Last Argument of Kings

feel so happy at the
sight of Logen Ninefingers no more.
    â€œThe King
o’ the Northmen,â€

Not What You Wanted
    Glokta woke to a
shaft of soft sunlight spilling through the hangings and across his
wrinkled bed-clothes, full of dancing dust-motes. He tried to turn
over, winced at a click in his neck. Ah, the first spasm of the
day. The second was not long coming. It flashed through his left
hip as he wrestled his way onto his back and snatched his breath
away. The pain crept down his spine, settled in his leg, and stayed
there.
    â€œAh,â€

Loose Ends
    A grubby white
box with two doors facing each other. The ceiling was too low for
comfort, the room too brightly lit by blazing lamps. Damp was
creeping out of one corner and the plaster had erupted with flaking
blisters, speckled with black mould. Someone had tried to scrub a
long bloodstain from the wall, but hadn’t tried nearly hard
enough.
    Two huge
Practicals stood against the wall, their arms folded. One of the
chairs at the bolted-down table was empty. Carlot dan Eider sat in
the other. History moves in circles, so they say. How things have
changed. And yet, how they have stayed the same. Her face was
pale with worry, there were dark rings of sleeplessness around her
eyes, but she still seemed beautiful. More than ever, in a way.
The beauty of the candle-flame that has almost burned out. Again.
    Glokta could
hear her scared breathing as he settled himself in the remaining
chair, leaned his cane against the scarred table-top, and frowned
into her face. “I am still wondering whether, in the next few
days, I will receive that letter you spoke of. You know the one. The
one you meant for Sult to read. The one that lays out the history of
my self-indulgent little mercy to you. The one that you made sure
will be sent to the Arch Lector… in the event of your death.
“Will it find its way onto my desk, now, do you suppose? A
final irony.â€

The Beginning
    The sides of the
valley were coated in white snow. The black road ran through it like
an old scar, down to the bridge, over the river, up to the gates of
Carleon. Black sprouts of sedge, tufts of black grass, black stones
poked up through the clean white blanket. The black branches of the
trees were each picked out on top with their own line of white. The
city was a huddle of white roofs and black walls, crowded in around
the hill, pressed into the fork in the black river under a stony grey
sky.
    Logen wondered
if this was how Ferro Maljinn saw the world. Black and white, and
nothing else. No colours. He wondered where she was now, what she was
doing. If she thought about him.
    Most likely not.
    â€œBack
again.â€

Acknowledgments
    Four people
without whom:
    Bren
Abercrombie, whose eyes are sore from reading it
    Nick
Abercrombie, whose ears are sore from hearing about it
    Rob Abercrombie,
whose fingers are sore from turning the pages
    Lou Abercrombie,
whose arms are sore from holding me up

    Then, at the
House of Questions, all those who assisted in this testing
interrogation, but particularly:
    Superior
Spanton, Practical Weir, and, of course, Inquisitor Redfearn.
    You can put away
the instruments. I confess…

    Copyright ©
Joe Abercrombie 2008 All rights reserved
    The right of Joe
Abercrombie to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
    First published
in Great Britain in 2008 by Gollancz
    An imprint of
the Orion Publishing Group Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s
Lane, London WC2H 9EA
    A CIP catalogue
record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0
57507 7 898 (cased) ISBN 978 0 57507 7 904 (trade paperback)
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