Glokta sends a letter to Sult reporting that Dagoska has repelled three major Gurkish assaults in as many days, and falsely claiming Magister Eider has been executed. That night, on a dark wharf, Practical Frost brings a prisoner: a gaunt, shaven-headed Carlot dan Eider. Glokta frees her from her manacles and tells her a ship is leaving for Westport. He is releasing her without Sult’s knowledge, on the condition she forget Dagoska and never return to the Union. Eider touches his cheek gently before boarding. Glokta reflects that Eider may be the only one to escape the doomed city alive.

Jezal awakens in a cart in excruciating pain, his jaw shattered and bound. Logen calms his panic, telling him it will get better with time. Days later, Logen explains how Jezal was injured: After killing two attackers, Jezal was ambushed by a third who struck him in the jaw with a mace. As Jezal collapsed, the attacker kept striking him, breaking his arm and leg. Quai saved Jezal’s life by smashing the attacker’s skull with a pan. The damage—a broken jaw, lost teeth, and torn mouth—amounts to a naming wound in Northern culture. Jezal begins to cry.

As the group stop by a large lake, Ferro removes Jezal’s bandages. Bayaz lectures Jezal about gaining strength through suffering and putting others first. Jezal meekly accepts it, his arrogance shattered by his recent experiences. As Logen lifts him into the cart, Jezal thanks him. Logen tells Jezal it is not a big deal; Logen follows his father’s philosophy of treating people the way one wants to be treated. Struck by Logen’s philosophy, Jezal realizes he has been underestimating the Northern man. Jezal also reflects that he has lived a selfish life until now and resolves to do better. When Jezal asks Bayaz if his face looks terrible, Bayaz claims the scars will add rugged mystery and tells a story about Harod the Great, who also bore a scar.

West struggles up a frozen slope, exhausted and crushed by his guilt over the disaster in the valley. Despite his best efforts, West could not prevent an entire division from being massacred by Union forces. When Ladisla collapses demanding rest, West asks Threetrees for a halt. Ladisla apologizes for the rout in battle, then shifts blame onto his own soldiers for being cowards, disgusting West further.

Black Dow confronts West and offers to kill Ladisla. West threatens to kill Dow if he harms any Southerner. After Dow leaves, West asks Cathil if any of his men have been bothering her. As the lone woman in the camp, Cathil is vulnerable. Cathil replies that she can handle the soldiers and discloses that Pike is not her real father—they pretend to be family for protection. In the evening, Pike reveals that he served under Colonel Glokta in West’s old regiment.

That night, despite the misery, West feels a strange sense of freedom. Cathil falls asleep against his shoulder, and West feels hope that he can still be a hero by returning Ladisla safely to Marshal Burr.

As Logen and Jezal’s party approach Aulcus, the landscape turns barren and dead. The group discovers a field littered with corpses. A tall, wild-eyed man surrounded by birds, approaches them. This is Magus Zacharus, Bayaz’s brother. Zacharus explains the corpses were defeated soldiers of Emperor Goltus. When he learns Ferro has demon blood and Logen can speak to spirits, he becomes agitated and begs Bayaz to abandon his quest, offering to unite with him and Yulwei against Khalul.

Bayaz bitterly rejects the offer. Zacharus accuses him of seeking a power he cannot control and of causing Juvens’s death through his affair with the Maker’s daughter, Tolomei. Bayaz dismisses this and resolves to proceed with his plans. Ferro slaps away one of Zacharus’s birds and tells him to mind his own business, dismissing both the old Magi as liars. As the group ride past Zacharus, Zacharus says he hopes Bayaz fails. Bayaz retorts that Zacharus’s hopes never come to anything.

Glokta watches Gurkish soldiers pour through a breach in the land walls. The defenders drive them back. Though the Magus Yulwei had warned about a Gurkish fleet, Glokta can see no sign of any ships. Vissbruck suggests evacuating by water, but Glokta refuses, citing orders to hold the defenses at all costs, and orders all civilians moved into the Upper City. Vissbruck protests that abandoning the Lower City means abandoning all hope of escape. Glokta privately thinks escape was never an option.

In the torture chamber, the captured Eater Shickel, who has felt nothing through her ordeal, suddenly speaks. She confirms she is an Eater: Priests forced her to eat her mother to join Prophet Khalul. Eaters gain supernatural abilities but suffer insatiable hunger and serve Khalul, who broke the Second Law to avenge Juvens’s betrayal. She was sent to return Dagoska to Gurkish rule. When asked about Bayaz, she calls him a traitor who murdered Juvens, then refuses to reveal Khalul’s plans. Glokta orders her burned.

That evening, Cosca joins Glokta, invigorated by the fighting but convinced holding out for a month is hopeless. Glokta orders him to hold the land walls, then fall back and set booby traps, making the Gurkish pay for every inch. Alone, Glokta concludes Dagoska’s fall is only a matter of time.

Ferro removes Jezal’s stitches. When Logen asks where she learned healing, she reveals that a man taught her the healing art after forcing her to sleep with him. Bayaz then tells the story of his past mistakes: his rivalry with Khalul, his exile by their master Juvens, and his time with Kanedias the Maker. He fell in love with the Maker’s daughter, Tolomei, who revealed her father was experimenting with forbidden powers. When Kanedias discovered the relationship, he pursued Bayaz to Juvens, and the resulting duel killed Juvens. Bayaz gathered the Magi for war against Kanedias, but Khalul refused, blamed Bayaz, broke from the order, and gained power by eating human flesh—breaking the Second Law.

Logen shares stories of his own scars and confesses that he sometimes enters a berserker state—the Bloody-Nine—where he loses all control. He admits to killing a friend as a boy and nearly killing his father, and says constant warfare worsened his condition until he became a terror to everyone. As the group recoils, Ferro unexpectedly defends him. Bayaz asks Ferro about her scars. She reveals she scarred her own face at age 12 after being sold to a brothel, to ruin her value and hurt her owner. Her story shocks everyone into silence.

Threetrees informs West that the Dogman has spotted a dozen of Bethod’s scouts and they will ambush them for supplies. Ladisla and Cathil will stay behind; West must fight. At the river crossing, West falls into the freezing water and goes into a stupor. Dow slaps him hard twice and tells him to use his anger. Enraged, West attacks Dow, who overpowers him—then the signal comes. West charges into the enemy camp, kills with his sword, then unarmed bites off an attacker’s nose and beats him to death. As the frenzy ebbs, West retches. The Northmen stare in shock. Dow laughs and nicknames him Furious.

West hurries back to check on Ladisla and Cathil and hears a woman scream. He bursts into the clearing to find Ladisla attempting to rape Cathil. When Ladisla rises and makes a casual excuse, West shoves him in the chest. Ladisla stumbles backward off the cliff. West looks down at the broken corpse and realizes he has murdered the heir to the throne—and almost laughs, reflecting that in the wilderness, normal rules do not apply. Dow arrives, looks over the cliff, and tells West he is starting to like him.