The footmen coughed, and averted their eyes, and scraped away towards the corners of the room. Bayaz himself neither smiled nor frowned. 'I stand always ready to advise your Majesty, but I had hoped that might be one item of business you could manage alone.'

'I hope you're well prepared for our little outing. I've been getting ready all morn—' Ardee froze when she looked up and saw Glokta's face. 'What happened to you?'

'What, this?' He waved his hand at the mottled mass of bruises. 'A Kantic woman broke into my apartments in the night, punched me repeatedly and near drowned me in the bath.' An experience I would not recommend.

Evidently she did not believe him. 'What really happened?'

'I fell down the stairs.'

'Ah. Stairs. They can be brutal bastards when you're not that firm on your feet.' She stared at her half-full glass, her eyes slightly misty.

'Are you drunk?'

'It's the afternoon, isn't it? I try always to be drunk by now. Once you start a job you should give it your best. Or so my father liked to tell me.'

Glokta narrowed his eyes at her, and she stared back evenly over the rim of her glass. No trembling lip, no tragic face, no streaks of bitter tears down the cheek. She seemed no less happy than usual. Or no more unhappy, perhaps. But Jezal dan Luthar's wedding day can be no joyous occasion for her. No one appreciates being jilted, whatever the circumstances. No one enjoys being abandoned.

'We need not go, you know.' Glokta winced as he tried unsuccessfully to stretch some movement into his wasted leg, and the wince itself caused a ripple of pain through his split lips and across his battered face. 'I certainly won't complain if I do not have to walk another step today. We can sit here, and talk of rubbish and politics.'

'And miss the king's marriage?' gasped Ardee, one hand pressed to her chest in fake horror. 'But I really must see what the Princess Terez is wearing! They say she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and even scum like me must have someone to look up to.' She tipped back her head and swilled down the last of her wine. 'Having fucked the groom is really no excuse for missing a wedding, you know.'

The flagship of Grand Duke Orso of Talins ploughed slowly, deliberately, majestically forwards, under no more than quarter sail, a host of seabirds flapping and calling in the rich blue sky above. It was by far the largest ship that Jezal, or anyone among the vast crowds that lined the quay and crammed the roofs and windows of the buildings along the waterfront, had ever laid eyes upon.

It was decked out in its finest: coloured bunting fluttered from the rigging and its three towering masts were hung with bright flags, the sable cross of Talins and the golden sun of the Union, side by side in honour of the happy occasion. But it looked no less menacing for that. It looked as Logen Ninefingers might have in a dandy's jacket. Unmistakably still a man of war, and appearing more savage rather than less for the gaudy finery in which it was plainly uncomfortable. As the means of bringing a single woman to Adua, and that woman Jezal's bride-to-be, this mighty vessel was anything but reassuring. It implied that Grand Duke Orso might be an intimidating presence as a father-in-law.