Evil For Evil: The Engineer Trilogy: Book Two

by K.J. Parker

my father always told me that what’s wrong with lying is that it’s an admission of weakness. If you’re the strongest, you can afford to tell the truth.)

Maybe, if I manage to get away with this, I can find the time to develop a sense of perspective. It’d be nice to have one of those for a change.

A lie, he’d learned long ago, is often the mirror image of the truth; by examining it carefully, you can reconstruct the fact that lie was designed to conceal.

‘we have a curious idea in this country that anything can be achieved provided you shout loud enough at the man in charge.’

One good thing about fighting a war against businessmen, we can do the same sums they do, which means we can more or less read their minds.’

trying to keep the peace, the way well-meaning idiots do.