'Disposing of traitors is no trouble for me. You know that.' Angry creases spread out around Sult's hard blue eyes. 'Could it be, after all we have been through together, you might take me for a fool?'

Glokta's voice rasped uncomfortably in his dry throat. 'Absolutely not, Arch Lector.' Merely a lethal megalomaniac. He knows. He knows that I am not entirely the dutiful slave. But how much does he know? And from whom did he learn it?

'I gave you an impossible task, and so I have allowed you the benefit of the doubt. But your benefit will only last as long as your successes. I grow tired of putting the spur to you. If you do not solve my problems with our new King in the next two weeks, I will have Superior Goyle dig out the answers to my questions about Dagoska. I will have him dig them from your twisted flesh, if I must. Do I make myself clear?'

As Visserine glass. Two weeks to find the answers, or… fragments of a butchered corpse found floating by the docks. But if I even ask the questions, Valint and Balk will inform his Eminence of our arrangement and… bloated by seawater, horribly mutilated, far beyond recognition. Alas for poor Superior Glokta. A comely and a well-loved man, but such bad luck. Wherever will he turn?

'I understand, Arch Lector.'

'Then why ever are you still sitting here?'

It was Ardee West herself who opened the door, a half-full wine glass in one hand. 'Ah! Superior Glokta, what a delightful surprise. Do come in!'

'You sound almost pleased to see me.' A rare response indeed to my arrival.

'Why wouldn't I be?' She stepped graciously aside to allow him past. 'How many girls are lucky enough to have a torturer for a chaperone? There's nothing like it for encouraging the suitors.'

He hobbled over the threshold. 'Where is your maid?'

'She got herself all worked up about some Gurkish army or other, so I let her go. Went to her mother in Martenhorm.'

'And you are yourself ready to leave, I hope?' He followed her into the warm living room, shutters and curtains closed, illuminated by the shifting glow from the coals on the fire.

'In fact, I have decided to stay in the city.'

'Really? The tragic princess, pining in her empty castle? Abandoned by her faithless servants, wringing her helpless hands while her enemies surround the moat?' Glokta snorted. 'Are you sure you fit the role?'

'Better than you fit that of the knight on the white charger, come to rescue the damsel with blade a-flashing.' She looked him scornfully up and down. 'I'd hoped for a hero with at least half his teeth.'

'I thought you'd be used to getting less than you hoped for by now.' I know that I am.

'What can I say? I'm a romantic. Have you come here only to puncture my dreams?'

'No. I do that without trying. I had in mind a drink and a conversation which did not include the subtext of my mutilated corpse.'