sore leg over the saddle bow and slid down to the sticky cobbles.

‘We will set up our headquarters here, for the time being. Major Jalenhorm?’

‘Sir?’

‘Find General Kroy and tell him to keep pressing north and west, towards the Agriont.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Somebody get some men together and start clearing this rubbish from the docks. We need to get our people through quicker.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And somebody find me General Poulder, damn it! Each man has to do his part!’

‘What’s this now?’ grunted Pike.

A strange procession was sweeping down the blasted quay towards them, almost dreamily out of place amongst the wreckage. A dozen watchful guards in black armour flanked a single man. He had black hair streaked with grey, sported a pointed beard, immaculately trimmed. He wore black boots, a fluted breastplate of black steel, a cloak of black velvet flowing majestically from one shoulder. He was dressed, in fact, like the world’s richest undertaker, but walked with the kind of steely self-importance reserved for the highest royalty. He plotted a direct course towards West, looking neither left nor right, the dumbfounded guards and staff forced effortlessly aside by his air of command like iron filings parted by magnetic repulsion.

He held out his black-gauntleted hand. ‘I am Grand Duke Orso, of Talins.’

The idea, perhaps, was that West should kneel and kiss it. Instead he seized it with his own and gave it a firm shake. ‘Your Excellency, an honour.’ He had no idea if that was even the proper form of address. He had scarcely been expecting to encounter one of the most powerful men in the world in the midst of a bloody battle on the docks of Adua. ‘I am Lord Marshal West, commander of his Majesty’s Army. Not to appear ungrateful, but you are far from home—’

‘My daughter is your Queen. On her behalf, the people of Talins are prepared to make any sacrifice. As soon as I heard of the . . .’ He arched one black eyebrow at the burning harbour. ‘Troubles, here, I prepared an expedition. The ships of my fleet, as well as ten thousand of my best troops, stand at your disposal.’

West hardly knew how to respond. ‘They do?’

‘I have taken the liberty of disembarking them. They are engaged in clearing the Gurkish from the south-western quarter of the city. The Three Farms, is it called?’

‘Er . . . yes.’

Duke Orso gave the thinnest of smiles. ‘A picturesque name for an urban area. You need no longer trouble yourself with your western flank. I wish you the best of luck with your endeavours, Lord Marshal. If fate is willing, we will meet each other afterward. Victorious.’ He bowed his magnificent head and swept away.

West stared after him. He knew that he really should have been grateful for the sudden appearance of ten thousand helpful Styrian troops, but he could not escape the nagging feeling that he would have been happier if Grand Duke Orso had never arrived. For the time being, however, he had more pressing worries.

‘Lord Marshal!’ It was Brint, hurrying down the quay at the front of a group of officers. One side of his face was covered in a long smear of ash. ‘Lord Marshal, General Poulder—’

‘At long bloody last!’ snapped West. ‘Now perhaps we’ll have some answers. Where the hell is that bastard?’ He shouldered Brint aside, and froze. Poulder lay on a stretcher held by four muddy and miserable-looking members of his staff. He had the expression of a man in peaceful sleep, to the degree that West kept expecting to hear him snore. A huge, ragged wound in his chest rather spoiled the effect, however.

‘General Poulder led the charge from the front,’ said one of the officers, swallowing his tears. ‘A noble sacrifice . . .’

West stared down. How often had he wished that man dead? He jerked one hand over his face at a sudden wave of nausea. ‘Damn it,’ he whispered.

Click, tap, pain. The dim hallway slid by with agonising slowness. Every step was an ordeal, now, but he forced himself on, legs burning, foot throbbing, neck aching, sweat running down his twisted back under his clothes, a rictus of toothless nonchalance clamped onto his face. At every gasp and grunt through the building he had expected a challenge. With each twinge and spasm he had been waiting for the Practicals to flood from the doorways and butcher him and his thinly disguised hirelings like hogs.

But those few nervous people they had passed had scarcely looked up. Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipice. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man’s efficiency.

He lurched through the open doors and into the ante-room outside the Arch Lector’s office. The secretary’s head jerked angrily up. ‘Superior Glokta! You cannot simply . . .’ He stumbled on the words as the mercenaries began to tramp into the narrow room behind him. ‘I mean to say . . . you cannot . . .’

‘Silence! I am acting on the express orders of the king himself.’ Well, everyone lies. The difference between a hero and a villain is whether anyone believes him. ‘Step aside!’ he hissed at the two Practicals flanking the door, ‘or be prepared to answer for it.’ They glanced at each other, then, as more of Cosca’s men appeared, raised their hands together and allowed themselves to be disarmed. The instinct of self-preservation. A decided disadvantage.

