'Oh, come now, Superior, compared to what you did to your prisoners in Angland this is really quite infantile. Try to pace yourself. If you scream like that now, you'll have nowhere to go later.' The fat mercenary seized Goyle's other wrist in his pudgy hands and dragged it out across the map of the Union.

'Nail?' asked Cosca, raising an eyebrow.

'You're getting the hang of it.'

'Wait! Ah! Wait!'

'Why? This is the closest I've come to enjoying myself in six years. Don't begrudge me my little moment. I get so very few of them.' Glokta raised the hammer.

'Wait!'

Click. Goyle roared with pain again. Click. And again. Click. The nail was through, and the one-time scourge of Angland's penal colonies was pinned flat by both arms. I suppose that's where ambition gets you without the talent. Humility is easier to teach than one would think. All it takes to puncture our arrogance is a nail or two in the right place. Goyle's breath hissed through his bloody teeth, pinioned fingers clawing at the wood. Glokta disapprovingly shook his head. 'I would stop struggling if I was you. You'll only tear the flesh.'

'You'll pay for this, you crippled bastard! Don't think you won't!'

'Oh, I've paid already.' Glokta turned his neck around in a slow circle, trying to make the grumbling muscles in his shoulders unclench just a fraction. 'I was kept, I am not sure for how long, but I would guess at several months, in a cell no bigger than a chest of drawers. Far too small to stand, or even to sit up straight in. Every possible position twisted, bent, agonising. Hundreds of interminable hours in the pitch darkness, the stifling heat. Kneeling in a stinking slurry of my own shit, wriggling, and squirming, and gasping for air. Begging for water which my jailers let drip down through a grate above. Sometimes they would piss through it, and I would be grateful. I have never stood up straight since. I really have no idea how I remained sane.' Glokta thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. 'Perhaps I didn't. In any case, these are the kind of sacrifices I have made. What sacrifices will you make, just to keep Sult's secrets?'

No answer but the blood running out from under Goyle's forearms, pooling around the glittering stone that marked the House of Questions in the city of Keln.