Glokta paused before the doorway. Where I have cringed so often at the pleasure of his Eminence. His fingers tingled against the wood. Can it possibly be this easy? To simply walk up in broad daylight and arrest the most powerful man in the Union? He had to suppress a smirk. If only I had thought of it sooner. He wrenched the doorknob round and lurched over the threshold.

Sult's office was much as it had always been. The great windows, with their view of the University, the huge round table with its jewelled map of the Union, the ornate chairs and the brooding portraits. It was not Sult sitting in the tall chair, however. It was none other than his favourite lapdog, Superior Goyle. Trying the big seat out for size, are we? Far too big for you, I'm afraid.

Goyle's first reaction was outrage. How dare anyone barge in here like this? His second was confusion. Who would dare to barge in here like this? His third was shock. The cripple? But how? His fourth, as he saw Cosca and four of his men follow Glokta through the door, was horror. Now we're getting so mew here.

'You!' he hissed. 'But you're—'

'Slaughtered? Change of plans, I'm afraid. Where's Sult?'

Goyle's eyes flickered around the room, over the dwarfish mercenary, the one with a hook for a hand, the one with the hideous boils, and came to rest on Cosca, swaggering round the edge of the chamber with one fist on his sword-hilt.

'I'll pay you! Whatever he's paying you, I'll double it!'

Cosca held out his open palm. 'I prefer cash in hand.'

'Now? I don't have… I don't have it with me!'

'A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You'll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.'

'Wait!' Goyle stumbled up and took a step back, his trembling hands held up in front of him. But there's nowhere to go but out the window. That's the trouble with ambition. It's easy to forget, when you're always looking upwards, that the only way down from the dizzy heights is a long drop.

'Sit down, Goyle,' growled Glokta.

Cosca grabbed his wrist, twisted his right arm savagely behind him and made him squeal, forced him back into the chair, clamped one hand round the back of his head and smashed his face into the beautiful map of the Union. There was a sharp crunch as his nose broke, spattering blood across the western part of Midderland.