Sult held out his hand, the stone on his ring of office flashing purple sparks. Glokta grimaced as he bent slowly to kiss it. 'I serve and obey, your Eminence.' He straightened up with an effort. No knife in the back of the neck? But Sult was already flowing across to the cabinet, grinning broadly.

'Sit, please sit! You need not wait to be asked!'

Since when? Glokta grunted his way into one of the chairs, taking only the briefest moment to check for poisoned spikes on the seat. The Arch Lector, meanwhile, had plucked open the cabinet and was rummaging inside. Will he pull out a loaded flatbow, and shoot me through the throat? But all that emerged were two glasses. 'It would seem congratulations are in order,' he threw over his shoulder.

Glokta blinked. 'What?'

'Congratulations. Excellent work.' Sult grinned down at him as he slid the glasses gracefully onto the round table, eased the stopper, clinking, from the decanter. What to say? What to say?

'Your Eminence… Dagoska… I must be candid. It was on the point of falling when I left. Very soon now, the city will be overrun—'

'Of course it will.' Sult dismissed it all with a wave of his white-gloved hand. 'There was never the slightest chance of holding it. The best I was hoping for was that you'd make the Gurkish pay! And how you did that, eh, Glokta? How you did that!'

'Then… you are… pleased?' He hardly dared say the word.

'I am delighted! If I had written the tale myself, it could not have worked out better! The incompetence of the Lord Governor, the treachery of his son, it all showed how little the regular authorities can be relied upon in a crisis. Eider's treason exposed the duplicity of the merchants, their dubious connections, their rotten morality! The Spicers have been dissolved alongside the Mercers: their trade rights are in our hands. The pair of them, consigned to the latrine of history and the power of the merchants broken! Only his Majesty's Inquisition remained staunch in the face of the Union's most implacable enemy. You should have seen Marovia's face when I presented the confessions to the Open Council!' Sult filled Glokta's glass all the way to the top.

'Most kind, your Eminence,' he muttered as he took a sip from it. Excellent wine, as always.

'And then he got up in the Closed Council, before the King himself, mark you, and declared to everyone that you wouldn't last a week once the Gurkish attacked!' The Arch Lector spluttered with laughter. 'I wish you could have been there. I'm confident he'll do better than that, I said. Confident he'll do better.' A ringing endorsement indeed.