Last Argument of Kings

sheep’s
death rattle, but less dignified. Then he swallowed, and wiped
his running eyes. I have not laughed so hard in years. Since
before the Emperor’s torturers did their work, I shouldn’t
wonder. And yet it is not so very difficult to stop. After all,
nothing is really very funny here, is it? He lifted the letter,
and read it again.
    Superior
Glokta,
    My
employers at the banking house of Valint and Balk are more than
disappointed with your progress. It is some time now since I asked
you, in person, to inform us of Arch Lector Sult’s plans. In
particular, the reasons for his continuing interest in the
University. Since then we have received no communication from you.
    It may
be that you believe the sudden arrival of the Gurkish beyond the city
walls has altered the expectations of my employers.
    It has
not, in any way whatsoever. Nothing will.
    You
will report to us within the week, or his Eminence will be informed
of your divided loyalties.
    I need
hardly add that it would be wise for you to destroy this letter.
    Mauthis.
    Glokta stared at
the paper for a long while by the light of the single candle, his
ruined mouth hanging open. For this, I lived through months of
agony in the darkness of the Emperor’s prisons? Tortured my
savage way through the Guild of Mercers? Slaughtered my bloody path
through the city of Dagoska? To end my days in ignominy, trapped
between a bitter old bureaucrat and a tank full of treacherous
swindlers? All my twisting, my lying my bargains, and my pain. All
those corpses left beside the road… for this?
    A new wave of
laughter rocked his body, twisted him up and made his aching back
rattle. His Eminence and these bankers deserve each other! Even
with the city burning down around them, their games cannot stop for
an instant. Games which may very well prove fatal to poor Superior
Glokta, who only tried to do his crippled best. He had to wipe a
little snot from under his nose he laughed so hard at that last
thought.
    It almost
seems a shame to burn such a horribly hilarious document. Perhaps I
should take it to the Arch Lector instead? Would he see the funny
side, I wonder? Would we chuckle over it together? He reached out
and held the corner of the letter to the twisting candle flame,
watched fire flicker up the side, creep out through the writing,
white paper curling up into black ashes.
    Burn, as my
hopes, and my dreams, and my glorious future burned beneath the
Emperor’s palace! Burn, as Dagoska did and Adua surely will
before the Emperor’s fury! Burn, as I would love to burn King
Jezal the Bastard, and the First of the Magi, and Arch Lector Sult,
and Valint and Balk, and the whole damned—
    â€œGah!â€

Charity
    Adua burned.
    The two
westernmost districts—the Three Farms, at the south-western
corner of the city, and the Arches, further north—were hacked
with black wounds. Smoke was still pouring up from some of them,
great columns lit in faint orange near the base. They spread out in
oily smears, dragged away to the west by a stiff wind, drawing a
muddy curtain across the setting sun.
    Jezal watched in
solemn silence, his hands bunched into numb fists on the parapet of
the Tower of Chains. There was no sound up here but for the wind
fumbling at his ears and, just occasionally, the slightest hint of
distant battle. A war cry, or the screams of the wounded. Or perhaps
only a sea-bird calling, high on the breeze. Jezal wished for a
maudlin moment that he were a bird, and could simply fly from the
tower and off over the Gurkish pickets, away from this nightmare. But
escape would not be so easy.
    â€œCasamir’s
Wall was first breached three days ago,â€

Better Left Buried
    When the
fighting is over you dig, if you’re still alive. You dig graves
for your dead comrades. A last mark of respect, however little you
might have had for them. You dig as deep as you can be bothered, you
dump them in, you cover them up, they rot away and are forgotten.
That’s the way it’s always been.
    There would be a
lot of digging when this fight was done. A lot of digging for both
sides.
    Twelve days,
now, since the fire started falling. Since the wrath of God began to
rain on these arrogant pinks, and lay blackened waste to their proud
city. Twelve days since the killing started—at the walls, and
in the streets, and through the houses. For twelve days in the cold
sunlight, in the spitting rain,