Her own front door.

One of the Practicals carefully flattened the bag, folded it with fussy precision, then slipped it into a pocket while the other untied her hands.

They stood there, in front of her little apartment. Fitting, in a way. All that pain and worry just to get back to where she’d started. They didn’t force her in. But they weren’t giving her any other choices.

One pointed out the door like an usher showing a valued client to her seat in the theatre. “Just inside, Inquisitor, if you’d be so kind?”

She could’ve fought, she supposed, but she’d have lost. She could’ve run, but they’d have caught her. She could’ve screamed for help, but no help would come. And anyway, now the moment had arrived, she wanted answers. It might be she’d only get more questions. It might be she’d get a final, crushing blow to the back of the skull, and darkness. But she wanted answers.

She pushed the door open with a fingertip. Her face was sweaty from the inside of the bag, the air cool on her skin. A lamp was lit in the dining room. An accusing finger of light stretched out across the boards towards her. She followed it down the hall, her knees a little weak, her mouth a little dry, her heart beating hard.

Vick’s guest sat at the dining table in the light of a single lamp, brightness splashed across the sharp bones of his face, darkness gathered in the deep lines. The squares board was set before him, the pieces Vick had knocked over returned to their places, casting long shadows across the chequered wood.

“Inquisitor Teufel. I have been waiting for you.”

Now it all made sense. And like every illusion, once Vick knew how it worked, she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t seen it right away.

“You’re the Weaver,” she said.

Sand dan Glokta bared his ruined teeth as he sat back in his wheeled chair and considered her calmly. “Yes.”

“Not Pike. Not Risinau. You.”

“Me.”

“You made the Breakers.”

“Made? No, no.” Glokta let one thin finger trail across the pieces on the squares board, as though considering his next move. “Society is a competition, and one cannot have winners without creating losers. People who lose once tend to lose more, and people who lose too often become discontented. I merely… gathered them into a group. Gave them a name. Pointed them in the right direction.”

“You… were the architect of the Great Change?”

“Architect sounds so grand. There was dry straw everywhere, I simply struck the match.”

She thought of the bank in flames in Valbeck, the ash fluttering down. She thought of the fires leaving their black scars through Adua. She thought of the Court of the People, burning up like a great torch to leave a blasted shell. “Why?”

“Ah, why do I do this? Why?” Glokta gazed down at the squares board. “Because sometimes… to change the world… we must burn it down. Bayaz controlled everything. We all were pieces in his game.” He nudged one of the smallest pieces forwards into empty space. “He owned the banks, and the banks owned the merchants, owned the nobles, owned the treasury, even. The king himself danced to Bayaz’s music. The Closed Council, too. Even me, though I’m not much of a dancer these days. The Great Change was the only way I could see to cut all the puppet strings at once. The only way I could see to make us…” Glokta shrugged his bony shoulders, wincing as though even that much movement gave him pain. “Free.”