'Exceptionally cock-eyed notions, as it happens. Sult wanted to return to an imaginary past where everyone kept their place and always did as they were told, and Marovia? Hah! Marovia wanted to piss power away to the people. Votes? Elections? The voice of the common man?'

'He aired some such notion.'

'I hope you aired the suitable level of contempt. Power for the people?' sneered Bayaz. 'They don't want it. They don't understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.'

'Someone like you, I suppose?'

'Who better suited? Marovia thought to use me in his petty schemes, and all the while I made good use of him. While he tussled with Sult over scraps the game was already won. A move I had prepared some time before.'

Glokta slowly nodded. 'Jezal dan Luthar.' Our little bastard.

'Your friend and mine.'

But a bastard is no use unless… 'Crown Prince Raynault stood in the way.'

The Magus flicked a piece over and it rolled slowly from the board and rattled to the table. 'We talk of great events. There is sure to be some wastage.'

'You made it seem that he was killed by an Eater.'

'Oh, he was.' Bayaz watched smugly from the shadows. 'Not all who break the Second Law serve Khalul. My apprentice, Yoru Sulfur, has long been partial to a bite or two.' And he snapped his two rows of smooth and even teeth together.

'I see.'

'This is war, Superior. In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice. But only look who I am lecturing. You need no lessons in ruthlessness.'

'No.' They cut them into me in the Emperors prisons, and I have been practising them ever since.

Bayaz nudged one of the pieces gently forward. 'A useful man, Sulfur. A man who long ago accepted the demands of necessity, and mastered the discipline of taking forms.' He was the guard, weeping outside Prince Raynault's door. The guard who vanished into thin air the next day…

'A shred of cloth taken from the Emissary's bed-chamber,' murmured Glokta. 'Blood daubed on his robe.' And so an innocent man went to the gallows, and the war between Gurkhul and the Union blossomed. Two obstacles swept neatly away with one sharp flick of the broom.

'Peace with the Gurkish did not suit my purposes. It was sloppy of Sulfur to leave such blatant clues. But then he never expected you to care about the truth when there was a convenient explanation to hand.'