wheezed.
“Then this shithouse must be a palace.”
Cosca shrugged. “It all looks the same if you’re drunk enough.”
“You think you’ll ever be drunk enough?”
“No. But it’s worth trying.” As if to prove the point he sucked another mouthful from the bottle.
Vitari perched herself on the edge of the table. “So what brings you here? I thought you were busy spreading the cock-rot across Styria.”
“My popularity at home had somewhat dwindled.”
“Found yourself on both sides of a fight once too often, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“But the Dagoskans welcomed you with open arms?”
“I’d rather you welcomed me with open legs, but a man can’t get everything he wants. Who’s your friend?”
Glokta slid out a rickety chair with one aching foot and eased himself into it, hoping it would bear his weight.
Cosca looked at him for a long time. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, heavy-lidded.
Glokta felt his eyelid flicker.
“A fighting man should know his enemies, and a hired man never knows who his next enemy might be. It’s worth taking notice of who’s who, in military circles. I heard your name mentioned, some time ago, as a man worth taking notice of. Bold and clever, I heard, but reckless. That was the last I heard. And now here you are, in a different line of work. Asking questions.”
“Recklessness didn’t work out for me in the end.” Glokta shrugged. “And a man needs something to do with his time.”
“Of course. Never doubt another’s choices, I say. You can’t know his reasons. You come here for a drink, Superior? They’ve nothing but this piss, I’m afraid.” He waved the bottle. “Or have you questions for me?”
“Experience?” spluttered Cosca, “Experience, you ask? Hah! Experience is one thing I am not short of —”
“No,” murmured Vitari over her shoulder, “just discipline and loyalty.”
“Yes, well,” Cosca frowned up at her back, “that all depends on who you ask. But I was at Etrina, and at Muris. Serious pair of sieges, those. And I besieged Visserine myself for a few months and nearly had it, except that she-devil Mercatto caught me unawares. Came on us with cavalry before dawn, sun behind and all, damned unfriendly trick, the bitch—”
“I heard you were passed out drunk at the time,” muttered Vitari.
“Yes, well… Then I held Borletta against Grand Duke Orso for six months—”
Vitari snorted. “Until he paid you to open the gates.”
Cosca gave a sheepish grin. “It was an awful lot of money. But he never fought his way in! You’d have to give me that, eh, Shylo?”
“No one needs to fight you, providing they bring their purse.”
The mercenary grinned. “I am what I am, and never claimed to be anything else.”
“So you’ve been known to betray an employer?” asked Glokta.
The Styrian paused, the bottle halfway to his mouth. “I am thoroughly offended, Superior. Nicomo Cosca may be a mercenary, but there are still rules. I could only turn my back on an employer under one condition.”
“Which is?”
Cosca grinned. “If someone else were to offer me more.”
“Ah, the riddle of the invisible torturer!” Cosca scratched thoughtfully at his sweaty beard, picked a little at the rash on his neck and examined the results, wedged under his fingernail. “Who knows or cares to know? The man was a swine. I hardly knew him and what I knew I didn’t like. He had plenty of enemies, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s a real snake pit down here. If you’re asking which one bit him, well… isn’t that your job? I was busy here. Drinking.”
Cosca hunched his shoulders and sank a little lower into his chair. “The man’s a child. Playing soldiers. Tinkering with his little castle and his little fence, when the big walls are all that count. Lose those and the game is done, I say.”
“I’ve been thinking the very same thing.”
Cosca raised an eyebrow. “Good. Flood it. The Gurkish don’t like the water much. Poor sailors. Flood it. Very good.” He tipped his head back and sucked the last drops from the bottle, then he tossed it on the dirty floor, wiped his mouth with his dirty hand, then wiped his hand on the front of his sweat-stained shirt. “At least someone knows what they’re doing. Perhaps when the Gurkish attack, we’ll last longer than a few days, eh?”
“You never know, perhaps the Gurkish won’t attack.”
“Oh, I hope they do.” Cosca reached under his chair and produced another bottle. There was a glint in his eye as he pulled the cork out with his teeth and spat it across the room. “I get paid double once the fighting starts.”
It was evening, and a merciful breeze was washing through the audience chamber. Glokta leaned against the wall by the window, watching the shadows stretch out over the city below.
The Lord Governor was keeping him waiting.
The glowing sun was shrouded in lines of orange cloud. Beneath it a long wedge of sea glittered silver in the last light of the day. The land walls had already plunged half the ramshackle buildings of the Lower City into deep gloom, and the shadows of the tall spires of the great temple stretched out across the roofs of the Upper City, creeping up the slopes of the rock towards the citadel. The hills on the mainland were nothing more than a distant suggestion, full of shadows.
The door opened and Glokta turned his head, wincing as his neck clicked. It was the Lord Governor’s son, Korsten dan Vurms. He shut the door behind him and strode purposefully into the room, metal heel tips clicking on the mosaic floor.
“Superior Glokta! I hope I have not kept you waiting.”
“You have,” said Glokta as he shuffled to the table. “That is what happens when one comes late to a meeting.”