‘Got yer!’ he shouted, squeezing him in a great hug. An awful mistake. Better to embrace the burning fire. Crack!

Logen might have pitied him, but Logen was far away and the Bloody-Nine had no more pity in him than the winter. Less even.

He struggled and strained, but it was useless. The Bloody-Nine’s grip was strong as the roots of mountains, relentless as the tide. ‘They send such as you to fight me?’ He flung the man back against the wall and squeezed, crushing

Something dug into the Bloody-Nine’s back, but there was no pain. It was a sign. A message in a secret tongue, that only he could understand. It told him where the next dead man was standing. He reeled around and the sword followed him in a furious, beautiful, irresistible arc. It crunched into someone’s guts, folded him in half, snatched him off h

Glokta watched him walk away. Sult was wrong. The Arch Lector, fallible after all. He underestimated this Bayaz, and it cost him. Who is this bald, irritable fool, who can make a sprawling idiot of the most powerful man in the Union? Standing here, deep within the bowels of this unearthly place, the answer did not seem so strange. The First of the

Still, he knew that he wanted to be a big, important man some day. To wear things with a lot of fur, and a heavy golden chain of office. To have people bow and scrape and fawn before him. He had made that decision long ago, and he supposed he still liked the idea. It was just that, up close, the whole thing seemed so awfully false and boring. He wo

And Glokta was in need of comfort. As he tottered further across the bridge, a niggling fear swelled inside him. It was more than the height, more than the strange company, more than the great tower looming above. A base fear, without reason. The animal terror of a nightmare. With every shuffling step the feeling grew. He could see the door now, a

‘Say one thing for the First of the Magi, say he’s a cheating bastard,’ growled Logen.

She treated him with the contempt he knew he deserved. And he couldn’t get enough of it. ‘Strangest thing,’ Jezal mumbled to himself, slouching miserably against the wall of the tunnel. ‘Strangest thing.’ It made him want to change her mind.