Glokta cracked his hammer against the top of the anvil with a clang to wake the dead. “Stop! Talking!” The little man blinked, and gaped, but he shut up. Glokta sank back in his chair, kneading at his withered thigh, the pain prickling up his back. “Do you have any notion of how tired I am? Of how much I have to do? The agony of getting out of bed each morning leaves me a broken man before the day even begins, and the present moment is an exceptionally stressful one. It is therefore a matter of the most supreme indifference to me whether you can walk for the rest of your life, whether you can see for the rest of your life, whether you can hold your shit in for the rest of your intensely short, intensely painful life. Do you understand?”
The Navigator looked wide-eyed up at Frost, looming over him like an outsize shadow. “I understand,” he whispered.
“Good,” said Severard.
“Ve’ gooth,” said Frost.
“Very good indeed,” said Glokta. “Tell me, Brother Longfoot, is one among your remarkable talents a superhuman resistance to pain?”
The prisoner swallowed. “It is not.”
“Then the rules of this game are simple. I ask a question and you answer precisely, correctly, and, above all, briefly. Do I make myself clear?”
“I understand completely. I do not speak other than to—”
Frost’s fist sunk into his gut and he folded up, eyes bulging. “Do you see,” hissed Glokta, “that your answer there should have been yes?” The albino seized the wheezing Navigator’s leg and dragged his foot up onto the anvil. Oh, cold metal on the sensitive sole. Quite unpleasant, but it could be so much worse. And something tells me it probably will be. Frost snapped a manacle shut around Longfoot’s ankle.
“I apologise for the lack of imagination.” Glokta sighed. “In our defence, it’s difficult to be always thinking of something new. I mean, smashing a man’s feet with a lump hammer, it’s so…”
“Pethethrian?” ventured Frost.
Glokta heard a sharp volley of laughter from behind Severard’s mask, felt his own mouth grinning too. He really should have been a comedian, rather than a torturer. “Pedestrian! Precisely so. But don’t worry. If we haven’t got what we need by the time we’ve crushed everything below your knees to pulp, we’ll see if we can think of something more inventive for the rest of your legs. How does that sound?”
“But I have done nothing!” squealed Longfoot, just getting his breath back. “I know nothing! I did—”
“Forget… about all that. It is meaningless now.” Glokta leaned slowly, painfully forwards, let the head of the hammer tap gently against the iron beside the Navigator’s bare foot. “What I want you to concentrate on… are my questions… and your toes… and this hammer. But don’t worry if you find that difficult now. Believe me when I say—once the hammer starts falling, you will find it easy to ignore everything else.”
Longfoot stared at the anvil, nostrils flaring as his breath snorted quickly in and out. And the seriousness of the situation finally impresses itself upon him.
“Questions, then,” said Glokta. “You are familiar with the man who styles himself Bayaz, the First of the Magi?”
“Yes! Please! Yes! Until recently he was my employer.”
“Good.” Glokta shifted in his chair, trying to find a more comfortable position while bending forwards. “Very good. You accompanied him on a journey?”
“I was the guide!”
“What was your destination?”
“The Island of Shabulyan, at the edge of the World.”
Glokta let the head of the hammer click against the anvil again. “Oh come, come. The edge of the World? A fantasy, surely?”
“Truly! Truly! I have seen it! I stood upon that island with my own feet!”
“Who went with you?”
“There was… was Logen Ninefingers, from the distant North.” Ah, yes, he of the scars and the tight lips. “Ferro Maljinn, a Kantic woman.” The one that gave our friend Superior Goyle so much trouble. “Jezal dan Luthar, a… a Union officer.” A posturing dolt. “Malacus Quai, Bayaz’ apprentice.” The skinny liar with the troglodyte’s complexion. “And then Bayaz himself!”
“Six of you?”
“Only six!”
“A long and a difficult journey to undertake. What was at the edge of the World that demanded such an effort, besides water?”
Longfoot’s lip trembled. “Nothing!” Glokta frowned, and nudged at the Navigator’s big toe with the head of the hammer. “It was not there! The thing that Bayaz sought! It was not there! He said he had been tricked!”
“What was it that he thought would be there?”
“He said it was a stone!”
“A stone?”
“The woman asked him. He said it was a rock… a rock from the Other Side.” The Navigator shook his sweating head. “An unholy notion! I am glad we found no such thing. Bayaz called it the Seed!”
Glokta felt the grin melting from his face. The Seed. Is it my imagination, or has the room grown colder? “What else did he say about it?”
“Just myths and nonsense!”
“Try me.”
“Stories, about Glustrod, and ruined Aulcus, and taking forms, and stealing faces! About speaking to devils, and the summoning of them. About the Other Side.”
“What else?” Glokta dealt Longfoot’s toe a firmer tap with the hammer.
“Ah! Ah! He said the Seed was the stuff of the world below! That it was left over from before the Old Time, when demons walked the earth! He said it was a great and powerful weapon! That he meant to use it, against the Gurkish! Against the Prophet!” A weapon, from before the Old Time. The summoning of devils, the taking of forms. Kanedias seemed to frown down from the wall more grimly than ever, and Glokta flinched. He remembered his nightmare trip into the House of the Maker, the patterns of light on the floor, the shifting rings in the darkness. He remembered stepping out onto the roof, standing high above the city without climbing a single stair.
“You did not find it?” he whispered, his mouth dry.
“No! It was not there!”
“And then?”
“That was all! We came back across the mountains. We made a raft and rode the great Aos back to the sea. We took a ship from Calcis and I sit before you now!”
Glokta narrowed his eyes, studying carefully his prisoner’s face. There is more. I see it. “What are you not telling me?”
“I have told you everything! I have no talent for dissembling!” That, at least, is true. His lies are plain.
“If your contract is ended, why are you still in the city?”
“Because… because…” The Navigator’s eyes darted round the room.
“Oh, dear me, no.” The heavy hammer came down with all of Glokta’s crippled strength and crushed Longfoot’s big toe flat with a dull thud. The Navigator gaped at it, eyes bulging from his head. Ah, that beautiful, horrible moment between stubbing your toe and feeling the hurt. Here it comes. Here it comes. Here it— Longfoot let vent a great shriek, squirmed around in his chair, face contorted with agony.
“I know the feeling,” said Glokta, wincing as he wriggled his own remaining toes around in his sweaty boot. “I truly, truly do, and I sympathise. That blinding flash of pain, then up washes the sick and dizzy faintness of the shattered bone, then the slow pulsing up the leg that seems to drag the water from your eyes and make your whole body tremble.” Longfoot gasped, and whimpered, tears glistening on his cheeks. “And what comes next? Weeks of limping? Months of hobbling, crippled? And if the next blow is to on your ankle?” Glokta prodded at Longfoot’s shin with the end of the hammer. “Or square on your kneecap, what then? Will you ever walk again? I know the feelings well, believe me.” So how can I inflict them now, on someone else? He shrugged his twisted shoulders. One of life’s mysteries. “Another?” And he raised the hammer again.