The Mercy of Gods (The Captive's War #1)

by James S.A. Corey

“Mur is with the research colloquy,” his aunt said. “Oh,” Dafyd said, and grinned. “Well, then I’m very pleased to meet you indeed. I came to meet with people who could help my prospects. Now that we’ve met, I can go home.”

“I put people at ease,” Dafyd said. “You’re at a point in your career that you should make people uneasy. You’re too fond of being underestimated. It’s a vice. You’re going to have to impress someone someday.”

Small moments, unnoticed at the time, change the fate of empires.

“I simultaneously want more beer and also a little less beer than I’ve already had,”

“Tell me again how you aren’t angry with me.” “I’m not. I’m not angry with you,” Tonner said. And then, “I’m just angry. And you’re here. So I’m being a little shit.”

Looked at in a wide enough frame, maybe her problems weren’t so large. They just seemed that way when she held them up against her eyes where they’d block out all the light.

“This wasn’t us,” he said. “Whatever it is? It wasn’t Tonner’s group.” “Do you know who killed him?” she asked, not looking up. “No.” “Then you can say it wasn’t you. ‘Us’ is a big word. You can fit surprises in it.”

“Why didn’t we ever talk about children, you and I?” Nöl asked. “Busy with our careers, and then later too set in our ways.” Synnia shot him a frown. “Strange time to bring up regrets, if that’s what this is.” “No. I’m just wondering how much more terrifying this would be if we had kids.”

“I think some important scientific questions have finally been answered. Alien life exists, and they are assholes.”

The librarian’s answer came quickly this time. “The only test is whether a subject species is useful. Usefulness is survival.” They were all silent for a moment. The implications of the simple statement were like ice water in Rickar’s blood. Campar chuckled. “Come on, that’s pretty much what every funding committee says.”

Life went on. That was the terrible thing. They were ripped out of their world, their lives, their sense of who and what they were. Their history. They were killed, or made to watch the people they loved die. And then, at some point, they were hungry. Thirsty. They had to piss. Someone told a joke, and they laughed, however darkly. They washed dishes. Changed clothes. Held funerals. It felt like it should have stopped, all of it, and it didn’t. The slow, low pulse of being alive kept making its demands, no matter what. However bad it was, however mind-breaking and strange and painful, the mundane insisted on its cut.

There are some other things in that same layer of the soup, but purification based on something besides specific gravity is a pain in my butt.

Pain in my butt! I’m not the only one who says that!

Jessyn knew the medicine was starting to work when her fantasies changed from suicide to murder.

People sang songs in death camps, and that wasn’t a comfort until you were in a death camp yourself.