They turned through a heavy door flanked by frowning Practicals, past an open gate of iron bars. Into a long and windowless corridor, sloping steadily downwards, lit by too few lanterns and filled with slow shadows. The walls were rendered and whitewashed, though none too recently. There was a seedy feel to the place, and a smell of damp. Just as there always is. The clicking of Glokta's cane, the hissing of his breath, the rustling of his white coat, all fell dead on the chill, wet air.

'Killing me will bring you scant satisfaction, you know.'

'We shall see.'

'I doubt it. I was hardly the one responsible for your little trip northwards. I did the work perhaps, but others gave the orders.'

'They were not my friends.'

Glokta snorted. 'Please. Friends are people one pretends to like in order to make life bearable. Men like us have no need of such indulgences. It is our enemies by which we are measured.' And here are mine. Sixteen steps confronted him. That old, familiar flight. Cut from smooth stone, a little worn towards the centre.

'Steps. Bastard things. If I could torture one man, do you know who it would be?' Pike's face was a single, expressionless scar. 'Well, never mind.' Glokta struggled to the bottom without incident, limped on a few more painful strides to a heavy wooden door, bound with iron.

'We are here.' Glokta slid a bunch of keys from the pocket of his white coat, flicked through them until he found the right one, unlocked the door, and went in.

Arch Lector Sult was not the man he used to be. But then none of us are, quite. His magnificent shock of white hair was plastered greasily to his gaunt skull, dry blood matted in a yellow-brown mass on one side. His piercing blue eyes had lost their commanding sparkle, sunken as they were in deep sockets and rimmed with angry pink. He had been relieved of his clothes, and his sinewy old man's body, somewhat hairy around the shoulders, was smeared with the grime of the cells. He looked, in fact, like nothing so much as a mad old beggar. Can this truly once have been one of the most powerful men in the wide Circle of the World? You would never guess. A salutary lesson to us all. The higher you climb, the further there is to fall.

'Glokta!' he snarled, thrashing helplessly, chained to his chair. 'You treacherous, twisted bastard!'

Glokta held up his white-gloved hand, the purple stone on his ring of office glinting in the harsh lamplight. 'I believe your Eminence is the proper term of address.'

'You?' Sult barked sharp laughter. 'Arch Lector? A withered, pitiable husk of a man? You disgust me!'

'Don't give me that.' Glokta lowered himself, wincing, into the other chair. 'Disgust is for the innocent.'