'Yes, yes, we've been over this.'

The old man gave a sulky frown. 'Did you bring that scroll back?'

'The Maker fell burning, and so on? I'm afraid not. The Arch Lector has it.'

'Gah. I hear far too much about that man these days. Them upstairs are always carping on him. His Eminence this, and his Eminence that. I'm sick of hearing it!' I know very much how you feel. 'Everyone's in a spin, these days. A spin and a ruckus.'

'Lots of changes upstairs. We have a new king.'

'I know that! Guslav, is it?'

Glokta gave a long sigh as he settled himself in the chair on the other side of the desk. 'Yes, yes, he's the one.' Only thirty years out of date, or so. I'm surprised he didn't think Harod the Great was still on the throne.

'What do you want this time?'

Oh, to fumble in the darkness for answers that are always just out of reach. 'I want to know about the Seed.'

The lined face did not move. 'The what?'

'It was mentioned in your precious scroll. That thing that Bayaz and his magical friends searched for in the House of the Maker, after the death of Kanedias. After the death of Juvens.'

'Bah!' The Adeptus waved his hand, the saggy flesh under his wrist wobbling. 'Secrets, power. It's all a metaphor.'

'Bayaz does not seem to think so.' Glokta shuffled his chair closer, and spoke lower. Though there cannot be anyone to hear, or to care if they did. 'I heard it was a piece of the Other Side, left over from the Old Time, when devils walked our earth. The stuff of magic, made solid.'

The old man wheezed with papery laughter, displaying a rotten cavern of a mouth with fewer teeth even than Glokta's own. 'I did not take you for a superstitious man, Superior.' Nor was I one, when I last came here with questions. Before my visit to the House of the Maker, before my meeting with Yulwei, before I saw Shickel smile while they burned her. What happy times they were, before I had heard of Bayaz, when things still made sense. The Adeptus wiped his runny eyes with his palsied mockery of a hand. 'Where did you hear that?'

Oh, from a Navigator with his foot on an anvil. 'Never you mind from where.'

'Well, you know more about it than me. I read once that rocks sometimes fall out of the sky. Some say they are fragments of the stars. Some say they are splinters, flung out from the chaos of hell. Dangerous to touch. Terribly cold.'

Cold? Glokta could almost feel that icy breath upon his neck, and he wriggled his shoulders at it, forcing himself not to glance behind him. 'Tell me about hell.' Though I think I already know more than most on the subject.

'Eh?'

'Hell, old man. The Other Side.'

'They say it is where magic comes from, if you believe in such things.'