Midnight Tides (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #5)

by Steven Erikson

Even those stalwart sentinels of perfection – numbers – can, in a single careless moment, be profoundly altered.

Barring the singular focus of the mind of one Tehol Beddict.

Ten paces away stood a huge figure sheathed in armour.

‘I think you were right about this not being a good idea.’

But a bar in the head took fashion sense to excess by any standard of measure.