The Blade Itself

slipped away silently across
the street.
    Glokta waited
for him to reach the wall and disappear into the shadows beside the
building, then he turned to Severard and pointed at the front door.
The eyes of the lanky Practical smiled at him for a moment, then he
scuttled quickly away, staying low, rolled over the low wall and
dropped without a sound onto the other side.
    Perfect so
far, but now I must move. Glokta wondered why he had come. Frost
and Severard were more than capable of dealing with Robb by
themselves, and he would only slow them down. I might even fall on
my arse and alert the idiot to our presence. So why did I come? But Glokta knew why. The feeling of excitement was already building
in his throat. It felt almost like being alive.
    He had muffled
the end of his cane with a bit of rag, so he was able to limp to the
wall, ever so delicately, without making too much noise. By that time
Severard had swung the gate open, holding the hinge with one gloved
hand so that it didn’t make a noise. Nice and neat. That
little wall might as well be a hundred feet high for all my chances
of getting over it.
    Severard was
kneeling on the step against the front door, picking the lock. His
ear was close to the wood, his eyes squinting with concentration,
gloved hands moving deftly. Glokta’s heart was beating fast,
his skin prickly with tension. Ah, the thrill of the hunt.
    There was a soft
click, then another. Severard slipped his glittering picks into a
pocket, then reached out and slowly, carefully turned the doorknob.
The door swung silently open. What a useful fellow he is. Without
him and Frost I am just a cripple. They are my hands, my arms, my
legs. But I am their brains. Severard slipped inside and Glokta
followed him, wincing with pain every time he put his weight on his
left leg.
    The hallway was
dark, but there was a shaft of light spilling down the stairs from
above and the banisters cast strange, distorted shadows on the wooden
floor. Glokta pointed up the steps, and Severard nodded and began to
tiptoe toward them, keeping his feet close to the wall. It seemed to
take him an age to get there.
    The third step
made a quiet creaking sound as he put his weight on it. Glokta
winced, Severard froze in place. They waited, still as statues. There
was no sound from upstairs. Glokta began to breathe again. Severard
moved ever so slowly upwards, step by gentle step. As he got towards
the top he peered cautiously round the corner, back pressed against
the wall, then he took the last step and disappeared from view
without a sound.
    Practical Frost
emerged from the shadows at the far end of the corridor. Glokta
raised an eyebrow at him but he shook his head. Nobody downstairs. He turned to the front door and started to close it, ever so gently.
Only when it was shut did he slowly, slowly release the doorknob, so
the latch slid silently into place.
    â€œYou’ll
want to see this.â€

An Offer and a Gift
    â€œAnd,
forward!â€

The King of the Northmen
    Logen breathed
in deep, enjoying the unfamiliar feel of the cool breeze on his
fresh-shaved jaw, and took in the view. It was the beginning of a
clear day. The dawn mist was almost gone, and from the balcony
outside Logen’s room, high up on the side of one of the towers
of the library, you could see for miles. The great valley was spread
out before him, split into stark layers. On top was the grey and
puffy white of the cloudy sky. Then there was the ragged line of
black crags that ringed the lake, and the dim brown suggestion of
others beyond. Next came the dark green of the wooded slopes, then
the thin, curving line of grey shingle on the beach. All was repeated
in the still mirror of the lake below—another, shadowy world,
upside down beneath his own.
    Logen looked
down at his hands, fingers spread out on the weathered stone of the
parapet. There was no dirt, no dried blood under his cracked
fingernails. They looked pale, soft, pinkish, strange. Even the scabs
and scrapes on his knuckles were mostly healed. It was so long since
Logen had been clean that he’d forgotten what it felt like. His
new clothes were coarse against his skin, robbed of its usual
covering of dirt and grease and dry sweat.
    Looking out at
the still lake, clean and well fed, he felt a different man. For a
moment he wondered how this new Logen might turn out, but the bare
stone of the parapet stared back at him where his missing finger used
to be. That could