'I also told you the less fucking the better.'

'And I suppose that's what you told all your conquests, is it?'

Glokta grimaced. Not exactly. I coaxed and I pleaded, I threatened and I bullied. Your beauty has wounded me, wounded me in the heart! I am wretched, I will die without you! Have you no pity? Do you not love me? I did everything short of display the instruments, then when I got what I wanted I tossed them aside and went merrily on to the next with never a backward glance.

'Hah!' snorted Ardee, as though she guessed what he was thinking. 'Sand dan Glokta, giving lectures on the benefits of chastity? Please! How many women did you ruin before the Gurkish ruined you? You were notorious!'

A muscle began to tremble in his neck, and he worked his shoulder round until he felt it soften. She makes a fair point. Perhaps a soft word with the gentleman in question will do the trick. A soft word, or a hard night with Practical Frost. 'Your bed, your business, I suppose, as they say in Styria. How does the great Captain Luthar come to be among the civilians in any case? Doesn't he have Northmen to rout? Who will save Angland, while he's here?'

'He wasn't in Angland.'

'No?' Father find him a nice, out of the way spot, did he?

'He's been in the Old Empire, or some such. Across the sea to the west and far away.' She sighed as though she had heard a great deal about it and was now thoroughly bored of the subject.

'Old Empire? What the hell was he up to out there?'

'Why don't you ask him? Some journey. He talked a lot about a Northman. Ninefingers, or something.'

Glokta's head jerked up. 'Ninefingers?'

'Mmm. Him and some old bald man.'

A flurry of twitches ran down Glokta's face. 'Bayaz.' Ardee shrugged and swigged from her glass again, already developing a slight drunken clumsiness to her movements. Bayaz. All we need, with an election coming, is that old liar sticking his hairless head in. 'Is he here, now, in the city?'

'How should I know?' grumbled Ardee. 'Nobody tells me anything.'

So Much in Common

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Ferro stalked round the room, and scowled. She poured her scorn out into the sweet-smelling air, onto the rustling hangings, over the great windows and the high balcony beyond them. She sneered at the dark pictures of fat pale kings, at the shining furniture scattered about the wide floor. She hated this place, with its soft beds and its soft people. She infinitely preferred the dust and thirst of the Badlands of Kanta. Life there was hard, and hot, and brief.

But at least it was honest.

This Union, and this city of Adua in particular, and this fortress of the Agriont especially, were all packed to bursting with lies. She felt them on her skin, like an oily stain she could not rub off. And Bayaz was sunk in the very midst of it. He had tricked her into following him across the world for nothing. They had found no ancient weapon to use against the Gurkish. Now he smiled, and laughed, and whispered secrets with old men. Men who came in sweating from the heat outside, and left sweating even more.