Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

another cell. Further south, in Shaffa. Deep beneath the Emperor’s palace. A cell in which I gasped away two years, squealing in the blackness, scratching at the walls, crawling in my own filth. His eye had begun to twitch, and he wiped it carefully with his finger.
    One prisoner lay stretched out, his face to the wall, skin black with bruises, both legs broken. Another hung from the ceiling by his wrists, knees brushing the floor, head hanging limp, back whipped raw. Vitari stooped and prodded at one of them with her finger. “Dead,” she said simply. She crossed to the other. “And this one. Dead a good while.”
    The flickering light fell across a third prisoner. This one was alive. Just. She was chained by hands and feet, face hollow with hunger, lips cracked with thirst, clutching filthy, bloodstained rags to her. Her heels scraped at the floor as she tried to push herself further back into the corner, gibbering faintly in Kantic, one hand across her face to ward off the light. I remember. The only thing worse than the darkness is when the light comes. The questions always come with it.
    Glokta frowned, his twitching eyes moving from the two broken corpses to the cowering girl, his head spinning from the effort, and the heat, and the stink. “Well this is very cosy. What have they told you?”
    Harker had his hand over his nose and mouth as he stepped reluctantly into the cell, Frost looming just over his shoulder. “Nothing yet, but I—”
    “You’ll get nothing from these two, now, that’s sure. I hope they signed confessions.”
    “Well… not exactly. Superior Davoust was never that interested in confessions from the browns, we just, you know…”
    “You couldn’t even keep them alive long enough to confess?”
    Harker looked sullen. Like a child unfairly punished by his schoolmaster. “There’s still the girl,” he snapped.
    Glokta looked down at her, licking at the space where his front teeth used to be. There is no method here. No purpose. Brutality, for it’s own sake. I might almost be sickened, had I eaten anything today. “How old is she?”
    “Fourteen, perhaps, Superior, but I fail to see the relevance.”
    “The relevance, Inquisitor Harker, is that conspiracies are rarely led by fourteen-year-old girls.”
    “I thought it best to be thorough.”
    “Thorough? Did you even ask them any questions?”
    “Well, I—”
    Glokta’s cane cracked Harker cleanly across the face. The sudden movement caused a stab of agony in Glokta’s side, and he stumbled on his weak leg and had to grab at Frost’s arm for support. The Inquisitor gave a squeal of pain and shock, tumbled against the wall and slid into the filth on the cell floor.
    “You’re not an Inquisitor!” hissed Glokta, “you’re a fucking butcher! Look at the state of this place! And you’ve killed two of our witnesses! What use are they now, fool?” Glokta leaned forward. “Unless that was your intention, eh? Perhaps Davoust was killed by a jealous underling? An underling who wanted to silence the witnesses, eh, Harker? Perhaps I should start my investigations with the Inquisition itself!”
    Practical Frost loomed over Harker as he struggled to get up, and he shrank back down against the wall, blood starting to dribble from his nose. “No! No, please! It was an accident! I didn’t mean to kill them! I just wanted to know what happened!”
    “An accident? You’re a traitor or an utter incompetent, and I’ve no use for either one!” He leaned down even lower, ignoring the pain shooting up his back, his lips curling away to show his toothless smile. “I understand a firm hand is most effective when dealing with primitives, Inquisitor. You will find there are no firmer hands than mine. Not anywhere. Get this worm out of my sight!”
    Frost seized hold of Harker by his coat and hauled him bodily through the filth towards the door. “Wait!” he wailed, clutching at the door frame, “please! You can’t do this!” His