joe abercrombie the last argument of kings

Lord Ingelstad stood in the doorway: a big, fatherly man with a ruddy complexion. The door beside him opened sharply and Glokta snapped his head round, doing his best to hide a grimace as his neck bones crunched.

The one good thing about every step being an ordeal.

He pressed his tongue into his empty gums and grunted as he shifted his leg, needles from it shooting up his back and making his eyelid flicker. The Gurkish saw to that, in the darkness beneath the Emperor’s prisons. I have no dazzling banquets, no ecstatic crowds, no beautiful women waiting breathlessly for my arrival, after all. The more shrivelled the man, the longer the wait on his pleasure. Somewhere in the shadows a clock vomited up a few sluggish chimes. Why do they never realise? Small things only seem smaller in large spaces. And the more shrivelled the man, the more swollen his pretensions must become. The head of a family whose fortunes had declined with the passing years, whose wealth and influence had shrivelled to almost nothing. When it came to the great noblemen on the Open Council, Lord Ingelstad, the owner of this oversized hall, was an undersized man indeed. Glokta shuffled away, his useless foot scraping over the tiles behind him, the tapping of his cane echoing amongst the mouldings on the faraway ceiling. And I get more than enough of that already. The marble bust at the foot of the stairs offered only its silent contempt. Why do I do it, when it always hurts me? Why must we test the pain? Tongue the ulcer, rub the blister, pick the scab? He stretched his twisted neck out to one side and then to the other, hearing the familiar clicks, feeling the familiar cords of pain stretching out through the tangled muscles between his shoulder blades. Superior Glokta stood in the hall, and waited.

Joe abercrombie the last argument of kings