Last Argument of Kings

and
fucked up everyone’s breakfast.
    Might help to
put some steel in the rest of the Dogman’s crew besides,
because more than a few were getting itchy. Some lads had tried to
get away two nights before. Given up their places and crept over the
wall in the darkness, tried to get down into the valley. Bethod had
their heads on spears out in front of his ditch now. A dozen battered
lumps, hair blowing about in the breeze. You could hardly see their
faces from the wall, but it seemed somehow they had an angry, upset
sort of a look. Like they blamed the Dogman for leading them to this.
As though he hadn’t enough to worry about with the reproaches
of the living.
    He frowned down
at Bethod’s camp, the shapes of his tents and his signs just
starting to come up black out of the mist and the darkness, and he
wondered what he could do, except for stand there, and wait. All his
boys were looking to him, hoping he’d pull some trick of magic
to get them out of this alive. But Dogman didn’t know any
magic. A valley, and a wall, and no ways out. No ways out had been
the whole point of the plan. He wondered if they could stand another
day. But then he’d wondered that yesterday morning.
    â€œWhat’s
Bethod planning for today, do we reckon?â€

Too Many Masters
    In spite of the
hot summer day outside, the banking hall was a cool, dim, shadowy
place. A place full of whispers, and quiet echoes, built of sharp,
dark marble like a new tomb. Such thin shafts of sunlight as broke
through the narrow windows were full of wriggling dust motes. There
was no smell to speak of. Except the stench of dishonesty, which
even I find almost overpowering. The surroundings may be cleaner than
the House of Questions, but I suspect there is more truth told among
the criminals.
    There were no
piles of shining gold ingots on display. There was not so much as a
single coin in evidence. Only pens, and ink, and heaps of dull paper.
Valint and Balk’s employees were not swaddled in fabulous robes
such as Magister Kault of the Mercers had worn. They did not sport
flashing jewels as Magister Eider of the Spicers had. They were
small, grey-dressed men with serious expressions. The only flashing
was from the odd pair of studious eye-glasses.
    So this is
what true wealth looks like. This is how true power appears. The
austere temple of the golden goddess. He watched the clerks
working at their neat stacks of documents, at their neat desks
arranged in neat rows. There the acolytes, inducted into the
lowest mysteries of the church. His eyes flickered to those
waiting. Merchants and moneylenders, shopkeepers and shysters,
traders and tricksters in long queues, or waiting nervously on hard
chairs around the hard walls. Fine clothes, perhaps, but anxious
manners. The fearful congregation, ready to cower should the deity
of commerce show her vengeful streak.
    But I am not
her creature. Glokta shouldered his way past the longest queue,
the tip of his cane squealing loud against the tiles, snarling, “I
am crippled!â€

Sweet Victory
    West sat, arms
crossed upon his saddle-bow, staring numbly up the dusty valley. “We
won,â€

Rude Awakenings
    Jezal was
smiling when he began to wake. They were done with this madcap
mission, and soon he would be back in Adua. Back in Ardee’s
arms. Warm and safe. He snuggled down into his blankets at the
thought. Then he frowned. There was a knocking sound coming from
somewhere. He opened his eyes a crack. Someone hissed at him from
across the room, and he turned his head.
    He saw Terez’
face, pale in the darkness, glaring from between the bed curtains,
and the last few weeks came back in a horrible rush. She looked just
as she had the day he married her, surely, and yet the perfect face
of his queen seemed now ugly and hateful to him.
    The royal
bedchamber had become a battlefield. The border, watched with iron
determination, was an invisible line between door and fireplace which
Jezal crossed at his peril. The far side of the room was Styrian
territory, and the mighty bed itself was Terez’ strongest
citadel, its defences apparently impregnable. On the second night of
their marriage, hoping perhaps that there had been some
misunderstanding on the first, he had mounted a half-hearted assault
which had left him with a bloody nose. Since then he had settled in
hopelessly for a long and fruitless siege.
    Terez was the
very mistress of deception. He