The Death of the Necromancer (Ile-Rien, #2)

by Martha Wells

If I’m going to be hanged for murder, I’d prefer it to be a murder I actually committed.

“Beauty is truth.”

Nicholas never ignored the possibility that his opponent had overlooked something.

Nicholas had learned early that one of the chief problems in deception was the tendency to try to over explain one’s actions. The truth was that people did the oddest things for the most inconsequential reasons and elaborate justifications only made one look guilty.

Nicholas’s impulses were usually all in the wrong direction and it was only the intellectual knowledge of right and wrong painstakingly instilled in him by Edouard that allowed him to understand most moral decisions.

“All my closest friends are mad.”

“Like my own son, you was.” Cusard let out his breath in a gusty sigh. “Should of beat you more when you was a boy.”