'Following me now?'

'I just watch.' His voice clicked in his bloody mouth. 'I just watch. I don't give the orders.'

The Gurkish soldiers did not give the orders to kill Ferro's people and make her a slave. That did not make them innocent. That did not make them safe from her. 'Who does?'

He coughed, and his face twitched, bubbles of blood blew out of his swollen nostrils. Nothing else. Ferro frowned.

'What?' She moved the knife down and pricked at his thigh with the point, 'you think I never cut a cock off before?'

'Glokta,' he mumbled, closing his eyes. 'I work… for Glokta.'

'Glokta.' The name meant nothing to her, but it was something to follow.

She slid the knife back up, up to his neck. The lump on his throat rose and fell, brushing against the edge of the blade. She clenched her jaw, and worked her fingers round the grip, frowning down. Tears had started to glitter in the corners of his eyes. Best to get it done, and away. Safest. But her hand was hard to move.

'Give me a reason not to do it.'

The tears welled up and ran down the sides of his bloody face. 'My birds,' he whispered.

'Birds?'

'There'll be no one to feed them. I deserve it, sure enough, but my birds… they've done nothing.' She narrowed her eyes at him.

Birds. Strange, the things that people have to live for.

Her father had kept a bird. She remembered it, in a cage, hanging from a pole. A useless thing, that could not even fly, only cling to a twig. He had taught it words. She remembered watching him feeding it, when she was a child. Long ago, before the Gurkish came.

'Ssssss,' she hissed in his face, pressing the knife up against his neck and making him cower. Then she pulled the blade away, got up and stood over him. 'The moment when I see you again will be your last. Back to your birds, shadow.'

He nodded, his wet eyes wide, and she turned and stalked off down the dark alleyway, into the dusk. When she crossed a bridge she tossed the knife away. It vanished with a splash, and ripples spread out in growing circles across the slimy water. A mistake, most likely, to have left that man alive. Mercy was always a mistake, in her experience.

But it seemed she was in a merciful mood today.

Questions

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Colonel Glokta was a magnificent dancer, of course, but with his leg feeling as stiff as it did it was difficult for him to truly shine. The constant buzzing of flies was a further distraction, and his partner was not helping. Ardee West looked well enough, but her constant giggling was becoming quite the irritation.

'Stop that!' snapped the Colonel, whirling her around the laboratory of the Adeptus Physical, the specimens in the jars pulsing and wobbling in time to the music.

'Partially eaten,' grinned Kandelau, one eye enormously magnified through his eyeglass. He pointed downwards with his tongs. 'This is a foot.'