Last Argument of Kings

it, he felt nothing. The warm taverns of Adua,
cards in the sunny courtyard. Ardee’s one-sided smile. It all
seemed a thousand years ago.
    The Northmen
were already busy, clipping at the grass in the shadow of the walls,
the clicking of their shears a strange echo of the gardeners in the
Agriont, shaving a circle a dozen strides across down to the roots.
The ground, he supposed, on which the duel would take place. The
ground where, in no more than an hour or two, the fate of the North
would be decided. Very much like a fencing circle, except that it
might soon be sprayed with blood.
    â€œA
barbaric custom,â€

Greater Good
    The room was
another over-bright box. It had the same off-white walls, spotted
with brown stains. Mould, or blood, or both. The same battered
table and chairs. Virtually instruments of torture in themselves. The same burning pains in Glokta’s foot, and leg, and back. Some things never change. The same prisoner, as far as anyone
could have told, with the same canvas bag over their head. Just
like the dozens who have been through this room over the past few
days, and just like the dozens more crammed into the cells beyond the
door, waiting on our pleasure.
    â€œVery
well.â€

Skarlings Chair
    Far below, the
water frothed and surged. It had rained hard in the night, and now
the river ran high with it, an angry flood chewing mindlessly at the
base of the cliff. Cold black water and cold white spray against the
cold black rock. Tiny shapes—golden yellow, burning orange,
vivid purple, all the colours of fire, whisked and wandered with the
mad currents, whatever way the rain washed them.
    Leaves on the
water, just like him.
    And now it
looked as if the rain would wash him south. To fight some more. To
kill men who’d never heard of him. The idea of it made him want
to be sick. But he’d given his word, and a man who doesn’t
keep his word isn’t much of a man at all. That’s what
Logen’s father used to tell him.
    He’d spent
a lot of long years not keeping to much of anything. His word, and
the words of his father, and other men’s lives, all meaning
less than nothing. All the promises he’d made to his wife and
to his children he’d let rot. He’d broken his word to his
people, and his friends, and himself, more times than he could count.
The Bloody-Nine. The most feared man in the North. A man who’d
walked all his days in a circle of blood. A man who’d done
nothing in all his life but evil. And all the while he’d looked
at the sky and shrugged his shoulders. Blamed whoever was nearest,
and told himself he’d had no choices.
    Bethod was gone.
Logen had vengeance, at last, but the world wasn’t suddenly a
better place. The world was the same, and so was he. He spread out
the fingers of his left hand on the damp stone, bent and wonky from a
dozen old breaks, knuckles scratched and scabbing, nails cracked and
wedged under with dirt. He stared down at the familiar stump for a
moment.
    â€œStill
alive,â€

Leadership
    Jezal clattered
through the cobbled streets astride a magnificent grey, Bayaz and
Marshal Varuz just behind him, a score of Knights of the Body, led by
Bremer dan Gorst, following in full war gear. It was strangely
unsettling to see the city, usually so brimful with humanity, close
to deserted. Only a scattering of threadbare urchins, of nervous city
watchmen, of suspicious commoners remained to hurry out of the way of
the royal party as they passed. Most of those citizens who had stayed
in Adua were well barricaded in their bedrooms, Jezal imagined. He
would have been tempted to do the same, had Queen Terez not beaten
him to it.
    â€œWhen did
they arrive?â€

A Rock and a Hard Place
    Glokta shook
with laughter, wheezing gurgles slobbering through his empty gums,
the hard chair creaking under his bony arse. His coughs and his
whimpers echoed dully from the bare walls of his dim living room. In
a way, it sounded very much like weeping. And perhaps it is, just
a little.
    Every shake of
his twisted shoulders drove nails into his neck. Every jerk of his
rib-cage sent flashes of pain down to the very tips of such toes as
he had left. He laughed, and the laughter hurt, and the pain made him
laugh all the more. Oh, the irony! I titter with hopelessness. I
chuckle with despair.
    Bubbles of spit
blew from his lips as he gave one last long whine. Like a