'Excellent.' Glokta looked at Ardee. 'It might be best if you stayed towards the back.'

She gave an exhausted nod. 'I was thinking the same.' He limped painfully over the threshold, black-clad mercenaries pouring through the doorway behind him, the last of them dragging Goyle reluctantly by his bandaged wrists. And along the very paths I took the first time I visited this heap of dust, so many months ago. Before the vote. Before Dagoska, even. How lovely to be back…

Down the dark hallway, past the dirty paintings of forgotten Adepti, tortured floorboards groaning under the boots of the mercenaries. Glokta lurched out into the wide dining hall.

The freak-show of Practicals was scattered about the dim chamber just as it had been when he last visited. The two identical men from Suljuk, with their curved swords. The tall, thin one, the dark men with their axes, the vast Northman with the ruined face. And so on. A good score of them in all. Have they been sitting here all this time, I wonder, just being menacing to each other?

Vitari was already up from her chair. 'I thought I told you to keep away from here, cripple.'

'I tried, indeed I did, but I could not banish the memory of your smile.'

'Ho, ho, Shylo!' Cosca strolled out from the hallway, twiddling at the waxed ends of his moustache with one hand, sword drawn in the other.

'Cosca! Don't you ever die?' Vitari let a cross-shaped knife tumble from her hand to clatter across the boards on the end of a long chain. 'Seems a day for men I hoped I'd seen the last of.' Her Practicals spread out around her, swords sliding from sheaths, axes, maces, spears scraping off the table. The mercenaries clomped into the hall, their own weapons at the ready. Glokta cleared his throat. 'I think it would be better for all concerned if we could discuss this like civilised—'

'You see anyone civilised?' snarled Vitari.

A fair point. One Practical sprang up on the table making the cutlery jump. The one-handed mercenary waved his hook in the air. The two heavily-armed groups edged towards each other. It looked very much as if Cosca and his hired hands would be earning their pay. A merry bloodbath I daresay it will be, and the outcome of a bloodbath is notoriously hard to predict. All in all, I would rather not take the gamble.

'A shame about your children! A shame for them, that there's no one civilised around!'

Vitari's orange eyebrows drew furiously inwards. 'They're far away!'