“What useful people can be?”

Sulfur smiled wider, showing a full set of clean, sharp teeth. “Do you know? Those were his very words.” He glanced towards Savine, who was clinging to one of the handles of her father’s chair, no idea whether to stand her ground, run for the children or scream for help. “Did you really think you could stuff King Jezal’s bastard onto the throne without even a by-your-leave?”

“I did. I have.”

“Doing it is one thing. Getting away with it is quite another. For a man who complains so much about pain you have been happy to inflict it wholesale.” Sulfur gently wagged one finger as he padded across the room towards them. “All this destruction, just to end up trapped by your own cleverness.”

“No doubt this is a trap.” Glokta looked up mildly at Sulfur. “But not for me.”

“What will you do, cripple? Wheel your chair over me?”

“You forget, I have some experience with your kind. The best weapon against an Eater… is another.”

A latch dropped with a soft scrape and Sulfur froze in the middle of the floor.

Zuri had slipped in through the nursery door. Savine was about to scream at her to get out, to get help, but something stole her voice, so all that came out was a reedy squeak. Zuri’s head hung over on one side, her teeth showing very white as she smiled too wide, her eyes gleaming black in the shadows.

“Someone has been a very bad boy,” she said.

Sulfur spun towards the door he had come in through, but Haroon had entered from the hallway and now pushed it firmly shut. Rabik dropped from the shadows among the vaults above, spun in the air as neatly as an acrobat and landed silently on all fours. Savine had no idea how she could have failed to notice him, clinging to the ceiling. But she saw him now.

“It has been a long time, Sulfur,” he sang, rocking back on his haunches.

“So much to answer for,” said Haroon.

The shock on Sulfur’s face only lasted for an instant. Then the air above his shoulders shimmered and Rabik was flung across the room as if by a slap from a giant’s hand. Savine gasped as he crashed into the window in a spray of glass, bounced from the stone frame leaving a great crack. He should have been dead, every bone shattered. Instead he fell in a ready crouch like a cat dropped from a high place, dust showering from a great dry split in his cheek but his mouth still fixed in a smile.

Sulfur and Haroon were fighting, too fast for Savine’s darting eyes to follow, a tangle of flailing limbs, blows landing with thuds and smacks so loud they were painful on the ear. Savine felt an awful sucking in her stomach and Haroon tumbled past like a cannon-stone, missed her by no more than a stride, smashed into the wall with an impact that showered plaster and made the whole room shake.