Vitari's eyes narrowed. 'Let me tell you a secret. I didn't choose to be here any more than you did, but I learned a long time ago that when Sult tells you to do a thing you'd better look like you did it. All I care about is getting out of here alive.' She moved even closer. 'Can we help each other?'

Can we indeed? I wonder. 'Alright then. I daresay I can squeeze one extra friend into the social whirl that is my life. I'll see what I can do for you.'

'You'll see what you can do?'

'That's the best you'll get. The fact is I'm not much good at helping people. Out of practice, you see.' He leered his toothless grin in her face, lifted her slack arm out of the way with his cane, then hobbled past the heap of bodies and back towards the temple door.

'What shall I tell Sult about Eider?'

'Tell him the truth,' Glokta called over his shoulder. 'Tell him she's dead.'

Tell him we all are.

So This is Pain

So This is Pain

« ^ »

'Where am I?' asked Jezal, only his jaw would not move. The cartwheels squealed as they turned, everything blinding bright and blurry, sound and light digging into his aching skull.

He tried to swallow, but could not. He tried to raise his head. Pain stabbed through his neck and his stomach heaved.

'Help!' he squealed, but nothing came out beyond a bubbling croak. What had happened? Painful sky above, painful boards underneath. He was lying in a cart, head on a scratchy sack, bouncing and jolting.

There had been a fight, he remembered that. A fight among the stones. Someone had called out. A crunch and blinding light, then nothing but pain. Even trying to think was painful. He lifted his arm to feel his face, but found that he couldn't. He tried to shift his legs, to push himself up, but he couldn't do that either. He worked his mouth, grunting, moaning.

His tongue was unfamiliar, three times its usual size, like a bloody lump of ham that had been shoved between his jaws, filling his mouth so he could hardly breathe. The right side of his face was a mask of agony. With every lurch of the cart his jaws rattled together, sending white-hot stabs of pain from his teeth into his eyes, his neck, the very roots of his hair. There were bandages over his mouth, he had to breathe through the left side, but even the air moving in his throat was painful.

Panic started to claw at him. Every part of his body was screaming. One arm was bound tight across his chest but he clutched weakly at the side of the cart with the other, trying to do something, anything, his eyes bulging, heart hammering, breath snorting in his nose.