Glokta paused before the doorway. Where I have cringed so often at the pleasure of his Eminence. His fingers tingled against the wood. Can it possibly be this easy? To simply walk up in broad daylight and arrest the most powerful man in the Union? He had to suppress a smirk. If only I had thought of it sooner. He wrenched the doorknob round and lurched over the threshold.

Sult’s office was much as it had always been. The great windows, with their view of the University, the huge round table with its jewelled map of the Union, the ornate chairs and the brooding portraits. It was not Sult sitting in the tall chair, however. It was none other than his favourite lapdog, Superior Goyle. Trying the big seat out for size, are we? Far too big for you, I’m afraid.

Goyle’s first reaction was outrage. How dare anyone barge in here like this? His second was confusion. Who would dare to barge in here like this? His third was shock. The cripple? But how? His fourth, as he saw Cosca and four of his men follow Glokta through the door, was horror. Now we’re getting somewhere.

‘You!’ he hissed. ‘But you’re—’

‘Slaughtered? Change of plans, I’m afraid. Where’s Sult?’

Goyle’s eyes flickered around the room, over the dwarfish mercenary, the one with a hook for a hand, the one with the hideous boils, and came to rest on Cosca, swaggering round the edge of the chamber with one fist on his sword-hilt.

‘I’ll pay you! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it!’

Cosca held out his open palm. ‘I prefer cash in hand.’

‘Now? I don’t have . . . I don’t have it with me!’

‘A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You’ll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.’

‘Wait!’ Goyle stumbled up and took a step back, his trembling hands held up in front of him. But there’s nowhere to go but out the window. That’s the trouble with ambition. It’s easy to forget, when you’re always looking upwards, that the only way down from the dizzy heights is a long drop.

‘Sit down, Goyle,’ growled Glokta.

Cosca grabbed his wrist, twisted his right arm savagely behind him and made him squeal, forced him back into the chair, clamped one hand round the back of his head and smashed his face into the beautiful map of the Union. There was a sharp crunch as his nose broke, spattering blood across the western part of Midderland.

Hardly subtle, but then the time for subtlety is behind us. The Arch Lector’s confession, or someone close to him . . . Sult would have been better, but if we cannot have the brains, I suppose we must make do with the arsehole. ‘Where is that girl with my instruments?’ Ardee crept cautiously into the room, came slowly across to the table and put the case down.

Glokta snapped his fingers, pointed. The fat mercenary ambled up and took a firm grip on Goyle’s free arm, dragged it sharply out across the table. ‘I expect you think you know an awful lot about torture, eh, Goyle? Believe me, though, you don’t really understand a thing until you’ve spent some time on both sides of the table.’

‘You mad bastard!’ The Superior squirmed, smearing blood across the Union with his face. ‘You’ve crossed the line!’

‘Line?’ Glokta spluttered with laughter. ‘I spent the night cutting the fingers from one of my friends and killing another, and you dare to talk to me about lines?’ He pushed open the lid of the case and his instruments offered themselves up. ‘The only line that matters is the one that separates the strong from the weak. The man who asks the questions from the man who answers them. There are no other lines.’ He leaned forward and ground the tip of his finger into the side of Goyle’s skull. ‘That’s all in your head! The manacles, if you please.’

‘Eh?’ Cosca looked to the fat mercenary, and the man shrugged, the blurred tattoos on his thick neck squirming.

‘Pffft,’ said the dwarf. Boil-face was silent. The one-handed mercenary had pulled down his mask and was busy picking his nose with his hook.

Glokta arched his back and gave a heavy sigh. There really is no replacement for experienced help. ‘Then I suppose we must improvise.’ He scooped up a dozen long nails and scattered them jingling across the table-top. He slid out the hammer, its polished head shining. ‘I think you can see where we’re going with this.’

‘No. No! We can work something out, we can—’ Glokta pressed the point of one nail into Goyle’s wrist. ‘Ah! Wait! Wait—’

‘Would you be good enough to hold this? I have only one hand to spare.’

Cosca took the nail gingerly between finger and thumb. ‘Mind where you aim with the hammer, though, eh?’

‘Don’t worry. I am quite precise.’ An awful lot of practice.

‘Wait!’ screeched Goyle.

The hammer made three metallic clicks, almost disappointingly quiet, as it drove the nail cleanly between the bones of Goyle’s forearm and into the table beneath. He roared with pain, spraying bloody spit over the table.

