Last Argument of Kings

done the same, it felt an age ago
now, from the top of the Tower of Chains. He’d stared out
dumbstruck at the endless city, wondering if he could ever have
dreamed of a man-made thing so proud, and beautiful, and
indestructible as the Agriont.
    By the dead, how
times change.
    The green space
of the park was scattered with fallen rubbish, trees broken, grass
gouged, half the lake leaked away and sunken to a muddy bog. At its
western edge a sweep of fine white buildings still stood, even if the
windows gaped empty. Further west, and they had no roofs, bare
rafters hanging. Further still their walls were torn and scoured,
empty shells, choked with rubble.
    Beyond that,
there was nothing. The great hall with the golden dome, gone. The
square where Logen had watched the sword-game, gone. The Tower of
Chains, the mighty wall under it, and all the grand buildings over
which Logen had fled with Ferro. All gone.
    A colossal
circle of destruction was carved from the western end of the Agriont,
and only acres of formless wreckage remained. The city beyond was
torn with black scars, smoke still rising from a few last fires, from
smouldering hulks still drifting in the bay. The House of the Maker
loomed over the scene, a sharp black mass under the brooding clouds,
uncaring and untouched.
    Logen stood
there, scratching at the scarred side of his face, over and over. His
wounds ached. So many of them. Every part of him was battered and
bruised, slashed and torn. From the fight with the Eater, from the
battle beyond the moat, from the duel with the Feared, from seven
days of slaughter in the High Places. From a hundred fights, and
skirmishes, and old campaigns. Too many to remember. So tired, and
sore, and sick.
    He frowned down
at his hands on the parapet in front of him. The bare stone looked
back where his middle finger used to be. He was Ninefingers still.
The Bloody-Nine. A man made of death, just as Bethod had said. He’d
nearly killed the Dogman yesterday, he knew it. His oldest friend.
His only friend. He’d raised the sword, and if it wasn’t
for a trick of fate, he would have done it.
    He remembered
standing high up, on the side of the Great Northern library, looking
out over the empty valley, the still lake like a great mirror beneath
it. He remembered feeling the wind on his fresh-shaved jaw, and
wondering whether a man could change.
    Now he knew the
answer.
    â€œMaster
Ninefingers!â€

Answers
    So much to
do.
    The House of
Questions still stood, and someone had to take the reins. Who else
will do it? Superior Goyle? A flatbow bolt through the heart prevents
him, alas. Someone had to look to the internment and questioning
of the many hundreds of Gurkish prisoners, more captured every day as
the army drove the invaders back to Keln. And who else will do it?
Practical Vitari? Left the Union forever with her children in tow. Someone had to examine the treason of Lord Brock. To dig him up, and
root out his accomplices. To make arrests, and obtain confessions. And who else is there, now? Arch Lector Sult? Oh, dear me, no.
    Glokta wheezed
up to his door, his few teeth bared at the endless pains in his legs. A fortunate decision, at least, to move to the eastern side of the
Agriont. One should be grateful for the small things in life, like a
place to rest one’s crippled husk. My old lodgings are no doubt
languishing under a thousand tons of rubble, just like the rest of—
    His door was not
quite shut. He gave it the gentlest of pushes and it creaked open,
soft lamplight spilling out into the corridor, a glowing stripe over
the dusty floorboards, over the foot of Glokta’s cane and the
muddy toe of one boot. I left no door unlocked, and certainly no
lamps burning. His tongue slithered nervously over his empty
gums. A visitor, then. An uninvited one. Do I go in, and welcome
them to my rooms? His eyes slid sideways into the shadows of the
corridor. Or do I make a run for it? He was almost smiling as
he shuffled over the threshold, cane first, then the right foot, then
the left, dragging painfully behind him.
    Glokta’s
guest sat by the window in the light of a single lamp, brightness
splashed across the hard planes of his face, cold darkness gathered
in the deep hollows. The squares board was set before him, just as
Glokta left it, the pieces casting long shadows across the chequered
wood.
    â€œWhy,
Superior Glokta. I have been waiting for you.â€

The Wounded
    West woke