The Blade Itself

Inquisitor. She has been drinking… though she hides it well. Not enough to make her stupid. Glokta pursed his lips. For some reason he had the feeling that he needed to watch his step.

“I’m not here in a professional capacity. Your brother asked me to—”

She cut him off rudely. “Did he? Really? Here to make sure I don’t fuck the wrong man, are you?” Glokta waited for a moment, allowing that to sink in, then he began to chuckle softly to himself. Oh, that’s grand! I begin to quite like her! “Something funny?” she snapped.

“Pardon me,” said Glokta, wiping his running eye with a finger, “but I spent two years in the Emperor’s prisons. I daresay, if I had known I’d be there half that long at the start, I would have made a more concerted effort to kill myself. Seven hundred days, give or take, in the darkness. As close to hell, I would have thought, as a living man can go. My point is this—if you mean to upset me you’ll need more than harsh language.”

Glokta treated her to his most revolting, toothless, crazy smile. There were few people indeed who could stomach that for long, but she did not look away for an instant. Soon, in fact, she was smiling back at him. A lop- sided grin of her own, and one which he found oddly disarming. A different tack, perhaps.

“The fact is, your brother asked me to look after your welfare while he is away. As far as I’m concerned you can fuck whomever you please, though my general observation has been that, as far as the reputations of young women are concerned, the less fucking the better. The reverse is true for young men of course. Hardly fair, but then life is unfair in so many ways, this one hardly seems worth commenting on.”

“Huh. You’re right there.”

“Good,” said Glokta, “so we understand each other then. I see that you hurt your face.”

She shrugged. “I fell. I’m a clumsy fool.”

“I know how you feel. I’m such a fool I knocked half my teeth out and hacked my leg to useless pulp. Look at me now, a cripple. It’s amazing where a little foolishness can take you, if it goes unchecked. We clumsy types should stick together, don’t you think?”

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, stroking the bruises on her jaw. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose we should.”

Goyle’s Practical, Vitari, was sprawled on a chair opposite Glokta, just outside the huge dark doors to the Arch Lector’s office. She was slumped into it, poured onto it, draped over it like a wet cloth, long limbs dangling, head resting on the back. Her eyes twitched lazily around the room from time to time under heavy lids, sometimes coming to rest on Glokta himself for insultingly long periods. She never turned her head though, or indeed moved a muscle, as though the effort might be too painful.

Which, indeed, it probably would be.

Plainly, she had been involved in a most violent melee, hand to hand. Above her black collar, her neck was a mass of mottled bruises. There were more around her black mask, a lot more, and a long cut across her forehead. One of her drooping hands was heavily bandaged, the knuckles of the other were scratched and scabbed over. She’s taken more than a couple of knocks. Fighting hard, against someone who meant business.

The tiny bell jumped and tinkled. “Inquisitor Glokta,” said the secretary, as he hurried out from behind his desk to open the door, “his Eminence will see you now.”

Glokta sighed, grunted and heaved on his cane as he got to his feet. “Good luck,” said the woman as he limped past.

“What?”

She gave a barely perceptible nod towards the Arch Lector’s office. “He’s in a hell of a mood today.”

As the door opened, Sult’s voice washed out into the ante-room, changing from a muffled murmuring into an all-out scream. The secretary jerked back from the gap as if slapped in the face.

“Twenty Practicals!” shrieked the Arch Lector, from beyond the archway. “Twenty! We should have been questioning that bitch now, instead of sitting here, licking our wounds! How many Practicals?”

“Twenty, Arch Lec—”

“Twenty! Damn it!” Glokta took a deep breath and insinuated himself through the door. “And how many dead?” The Arch Lector was striding briskly up and down the tiled floor of his huge circular office, waving his long arms in the air. He was dressed all in white, as spotless as ever. Though I fancy a hair is out of place, maybe even two. He must truly be in a fury. “How many?”

“Seven,” mumbled Superior Goyle, hunched into his chair.

“A third of them! A third! How many injured?”

“Eight.”

“Most of the rest! Against how many?”

“In all, there were six—”

“Really?” The Arch Lector thumped his fists on the table, leaning down over the shrinking Superior. “I heard two. Two!” he screamed, pacing once more round and round the table, “and both of them savages! Two I heard! A white one and a black one, and the black one a woman! A woman!” He kicked savagely at the chair next to Goyle and it wobbled back and forth on its feet. “And what’s worse, there were countless witnesses to this disgrace! Did I not say discreet? What part of the word discreet is beyond your comprehension, Goyle?”

“But Arch Lector, circumstances cannot—”

“Cannot?” Sult’s screech rose an entire octave higher. “Cannot? How dare you give me cannot, Goyle? Discreet I asked for, and you gave me bloody slaughter across half the Agriont, and failed into the bargain! We look like fools! Far worse, we look like weak fools! My enemies on the Closed Council will waste no time in turning this farce to their advantage. Marovia’s already stirring trouble, the old windbag, whining about liberty and tighter reins and all the rest of it! Damn lawyers! They had their way, we’d get nothing done! And you’re making it happen, Goyle! I’m stalling, and I’m saying sorry, and I’m trying to put things in the best light, but a turd’s a turd, whatever light it’s in! Do you have any notion of the damage you’ve inflicted? Of the months of hard work you’ve undone?”

“But, Arch Lector, have they not now left the—”

“They’ll be back, you cretin! He did not go to all this trouble simply to leave, dolt! Yes they’ve gone, idiot, and they’ve taken the answers with them! Who they are, what they want, who is behind them! Left? Left? Damn you, Goyle!”

“I am wretched, your Eminence.”

“You are less than wretched!”

“I cannot but apologise.”

“You’re lucky you’re not apologising over a slow fire!” Sult sneered his disgust. “Now get out of my sight!”

Goyle flashed a look of the most profound hatred at Glokta as he cringed his way out of the room. Goodbye, Superior Goyle, goodbye. The Arch Lector’s fury could not fall upon a more deserving candidate. Glokta could not suppress the tiniest of smiles as he watched him go.

“Something amusing you?” Sult’s voice was ice as he held out his white gloved hand, purple stone flashing on his finger.

Glokta bent to kiss it. “Of course not, your Eminence.”

“Good, because you’ve nothing to be amused about, I can tell you! Keys?” he sneered. “Stories? Scrolls? What could have possessed me to listen to your drivel?”

“I know, Arch Lector, I apologise.” Glokta edged humbly into the chair that Goyle had so recently vacated.

“You apologise, do you? Everyone apologises! Some good that does me! Fewer apologies and more successes is what I need! And to think, I had such high hopes for you! Still, I suppose we must work with the tools we have.”

Meaning? But Glokta said nothing.

“We have problems. Very serious problems, in the South.”

“The South, Arch Lector?”

“Dagoska. The situation there is grave. Gurkish troops are flocking to the peninsula. They already outnumber