'No bigger pair o' bastards in all the north,' said Shivers. 'And now I hear tell that Bethod's made a deal.'

'What kind of a deal?' asked Threetrees.

Shivers turned and spat over his shoulder. 'A deal with the fucking Shanka, that's what.'

Dogman stared. They all did. That was some evil kind of a rumour. 'With the Flatheads? How?'

'Who knows? Might be that witch found some way to talk to 'em. Times are changing, fast, and it ain't right, any of it. There's a lot of boys over there ain't happy. That's without getting started on that Feared.'

Dow frowned. 'Feared? I never heard of him.'

'Where you lot been? Under the ice?'

They all looked at each other. 'Pretty much,' said the Dog-man. 'Pretty much.'

Cheap at the Price

Cheap at the Price

« ^ »

'You have a visitor, sir,' muttered Barnam. His face, for some reason, was pale as death.

'Clearly,' snapped Glokta. 'That was them knocking at the door, I assume.' He dropped his spoon into his barely touched bowl of soup and licked sourly at his gums. A particularly disgusting excuse for a meal, this evening. I miss Shickel's cooking, if not her attempts to kill me. 'Well, who is it, man?'

'It's… er… it's…'

Arch Lector Sult ducked through the low doorway so as not to disturb his flawless white hair on the frame. Ah. I see. He swept the cramped dining room with a scowl, lip wrinkled as though he had stumbled into an open sewer. 'Don't get up,' he spat at Glokta. I wasn't planning to.

Barnam swallowed. 'Can I get your Eminence any—'

'Get out!' sneered Sult, and the old servant nearly fell over in his haste to make it to the door. The Arch Lector watched him go with withering scorn. The good humour of our previous meeting seems a vaguely remembered dream.

'Damn peasants,' he hissed as he slid in behind Glokta's narrow dining table. 'There's been another uprising near Keln, and this bastard the Tanner was in the midst of it again. An unpopular eviction turned into a bloody riot. Lord Finster entirely misjudged the mood, got three of his guards killed and himself besieged in his manor by an angry mob, the halfwit. They couldn't get in, fortunately, so they satisfied themselves with burning down half the village.' He snorted. 'Their own damn village! That's what an idiot does when he gets angry. He destroys whatever's nearest, even if it's his own house! The Open Council are screaming for blood of course. Peasant blood, and lots of it. Now we have to get the Inquisition going down there, root out some ringleaders, or some fools who can be made to look like them. It should be Finster himself we're hanging, the dolt, but that's hardly an option.'