“So…”

“So you’re the perfect choice.” And she sat and gnawed away at that bone.

“But…?”

“But you’re not the only one who wants something.” Judge tossed the stripped bone down, licked her fingers, then dried them off by dragging her hair out of her face. “Do you know the person I’d most like to put on trial?”

Leo didn’t want to draw this out. A conversation with Judge was a game that could turn fatal at any moment. He wondered who he’d most like to see on trial. “King Orso?”

She wrinkled her nose. “That walking cock? No. Have you ever read one o’ Sworbreck’s books?”

Leo would rather have drunk Sworbreck’s piss. “I’m… not much of

a reader.”

“You should. They got me through some hard times. The last chapter is the sentimental fairwell. But the climax of the story is a little bit before. The danger. The excitement. The triumph. You see? Putting King Orso on trial,” she shrugged her bony shoulders high. “That’s the last chapter. It has to be done, but it’ll get no one’s juices flowing, eh, Broad?”

Broad stayed silent.

“No, the person I’d most like to put on trial is Old Sticks himself. Sand dan fucking Glokta. He was the one who set the policies. The one who did the torturing and raised the gibbets and made all the examples. The one who racked up most o’ the names we’ve carved into the Square of Martyrs.” Judge curled back her lips in disgust. “But like the cunning old louse he is, he’s wriggled away into the woodwork. I need someone in the dock who can help me winkle out the cripple.” She raised her red brows expectantly.

“Well, we never wasted much warmth on each other, I promise you. I’ve no idea where—”

“I want to put your wife on trial.”

Judge was smiling, so Leo took it for a joke, and managed a sour grin himself. “You’re joking.”

“I’m fucking not,” she hissed, showing her teeth. “I want your word—if I put your wife on trial, you’ll do nothing to stop me. She denounces her father, tells us where he can be found, I daresay the court could find its way to clemency. Eh? Eh? Eh?”

Leo swallowed. His heart was beating very loud. He glanced up at Broad, but the man’s eye-lenses had caught the light from a window and were bright white, so Leo couldn’t see his eyes. There was something dead about his thickly stubbled face. Scabs on his tattooed knuckles. A welt of bruises on one side of his neck. He lifted his bottle, and took a sip.

“Leo…” he heard Glaward whisper, and Leo held up a hand to silence him.

It was less than a year ago, if you could believe it, that he had introduced Savine to the people of Angland, cheering on the dockside, full of pride and admiration. He remembered using the word love, even though he wasn’t sure now what he’d meant by it. If someone had threatened a hair on his wife’s head then, they would’ve faced his rash and righteous fury. But there had been a Great Change since. A change in so many things. He couldn’t afford rashness or righteousness, and fury even less.