“Intelligence knows,” Avra said airily, “that ‘sane’ doesn’t exist. Nobody is sane. Nobody has ever been sane. Sane is fake. Sane is…” He waved to his own face. “One of those things you wear to a masked ball.” “… A mask?” “Yes, thank you, one of those. Behind everybody’s sanity mask is someone who is unalloyed batshit in one way or another. This is the truth of human nature, Baltakan.” He polished off the last dregs of beer. “When I say ‘one absolute madman,’ that’s not somebody less sane, because nobody’s sane. That’s just somebody who’s decided that leaving his mask off gets him where he
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