'Sult's signed confession?' murmured Glokta.

'Such a document would seem to solve some problems for both of us. Sult would be gone, and the bankers would have lost their hold over you. The Gurkish would still be camped outside our walls of course, but one can't have everything.'

'The Arch Lector's signed confession.' And shall I pluck the moon from the sky while I'm about it?

'Or a big enough stone to start the landslide—perhaps the confession of someone suitably close to him. I understand that you are expert at obtaining them.' The High Justice peered at Glokta from under his heavy brows. 'Was I misinformed?'

'I cannot conjure evidence from thin air, your Worship.'

'Those lost in the desert must take the chances they are offered, however slender. Find evidence, and bring it to me. Then I can act, and not one moment before. You understand that I cannot take any risks for you. It is difficult to trust a man who chose his master, and now chooses another.'

'Chose?' Glokta felt his eyelid twitching again. 'If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.'

'The world is full of tragic tales.' Marovia walked to the window, turning his back and staring out at the darkening sky. 'Especially now. You can hardly expect them to make any difference to a man of my experience. I wish you good day.'

Further comment seems pointless. Glokta rocked forwards, pushed himself painfully up to standing with the aid of his cane, and limped for the door. But the tiniest glimmer of hope has come creeping into the dank cellar of my despair… I need only obtain a confession to High Treason from the head of his Majesty's Inquisition—

'And Superior!' Why can no one ever finish talking before I get up? Glokta turned back into the room, his spine burning. 'If someone close to you is talking, you need to shut them up. Now. Only a fool would consider uprooting treason from the Closed Council before he had cut the weeds from his own lawn.'

'Oh, you need not worry about my garden, your Worship.' Glokta treated the High Justice to his most repulsive grin. 'I am even now sharpening my shears.'

Charity

« ^ »

Adua burned.

The two westernmost districts—the Three Farms, at the south-western corner of the city, and the Arches, further north—were hacked with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them, great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a muddy curtain across the setting sun.

Jezal watched in solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But escape would not be so easy.