‘Oh, come now, Superior, compared to what you did to your prisoners in Angland this is really quite infantile. Try to pace yourself. If you scream like that now, you’ll have nowhere to go later.’ The fat mercenary seized Goyle’s other wrist in his pudgy hands and dragged it out across the map of the Union.

‘Nail?’ asked Cosca, raising an eyebrow.

‘You’re getting the hang of it.’

‘Wait! Ah! Wait!’

‘Why? This is the closest I’ve come to enjoying myself in six years. Don’t begrudge me my little moment. I get so very few of them.’ Glokta raised the hammer.

‘Wait!’

Click. Goyle roared with pain again. Click. And again. Click. The nail was through, and the one-time scourge of Angland’s penal colonies was pinned flat by both arms. I suppose that’s where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place. Goyle’s breath hissed through his bloody teeth, pinioned fingers clawing at the wood. Glokta disapprovingly shook his head. ‘I would stop struggling if I was you. You’ll only tear the flesh.’

‘You’ll pay for this, you crippled bastard! Don’t think you won’t!’

‘Oh, I’ve paid already.’ Glokta turned his neck around in a slow circle, trying to make the grumbling muscles in his shoulders unclench just a fraction. ‘I was kept, I am not sure for how long, but I would guess at several months, in a cell no bigger than a chest of drawers. Far too small to stand, or even to sit up straight in. Every possible position twisted, bent, agonising. Hundreds of interminable hours in the pitch darkness, the stifling heat. Kneeling in a stinking slurry of my own shit, wriggling, and squirming, and gasping for air. Begging for water which my jailers let drip down through a grate above. Sometimes they would piss through it, and I would be grateful. I have never stood up straight since. I really have no idea how I remained sane.’ Glokta thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Perhaps I didn’t. In any case, these are the kind of sacrifices I have made. What sacrifices will you make, just to keep Sult’s secrets?’

No answer but the blood running out from under Goyle’s forearms, pooling around the glittering stone that marked the House of Questions in the city of Keln.

‘Huh.’ Glokta gripped his cane hard and leaned down to whisper in Goyle’s ear. ‘There’s a little bit of flesh, between your fruits and your arsehole. You never really see it, unless you’re a contortionist, or unnaturally fond of mirrors. You know the one I’m talking about. Men spend hours thinking about the area in front of it, and almost as long on the area behind, but that little patch of flesh? Unfairly ignored.’ He scooped up a few nails and jingled them gently in Goyle’s face. ‘I mean to set that right, today. I’m going to start there, and work outwards, and believe me, once I’m done, you’ll be thinking about that patch of flesh for the rest of your life. Or you’ll be thinking about where it used to be, at least. Practical Cosca, would you be kind enough to help the Superior out of his trousers?’

‘The University!’ bellowed Goyle. He had a sheen of sweat all over his balding head. ‘Sult! He’s in the University!’

So soon? Almost disappointing. But then few bullies take a beating well. ‘What’s he doing there, at a time like this?’

‘I . . . I don’t—’

‘Not good enough. Trousers, please.’

‘Silber! He’s with Silber!’

Glokta frowned. ‘The University Administrator?’

Goyle’s eyes darted from Glokta, to Cosca, and back again. He squeezed them shut. ‘The Adeptus Demonic!’

There was a long pause. ‘The what?’

‘Silber, he doesn’t just run the University! He conducts . . . experiments.’

‘Experiments of what nature?’ Glokta jabbed sharply at Goyle’s bloody face with the head of the hammer. ‘Before I nail your tongue to the table.’

‘Occult experiments! Sult has been giving him money, for a long time! Since the First of the Magi came calling! Before, maybe!’

Occult experiments? Funding from the Arch Lector? It hardly seems Sult’s style, but it explains why those damn Adepti were expecting money from me when I first visited the place. And why Vitari and her circus have set up shop there now. ‘What experiments?’

‘Silber . . . he can make contact . . . with the Other Side!’

‘What?’

‘It’s true! I have seen it! He can learn things, secrets, there is no other way of knowing, and now . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘He says he has found a way to bring them through!’

‘Them?’

‘The Tellers of Secrets, he calls them!’

Glokta licked at his dry lips. ‘Demons?’ I thought his Eminence had no patience with superstition, when all this time . . . The nerve of the man!

‘He can send them against his enemies, he says. Against the Arch Lector’s enemies! They are ready to do it!’

