'Oh, this is nothing. I suffer twice the pain and ten times the humiliation getting up in the morning. A man like you could be very useful to me. A man… as hard as you have proved yourself to be. A man who has lost everything, including all his scruples, all his mercy, all his fear. We both have lost everything. We both have survived. I understand you, Rews, as no one else ever can.'

'Pike is my name, now.'

'Of course it is. Let me up, Pike.'

Slowly the knife slid away from his throat. The man who had been Salem Rews stood over him, frowning down. Who could ever anticipate the turns that fate can take? 'Up, then.'

'Easier said than done.' Glokta dragged in a few sharp breaths, then growling with a great and painful effort he rolled over onto all fours. A heroic achievement indeed. He slowly tested his limbs, wincing as his twisted joints clicked. Nothing broken. No more broken than usual, anyway. He reached out and took the handle of his fallen cane between two fingers, dragged it towards him through the scattered papers. He felt the point of the blade pressing into his back.

'Don't take me for a fool, Glokta. If you try anything—'

He clutched at the edge of the desk and dragged himself up. 'You'll cut my liver out and all the rest. Don't worry. I am far too crippled to try anything worse than shit myself. I have something to show you, though. Something that I feel sure you will appreciate. If I'm wrong, well… you can slit my throat a little later.'

Glokta lurched out of the heavy door of his office, Pike sticking as close to his shoulder as a shadow, the knife kept carefully out of sight.

'Stay,' he snapped at the two Practicals in the ante-room, hobbling on past the frowning secretary at the huge desk. Out into the wide hallway running through the heart of the House of Questions and Glokta limped faster, cane clicking against the tiles. It hurt him to do it, but he held his head back, gave a cold wrinkle to his lip. Out of the corners of his eyes he saw the Clerks, the Practicals, the Inquisitors, bowing, sliding backwards, clearing away. How they fear me. More than any man in Adua, and with good reason. How things have changed. And yet, how they have stayed the same. His leg, his neck, his gums. These things were as they had always been. And always will be. Unless I am tortured again, of course.

'You look well,' Glokta tossed over his shoulder. 'Aside from your hideous facial burns, of course. You lost weight.'

'Starving can do that.'

'Indeed, indeed. I lost a great deal of weight in Gurkhul. And not just from the pieces they cut out of me. This way.'