Glokta peered into the murk. 'Cosca?'

'The very same!' laughed the Styrian. He was affecting a fine leather cap with a ludicrously tall plume, and he flicked at it with a finger. 'I bought a new hat. Or should I say you bought me one, eh, Superior?'

'So I see.' Glokta glared at the long feather, the flamboyant golden basketwork on the hilt of Cosca's sword. 'I thought we said inconspicuous.'

'In… con… spicuous?' The Styrian frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. 'Ah, so that was the word. I remember something was said, and I remember I didn't understand it.' He winced, and scratched at his crotch with one hand. 'I think I picked up some passengers from one of those women at the tavern. Little bastards don't half give a man an itch.' Huh. The women are paid to go there. One might have thought the lice would have better taste.

A shadowy crowd began to form out of the darkness behind Cosca, a few carrying hooded lanterns. A dozen shaggy outlines, then a dozen more, menace floating silently from each one of them like the stink floating from a turd. 'Are these your men?'

The nearest sported perhaps the worst facial boils that Glokta had ever seen. The man beside him had only one hand, the other having been replaced with a savage-looking hook. A huge fat fellow came next, his pale neck blue with a confusion of badly drawn tattoos. A man almost dwarfish, with a face like a rat and only one eye accompanied him. He had not bothered with a patch, and the socket yawned open under his greasy hair. The list of villainy went on. Two dozen, perhaps, all told, of the most savage-looking criminals Glokta had ever laid eyes on. And I've laid eyes on a few in my time. Strangers to bathwater, certainly. Not a one of them looks like he wouldn't sell his sister for a mark. 'They appear somewhat unreliable,' he murmured.

'Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.'

'Are you sure?'

'She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?' Cosca flung his arm round Glokta's twisted shoulders and drew him close, causing a painful twinge to jab at his hips. 'I'm afraid that pickings are slim.' His warm breath smelled strongly of spirits and corruption. 'Every man not desperate fled the city the moment the Gurkish arrived. But who cares, eh? I hired them for their guts and their sinews, not their looks. Desperate men are the kind I like! We can understand them, no, you and I? Some jobs call for desperate men only, eh, Superior?'