In the pale moonlight, Carlot dan Eider's face looked gaunt and wasted, full of sharp edges, with a set of black grazes across her hollow cheek. Her head had been shaved, after the fashion of confessed traitors, and without that weight of hair her skull seemed strangely small, almost child-like, her neck absurdly long and fragile. Especially with a ring of angry bruises round it, the dark after-images left by the links of Vitari's chain. There was hardly any remnant of the sleek and masterful woman who had taken him by the hand in the Lord Governor's audience chamber, it seemed an age ago. A few weeks in the darkness, sleeping on the rotten floor of a sweltering cell, not knowing if you'll live another hour—that can ruin the looks. I should know.

She lifted her chin at him, nostrils wide, eyes gleaming in black shadows. That mixture of fear and defiance that comes on some people when they know they are about to die. 'Superior Glokta, I hardly dared hope I would see you again.' Her words might have been jaunty, but there was no disguising the edge of fear in her voice. 'What now? A rock tied round the legs and into the bay? Isn't that all a touch dramatic?'

'It would be, but that isn't what I have in mind.' He looked up at Frost and gave the barest of nods. Eider flinched, squeezing her eyes shut and biting on her lip, hunching her shoulders as she felt the hulking Practical loom up behind her. Waiting for the crushing blow on the back of the skull? The stabbing point between the shoulder blades? The choking wire across the throat? The terrible anticipation. Which shall it be? Frost raised his hand. There was a flash of metal in the darkness. Then a gentle clicking as the key slid smoothly into Eider's manacles and unlocked them.

She slowly prised open her eyes, slowly brought her hands round in front of her, blinked down as though she had never seen them before. 'What's this?'

'This is exactly what it appears to be.' He nodded his head down the wharf. 'This is a ship leaving for Westport on the next tide. You have contacts in Westport?'

The tendons in her thin neck fluttered as she swallowed. 'I have contacts everywhere.'

'Good. Then this is me setting you free.'

There was a long silence. 'Free?' She lifted one hand to her head and rubbed absently at her stubbly scalp, staring at Glokta for a drawn-out moment. Not sure whether to believe it, and who can blame her? I'm not sure that I believe it. 'His Eminence must have mellowed beyond recognition.'

Glokta snorted. 'Not likely. Sult knows nothing about this. If he did, I rather think we both might be swimming with rocks round our ankles.'

Her eyes narrowed. The merchant Queen judges the bargain. 'Then what's the price?'