Glokta felt his left eye twitching, and he pressed the back of his hand against it. A year ago I would have laughed to my boots and nailed him to the ceiling. But things are different, now. We passed inside the House of the Maker. We saw Shickel smile as she burned. If there are Eaters? If there are Magi? Why should there not be demons? How could there not be? ‘What enemies?’

‘The High Justice! The First of the Magi!’ Goyle squeezed his eyes shut again. ‘The king,’ he whimpered.

Ahhhh. The. King. Those two little words are my kind of magic. Glokta turned to Ardee, and showed her the yawning gap in his front teeth. ‘Would you be so kind as to prepare a Paper of Confession?’

‘Would I . . .’ She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide in her pale face, then hurried to the Arch Lector’s desk, snatched up a sheet of paper and a pen, dipped it rattling in a bottle of ink. She paused, her hand trembling. ‘What should I write?’

‘Oh, something like, “I, Superior Goyle, confess to being an accomplice in a treasonous plot of his Eminence Arch Lector Sult, to . . .”’ How to phrase it? He raised his brows. How else but call it what it is? ‘ “To use diabolical arts against his Majesty the king and members of his Closed Council.”

The nib scratched clumsily over the paper, scattering specks of ink. Ardee held it crackling out to him. ‘Good enough?’

He remembered the beautiful documents that Practical Frost used to prepare. The elegant, flowing script, the immaculate wording. Each Paper of Confession, a work of art. Glokta stared sadly down at the ink-spotted daub in his hand.

‘But a brief step from unreadable, but it will serve.’ He slid the paper under Goyle’s trembling hand, then took the pen from Ardee and wedged it between his fingers. ‘Sign.’

Goyle sobbed, sniffed, scrawled his name at the bottom of the page as best he could with his arm nailed down. I win, and for once the taste is almost sweet.

‘Excellent,’ said Glokta. ‘Pull those nails, and find some sort of bandage. It would be a shame if he bled to death before he had the chance to testify. Gag him, though, I’ve heard enough for now. We’ll take him with us to the High Justice.’

‘Wait! Wait! Wurghh—!’ Goyle’s cries were sharply cut off as the mercenary with the boils wedged a wad of dirty cloth in his mouth. The dwarf slid the pliers from the case. So far, and we are still alive. What ever are the odds of that? Glokta limped to the window and stood, stretching his aching legs. There was a muffled shriek as the first nail was ripped from Goyle’s arm, but Glokta’s thoughts were elsewhere. He stared out towards the University, its spires looming up through the smoky murk like clawing fingers. Occult experiments? Summonings and sendings? He licked sourly at his empty gums. What is going on in there?

Smoke had drawn a sooty veil across the city and made it impossible to tell what was happening any further than a half mile distant. Members of Varuz’ staff, scattered around the parapets, would occasionally call out useless and wildly contradictory news. There was fighting in the Four Corners, up the Middleway, throughout the central part of the city. There was fighting on land and on sea. By turns all hope was lost and they were on the verge of deliverance. But one thing was in no doubt. Below, beyond the moat of the Agriont, the Gurkish efforts continued ominously unabated.

A rain of flatbow bolts continued to pepper the square outside the gates, but for every corpse the Gurkish left, for every wounded man dragged away, five more would vomit out from the burning buildings like bees from a broken hive. Soldiers swarmed down there in teeming hundreds, enclosing the whole circuit of the Agriont in an ever-strengthening ring of men and steel. They squatted behind their wooden screens, they shot arrows up towards the battlements. The pounding of drums had drawn steadily closer and now echoed out around the city. Peering through his eye-glass, with every muscle tensed to try and hold it steady, Jezal had begun to notice strange figures scattered below.

Tall and graceful figures, conspicuous in pearly white armour edged with glinting gold, they moved among the Gurkish soldiers, pointing, ordering, directing. Often, now, they were pointing towards the bridge that led to the west gate of the Agriont. Dark thoughts niggled at the back of Jezal’s mind. Khalul’s Hundred Words? Risen up from the shadowy corners of history to bring the First of the Magi to justice?

‘If I didn’t know better, I would have said that they were preparing for an assault.’

‘There is no cause for alarm,’ croaked Varuz, ‘our defences are impregnable.’ His voice quavered, then cracked entirely at the final word, doing little to give anyone the slightest reassurance. Only a few short weeks ago, nobody would have dared to suggest that the Agriont could ever fall. But nobody would ever have dreamed that it would be surrounded by legions of Gurkish soldiers, either. Very plainly, the rules had changed. A deep blast of horns rang out.

