'I think I got the better part of that deal.'

'I got my life, didn't I?'

'Hardly the kind of life that most young women hanker for.' He watched her, the strip of sunlight wandering back and forth across her darkened face as she moved. 'I know that I'm not what you wanted… in a husband.'

'I always dreamed of a man I could dance with.' She looked up and held his eye. 'But I think, perhaps, that you suit me better. Dreams are for children. We both are grownups.'

'Still. You see now that not dancing is the least of it. You should not have to do… this.'

'I want to do it.' She took a firm grip on his face and twisted it, somewhat painfully, so he was looking straight into hers. 'I want to do something. I want to be useful. I want someone to need me. Can you understand that?'

Glokta swallowed. 'Yes.' Few better. 'Where's Barnam?'

'I told him he could have the mornings off. I told him I'd be doing this from now on. I've told him to move my bed in here, as well.'

'But—'

'Are you telling me I can't sleep in the same room as my husband?' Her hands slid slowly over his withered flesh, gentle, but firm, rubbing at the scarred skin, pressing at the ruined muscles. How long ago? Since a woman looked at me with anything but horror? Since a woman touched me with anything but violence? He lay back, his eyes closed and his mouth open, tears running from his eye and trickling down the sides of his head into the pillow. Almost comfortable. Almost…

'I don't deserve this,' he breathed.

'No one gets what they deserve.'

Queen Terez looked down her nose at Glokta as he lurched into her sunny salon, without the slightest attempt to hide her utter disgust and contempt. As though she saw a cockroach crawling into her regal presence. But we will see. We know well the path, after all. We have followed it ourselves, and we have dragged so many others after. Pride comes first. Then pain. Humility follows hard upon it. Obedience lies just beyond.

'My name is Glokta. I am the new Arch Lector of his Majesty's Inquisition.'

'Ah, the cripple,' she sneered. With refreshing directness. And why do you disrupt my afternoon? You will find no criminals here.' Only Styrian witches.

Glokta's eyes flickered to the other woman, standing bolt upright near one of the windows. 'It is a matter we had better discuss alone.'

'The Countess Shalere has been my friend since birth. There is nothing you can say to me that she cannot hear.' The Countess glared at Glokta with a disdain little less piercing than the queen's.