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.Apokey, unremarkable hallway in a pokey, unremarkable house among many hundredsof others the same.The whole district was recently built, terraces of housesin the new fashion: half-timbered, three stories, good perhaps for a familyand a couple of servants.Hundreds of houses, one very much like another.Houses for the gentlefolk.The new rich.Jumped-up commoners, Sult wouldprobably have called them.Bankers, merchants, artisans, shop keepers, clerks.Perhaps the odd town-house of some successful gentleman farmer, like this onehere.The voices had stopped now.Glokta heard movement, some clinking of glass,then the door opened a crack and the maid peered out.An ill-favoured girlwith big, watery eyes.She looked scared and guilty.Still, I am used to that.Everyone seems scared and guilty around the Inquisition.'She'll see you now,' the girl mumbled.Glokta nodded and shuffled past herinto the room beyond.He had some hazy memories of staying with West's family for a week or two onesummer, up in Angland, a dozen years ago perhaps, although it seemed more likea hundred.He remembered fencing with West in the courtyard of their house, ofPage 271 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlbeing watched every day by a dark-haired girl with a serious face.Heremembered meeting a young woman in the park not long ago, who had asked himhow he was.He had been in a lot of pain at the time, scarcely seeingstraight, and her face was a blur in his memory.So it was that Glokta was notsure what to expect, but he certainly had not expected the bruises.He was atouch shocked, for a moment.Though I hide it well.Dark, purple and brown and yellow, under her left eye, the lower lid wellswollen.Round the corner of her mouth too, the lip split and scabbed over.Glokta knew a lot about bruises, few men more.And I hardly think she gotthese by accident.She was punched in the face, by someone who meant it.Helooked at those ugly marks, and he thought about his old friend Collem West,crying in his dining room and begging for help, and he put the two together.Interesting.She sat there, all the while, looking back at him with her chin high, the sideof her face with the worst bruises turned towards him, as though challenginghim to say something.She is not much like to her brother.Not much like atall.I don't think she'll be bursting into tears in my dining room, oranywhere else.'What can I do for you, Inquisitor?' she asked him coldly.He detected thevery slightest slurring of the word Inquisitor.She has been drinking& thoughshe hides it well.Not enough to make her stupid.Glokta pursed his lips.Forsome reason he had the feeling that he needed to watch his step.'I'm not here in a professional capacity.Your brother asked me to 'She cut him off rudely.'Did he? Really? Here to make sure I don't fuck thewrong man, are you?' Glokta waited for a moment, allowing that to sink in,then he began to chuckle softly to himself.Oh, that's grand! I begin to quitelike her! 'Something funny?' she snapped.'Pardon me,' said Glokta, wiping his running eye with a finger, 'but I spenttwo years in the Emperor's prisons.I daresay, if I had known I'd be therehalf that long at the start, I would have made a more concerted effort to killmyself.Seven hundred days, give or take, in the darkness.As close to hell, Iwould have thought, as a living man can go.My point is this if you mean toupset me you'll need more than harsh language.'Glokta treated her to his most revolting, toothless, crazy smile.There werefew people indeed who could stomach that for long, but she did not look awayfor an instant.Soon, in fact, she was smiling back at him.A lop-sided grinof her own, and one which he found oddly disarming.A different tack, perhaps.'The fact is, your brother asked me to look after your welfare while he isaway.As far as I'm concerned you can fuck whomever you please, though mygeneral observation has been that, as far as the reputations of young womenare concerned, the less fucking the better.The reverse is true for young menof course.Hardly fair, but then life is unfair in so many ways, this onehardly seems worth commenting on.''Huh.You're right there.''Good,' said Glokta, 'so we understand each other then.I see that you hurtyour face.'She shrugged.'I fell.I'm a clumsy fool.''I know how you feel.I'm such a fool I knocked half my teeth out and hackedmy leg to useless pulp.Look at me now, a cripple.It's amazing where a littlefoolishness can take you, if it goes unchecked.We clumsy types should sticktogether, don't you think?'She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, stroking the bruises on her jaw.'Yes,' she said, 'I suppose we should.'Goyle's Practical, Vitari, was sprawled on a chair opposite Glokta, justoutside the huge dark doors to the Arch Lector's office.She was slumped intoit, poured onto it, draped over it like a wet cloth, long limbs dangling, headresting on the back.Her eyes twitched lazily around the room from time totime under heavy lids, sometimes coming to rest on Glokta himself forinsultingly long periods.She never turned her head though, or indeed moved aPage 272 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlmuscle, as though the effort might be too painful.Which, indeed, it probably would be.Plainly, she had been involved in a most violent melee, hand to hand.Aboveher black collar, her neck was a mass of mottled bruises.There were morearound her black mask, a lot more, and a long cut across her forehead
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