‘Down there,’ muttered one of his staff.

Jezal peered through his borrowed eye-glass. Some form of great cart had been drawn up through the streets, like a wooden house on wheels, covered by plates of beaten metal. Even now, Gurkish soldiers were loading barrels into it under the direction of two men in white armour.

‘Explosive powder,’ someone said, unhelpfully.

Jezal felt Marovia’s hand on his arm. ‘Your Majesty, it might be best if you were to retire.’

‘And if I am not safe here? Where, precisely, will I be out of danger, do you suppose?’

‘Marshal West will soon deliver us, I am sure. But in the meantime the palace is much the safest place. I will accompany you.’ He gave an apologetic smile. ‘At my age, I fear I will be little use on the walls.’

Gorst held out one gauntleted hand towards the stairs. ‘This way.’

Only one secretary remained outside the office of the High Justice, peering disapprovingly over his twinkling eye-glasses. No doubt the rest have donned ill-fitting armour and are manning the walls. Or, more likely, have locked themselves in cellars. If only I were with them.

‘I am afraid his Worship is busy.’

‘Oh, he will see me, don’t worry about that.’ Glokta hobbled past without stopping, placed his hand on the brass doorknob of Marovia’s office, and almost jerked it back in surprise. The metal was icy cold. Cold as hell. He turned it with his fingertips and opened the door a crack. A breath of white vapour curled out into the hall, like the freezing mist that would hang over the snowy valleys in Angland in the midst of winter.

It was deathly cold in the room beyond. The heavy wooden furniture, the old oak panelling, the grubby window panes, all glittered with white hoar-frost. The heaps of legal papers were furry with it. A bottle of wine on a table by the door had shattered, leaving behind a bottle-shaped block of pink ice and a scattering of sparkling splinters.

‘What in hell . . .’ Glokta’s breath smoked before his smarting lips. Mysterious articles were scattered widely about the wintry room. A long, snaking length of black tubing was frozen to the panelling, like a string of sausages left in the snow. There were patches of black ice on the books, on the desk, on the crunching carpet. There were pink fragments frozen to the ceiling, long white splinters frozen to the floor . . .

Human remains?

A large chunk of icy flesh, partly coated in rime, lay in the middle of the desk. Glokta turned his head sideways to better take it in. There was a mouth, still with some teeth attached, an ear, an eye. Some strands of a long beard. Enough, in the end, for Glokta to recognise whose parts were scattered so widely around the freezing room. Who else but my last hope, my third suitor, High Justice Marovia?

Cosca cleared his throat. ‘It seems there is something to your friend Silber’s claims after all.’

An understatement of devilish proportions. Glokta felt the muscles round his left eye twitching with a painful intensity. The secretary fussed up to the door behind them, peered through, gasped, and reeled away. Glokta heard him being noisily sick outside. ‘I doubt the High Justice will be lending us much assistance.’

‘True. But isn’t it getting a little late in the day for your papers and so forth anyway?’ Cosca gestured towards the windows, flecked and spotted with frozen blood. ‘The Gurkish are coming, remember? If you’ve scores to settle, get them settled now, before our Kantic friends tear up all the bills. When plans fail, swift action must serve, eh, Superior?’ He reached behind his head, unbuckled his mask, and let it drop to the floor. ‘Time to laugh in your enemy’s face! To risk all on one final throw! You can pick up the pieces afterward. If they don’t go back together, well, what’s the difference? Tomorrow we might all be living in a different world.’

Or dying in one. Not the way we wanted it, maybe, but he is right. Perhaps we might borrow one final shred of Colonel Glokta’s dash before the game is over? ‘I hope I can still count on your help?’

Cosca clapped him on the shoulder and sent a painful shudder through his twisted back. ‘A noble last effort, against all the odds? Of course! Though I should mention that I usually charge double once the diabolical arts are involved.’

‘How does triple sound?’ After all, Valint and Balk have deep pockets.

Cosca’s grin grew wider. ‘It sounds well.’

‘And your men? Are they reliable?’

‘They are still waiting for four fifths of their pay. Until they receive it I would trust any one of them with my life.’

‘Good. Then we are prepared.’ Glokta worked his aching foot around in his boot. Just a little further now, my toeless beauty. Just a few shuddering steps more, and one way or another, we both can rest. He opened his fingers and let Goyle’s confession float down to the frosty floor. ‘To the University, then! His Eminence has never liked to be kept waiting.’