Logen stared into the fire. The flames flickered, and for just a moment, he saw a face in them. Bethod’s. Or the Bloody-Nine’s. Hard to tell the difference anymore.
“I overtook you. There’s a difference. You move like a glacier with a grudge.” Glokta lowered himself onto a rock with a symphony of grunts. “The Arch Lector sends his regards. And a message. The Seed isn’t in the tomb. It never was. We’ve been chasing a ghost while the real prize walks into Adua wearing a different face.”
“You do.” Now she looked up. Her eyes were yellow slits, the color of old hatred. “Like a pig with a stone in its throat.” joe abercrombie the first law trilogy
The mud had a name, but Logen Ninefingers couldn’t remember it. Didn’t matter. Mud was mud. It sucked at his boots, it splattered his coat, and if you fell in it face-first, it drowned you just the same as any other.
He had nine names for the dead. His dead. The ones he’d put in the ground with his own two hands—or with the help of the other bastard who lived inside him, the one who whispered still alive, still alive when the blood ran hot. He tried not to think about that one. Thinking gave it teeth. Logen stared into the fire
Ferro stopped sharpening. “Whose face?”
Logen almost smiled. Almost. His face had forgotten how, years ago. Instead, he worked a piece of gristle from between his teeth with a dirty fingernail. “You ever think,” he said, “that maybe the Magi sent us this way just to watch us fail?” Or the Bloody-Nine’s
“Admiring gets your throat cut while you sleep.”
Logen’s hand went to the Maker’s sword. The grip was cold. It always was. Ferro was already on her feet, knife reversed, a whisper of movement where there’d been a statue a heartbeat before.
The Debt of a Failed Knife
Glokta’s eyes glittered. “Yours, if you’re not careful. Now eat your rabbit. We leave in an hour. The First of the Magi is tired of waiting, and when wizards get impatient, men get dead.”