The Widow's House (The Dagger and the Coin, #4)

by Daniel Abraham

The grief-fire of the last dragon lit the empty world.

“That we found a sleeping dragon that might or might not be what the spider priests were looking for, that we woke it up, gave it a rough outline of human history since the fall of the empire. And then it got upset and flew away.”

Hoping to go back to what the world had been was trying to build wood from ashes.

Perhaps the nobility of war came not from victory, but from accepting an enemy’s surrender. Not from taking the day, but from stopping short of absolute and unending slaughter. If so, she still thought less of it than she once had. She expected better of the world.

“Words can so often mean what you take from them rather than what was intended.”

Even a burning world had its moments of peace and sweetness. Perhaps even more, since they were so rare and the alternative so bitter.

“Gold,” Cithrin said, waving her hand. “What’s gold? A metal too soft to take an edge. There’s no power there. What makes gold important is the story we tell about it. All of humanity has agreed that this particular object has value, and then because we all said so, it does. The metal hasn’t changed. It doesn’t breathe, it doesn’t bleed. It is what it was before. All we’re doing is telling that same story about some letters we’ve written.”

“There are as many definitions of justice as there are people making them. Justice is doing what you said you would do, or being forced to. Or justice is getting back what was taken from your family. Or justice is hurting the man who hurt you. Anyone who wants to make the world just has only to say what justice is first, and then impose it on everyone with a different thought.