'With Marovia?' squealed Goyle, his eyes bulging with triumph. When the safe options are all exhausted, we must take risks. Is that not what I told myself as I rode down to the bridge, while the Gurkish massed upon the other side? Ah well, once more into the tempest…

Glokta took a deep breath. 'Marovia's seat on the Closed Council is no safer than anyone else's. We may have been working against each other, but only out of habit. On the subject of this vote our aims are the same. To secure a weak candidate and maintain the balance. Together you have more than fifty votes. That might well be enough to tip the scales.'

Goyle sneered his contempt. 'Join forces with that peasant-loving hypocrite? Have you lost your reason?'

'Shut up, Goyle.' Sult glared at Glokta for a long while, his lips pursed in thought. Considering my punishment, perhaps? Another tongue-lashing? Or a real lashing? Or my body found floating— 'You are right. Go and speak to Marovia.'

Sand dan Glokta, once more the hero! Goyle's jaw hung open. 'But… your Eminence!'

'The time for pride is far behind us!' snarled Sult. 'We must seize any chance of keeping Brock and the rest from the throne. We must find compromises, however painful, and we must take whatever allies we can. Go!' he hissed over his shoulder, folding his arms and turning back to his crackling papers. 'Strike a deal with Marovia.'

Glokta got stiffly up from his chair. A shame to leave such lovely company, but when duty calls… He treated Goyle to the briefest of toothless smiles, then took up his cane and limped for the door.

'And Glokta!' He winced as he turned back into the room. 'Marovia's aims and ours may meet for now. But we cannot trust him. Tread carefully.'

'Of course, your Eminence.' I always do. What other choice, when every step is agony?

The private office of the High Justice was as big as a barn, its ceiling covered in festoons of old moulding, riddled with shadows. Although it was only late afternoon, the thick ivy outside the windows, and the thick grime on the panes, had sunk the place into a perpetual twilight. Tottering heaps of papers were stacked on every surface. Wedges of documents tied with black tape. Piles of leather-bound ledgers. Stacks of dusty parchments in ostentatious, swirling script, stamped with huge seals of red wax and glittering gilt. A kingdom's worth of law, it looked like. And, indeed, it probably is.