The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Apothetikal: an imperial officer responsible for managing the Empire’s many organic alterations.

Iudex, the imperial administration responsible for managing the high courts and delivering justice throughout the Empire.

I, as an Imperial engraver, had been altered to remember everything I experienced, always and forever.

Each type of Sublime was different. There were axioms, the people whose minds had been altered to process calculations inhumanly well; linguas, suffused to be inhumanly skilled at speaking and reading and writing in countless languages; spatiasts, altered to possess an inhumanly accurate comprehension of space, making them stunningly good drawers and map makers; and then a few other odd sorts you only saw very rarely.

we get some say in what kind of person we are, Din. We do not pop out of a mold. We change. We self-assemble.”

said Strovi, “is that they were all part of the Engineering

“The thing about war, boy, is while it happens, you’ve no idea what’s going on—and when it’s over, everyone spends the rest of your life telling you what you did.”

“Civilization is often a task that is only barely managed. But harden your heart and slow your blood. The towers of justice are built one brick at a time. We have more to build yet.”