Glokta took a deep breath. 'The Arch Lector wants me to… explain myself.'

Vissbruck gave a squeaky chuckle. 'For some reason, the image of rats fleeing a burning house springs to mind.' An apt metaphor. If the rats are fleeing the flames to fling themselves into a mincing machine.

'Come now, General.' Cosca let his head roll back against the wall, a faint smile on his lips. 'The Superior didn't have to come to us with this. He could have stolen away in the night, and no one any the wiser. That's what I'd have done.'

'Allow me to have scant regard for what you might have done,' sneered Vissbruck. 'Our situation is critical. The land walls are lost, and with them all chance of holding out for long. The slums swarm with Gurkish soldiers. Every night we make sallies from the gates of the Upper City. We burn a ram. We kill some sentries while they sleep. But every day they bring up more equipment. Soon, perhaps, they will have cleared space down among the hovels and assembled their great catapults. Shortly thereafter, one imagines, the Upper City will come under sustained fire from incendiaries!' He stabbed an arm at the window. 'They might even reach the Citadel from there! This very room may sport a boulder the size of a woodshed as a centrepiece!'

'I am well aware of our position,' snapped Glokta. The stench of panic the last few days has grown strong enough almost for the dead to smell it. 'But the Arch Lector's orders are most specific. To fight to the last man. No surrender.'

Vissbruck's shoulders slumped. 'Surrender would do no good in any case.' He got up, made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his uniform, then slowly pushed his chair under the table. Glokta almost pitied him at that moment. Probably he is deserving of pity, but I wasted all I had on Carlot dan Eider, who hardly deserved it at all.

'Allow me to offer you one piece of advice, from a man who's seen the inside of a Gurkish prison. If the city should fall, I strongly recommend that you take your own life rather than be captured.'

General Vissbruck's eyes widened for a moment, then he looked down at the beautiful mosaic floor, and swallowed. When he lifted his face Glokta was surprised to see a bitter smile. 'This is hardly what I had in mind when I joined the army.'

Glokta tapped his ruined leg with his cane, and gave a twisted grin of his own. 'I could say the same. What did Stolicus write? "The recruiting sergeant sells dreams but delivers nightmares?"'

'That would seem appropriate to the case.'

'If it's any comfort, I doubt that my fate will be even as pleasant as yours.'