A single lamp cast creeping shadows across the mouldering hallway, over rough stone and flaking plaster. It made sinister outlines of the mercenaries, turned Cosca's face and Ardee's into unfamiliar masks. The darkness seemed to gather inside the heavy stonework of the archway and around the door within— ancient-looking, knotted and grained, studded with black iron rivets.

'Something amusing, Superior?'

'I stood here,' murmured Glokta. 'In this exact spot. With Silber.' He reached out and brushed the iron handle with his fingertips. 'My hand was on the latch… and I moved on.' Ah, the irony. The answers we seek so long and far for—so often at our fingertips all along.

Glokta felt a shiver down his twisted spine as he leaned close to the door. He could hear something from beyond, a muffled droning in a language he did not recognise. The Adeptus Demonic calls upon the denizens of the abyss? He licked his lips, the image of High Justice Marovia's frozen remains fresh in his mind. It would be rash to plunge straight through, however keen we are to put our questions to rest. Very rash…

'Superior Goyle, since you have led us here, perhaps you would care to go first?'

'Geegh?' squeaked Goyle through his gag, his already bulging eyes going even wider. Cosca took the Superior of Adua by his collar, seized the iron handle with his other hand, thrust it swiftly open and applied his boot to the seat of Goyle's trousers. He stumbled through, bellowing meaningless nonsense into his gag. The metallic sound of a flatbow being discharged issued from the other side of the door, along with the chanting, louder and harsher now by far.

What would Colonel Glokta have said? Onwards to victory, lads! Glokta lurched through the doorway, almost tripping over his own aching foot on the threshold, and gazed about him in surprise. A large, circular hall with a domed ceiling, its shadowy walls painted with a vast, exquisitely detailed mural. And one that seems uncomfortably familiar. Kanedias, the Master Maker, loomed up over the chamber with arms outspread, five times life-size or more, fire blazing from behind him in vivid crimson, orange, white. On the opposite wall lay his brother Juvens, stretched out on the grass beneath flowering trees, blood running from his many wounds. In between the two men, the Magi marched to take their revenge, six on one side, five on the other, bald Bayaz in the lead. Blood, fire, death, vengeance. How wonderfully appropriate, given the circumstances.