Last Argument of Kings

The third and final installment of the First Law trilogy follows multiple converging storylines across a sprawling secondary world where magic is fading, political intrigue is lethal, and war grinds on without mercy.

The Union, a powerful nation governed by a king, a Closed Council of senior officials, and an Open Council of nobles, faces collapse on multiple fronts. Both royal heirs are dead, King Guslav the Fifth is dying, and a vote to choose a new monarch looms. In the North, the Union army remains locked in a grinding campaign against Bethod, a warlord who has declared himself King of the Northmen. The distant Gurkish Empire, the Union's oldest enemy to the south, gathers strength for invasion.

Superior Glokta, a torturer serving the Union's Inquisition who has severe physical disabilities from his own past imprisonment, is tasked by his master Arch Lector Sult with rigging the royal vote. Using blackmail and threats against noblemen's families, Glokta secures votes while competing against agents of High Justice Marovia, who employ identical tactics. Glokta also discovers he is trapped between Sult and the banking house of Valint and Balk, which funded his defense of the city of Dagoska in a previous engagement and now demands his obedience in return.

In the North, the Dogman, a shrewd scout who has reluctantly become a war chief, leads a covert operation to seize the port city of Uffrith, establishing a crucial supply line. Lord Marshal Burr, the ailing Union commander, prepares to push into Bethod's territory, though his health deteriorates week by week.

Bayaz, the First of the Magi, a centuries-old wizard who founded the Union in ancient times, returns to the capital city of Adua with Captain Jezal dan Luthar, a vain young officer hardened by a harrowing journey to the edge of the world. Their quest for the Seed, an artifact of immense destructive power, has failed. Bayaz parts ways with Logen Ninefingers, a feared Northern warrior known as the Bloody-Nine, who returns north to fight Bethod. Ferro Maljinn, a vengeful woman who traveled with Bayaz, departs wordlessly. Jezal reunites with Ardee West, his lover and the sister of Colonel Collem West, though their relationship proves volatile and painful.

Logen rejoins the Dogman's band, where old companions welcome him, but Black Dow voices open hostility and a young warrior named Shivers, whose brother Logen killed years ago, watches him with cold hatred. The Northmen ally with Crummock-i-Phail, an eccentric hillman chief who proposes a dangerous gamble: lure Bethod north into a mountain fortress, then have the Union army strike from behind. Despite the fortress proving little more than a crumbling wall, the Dogman agrees. Seven days of savage fighting follow as Bethod sends waves of Shanka, monstrous subhuman creatures, then wild Easterners, and finally his best warriors. During the final assault, Logen is beaten nearly unconscious and the Bloody-Nine takes over, a berserker state in which he kills indiscriminately. He murders his own friend and ally Tul Duru Thunderhead by stabbing him in the neck. West's army arrives on the seventh day, having marched north after Burr's sudden death, and crushes Bethod's forces from behind. Bethod escapes toward his capital, Carleon.

In Adua, Bayaz has been maneuvering. He assigns Jezal to lead forces against a peasant rebellion, then arranges the rebels' surrender behind the scenes, ensuring Jezal receives credit as a heroic negotiator. When King Guslav dies, Bayaz reveals Jezal as the king's illegitimate son by a mistress, a claim prepared over many years. Lord Isher, having been promised rewards in advance, immediately declares support. Sult and Marovia, seeing a chance to maintain their influence through a pliable monarch, signal their own supporters. Jezal is elected by near-unanimous vote, stunned and horrified.

His reign proves a gilded cage. Bayaz dictates policy, the Closed Council ignores Jezal, and his arranged marriage to Princess Terez of Talins is a disaster: She despises him and refuses all intimacy. West, whom Jezal names Lord Marshal in his one act of independent will, subdues the rival Generals Poulder and Kroy through calculated manipulation and leads the army in pursuit of Bethod.

At the walls of Carleon, Logen challenges Bethod to a duel. Bethod's champion is Fenris the Feared, a monstrous ancient warrior whose left side, covered in protective signs written by the long-dead sorcerer Glustrod, cannot be harmed. Logen drives the Maker's sword, an ancient blade of legendary power, through the boundary between the protected and unprotected halves of the giant's body, killing him. While the Dogman, Dow, and Grim infiltrate the city and kill Bethod's witch Caurib, Logen climbs the gatehouse and beats Bethod to death. He is proclaimed King of the Northmen despite his whispered refusal.

The Gurkish Empire then invades Midderland, the Union's heartland, landing a massive army. Adua comes under siege. Bayaz enters the House of the Maker, a sealed tower at the heart of the Agriont (the Union's fortress-citadel) built by a legendary ancient craftsman known simply as the Maker, and Ferro secretly follows. She climbs the vast mechanism inside and retrieves the Seed. Bayaz's apprentice Quai reveals himself as Tolomei, the Maker's daughter, who murdered the real Quai months ago and assumed his form. Tolomei seeks the Seed to open gates between the living world and the Other Side, a realm of demons. Bayaz battles her with the Maker's weapon, a hooked rod that fires a devastating beam of energy, and seals the tower with both Tolomei and Yulwei, his fellow Magus, trapped inside.

As the siege tightens, Glokta discovers that his Practicals, the Inquisition's field agents, have both betrayed him: Frost has been informing on him to Sult, and Severard has been selling secrets to Valint and Balk. Frost kills Severard and turns on Glokta. Ardee saves Glokta's life by striking Frost with a cleaver, and Glokta kills Frost with a hidden blade in his cane. He secures a treason confession from Sult's lieutenant, Superior Goyle, and leads mercenaries to arrest the Arch Lector.

In the climactic battle, West's army assaults the Gurkish lines from the east while Grand Duke Orso arrives with Styrian reinforcements by sea. In the Square of Marshals, Bayaz uses the Seed to power a devastating spell, defying the First Law, the prohibition against drawing on the power of the Other Side. A spinning column of destruction annihilates the Hundred Words, the superhuman Eaters serving Khalul, Bayaz's ancient rival among the Magi. The blast also obliterates the western Agriont and kills thousands of sheltering civilians. Ferro holds the Seed throughout, hearing demonic voices urging her to open the gates between worlds. She resists and seals the Seed back in its box. Inside the palace, Yoru Sulfur, a former apprentice of Bayaz, reveals he has been impersonating High Justice Marovia and destroys two Eaters with the Maker's weapon, saving Jezal's life.

The aftermath is bleak despite victory. A wasting sickness spreads among survivors near the blast, and Collem West is among those dying. Harding Grim, one of the Dogman's most steadfast companions, is killed in the street fighting. Bayaz reveals to Glokta that he controls Valint and Balk and has secretly ruled the Union for centuries. He installs Glokta as the new Arch Lector and his permanent agent, an offer Glokta cannot refuse given his debts. Glokta marries Ardee, who is pregnant with Jezal's child, to protect her from those who would eliminate the pregnancy as a political threat. When Jezal attempts to assert his independence, Bayaz inflicts agonizing pain on him and reveals that Jezal was not a king's son at all but a child bought from a prostitute for six marks. Jezal is left utterly broken.

Glokta coerces Queen Terez into consummating the marriage by holding her beloved companion, the Countess Shalere, hostage. Ferro, permanently altered by the Seed, kills the Eater Mamun, Khalul's first apprentice, when he comes for her, then flees south toward Gurkhul to pursue her vengeance alone, hearing demonic voices she refuses to obey. Logen returns to Carleon to find Black Dow sitting in Skarling's Chair, the ancient throne of the North, with Bethod's sons, Calder and Scale, and armed men waiting to kill him. After a brief fight, Logen leaps from the high windows into the river far below, echoing his fall at the trilogy's opening, and his fate is left uncertain.