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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Scott Lynch
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August 1 - August 9, 2019
If reassurances could dull pain, nobody would ever go to the trouble of pressing grapes.”
The Last Mistake was a sort of monument to the failure of human artifice at critical moments. Its walls were covered in a bewildering variety of souvenirs, each one telling a visual tale that ended with the phrase “not quite good enough.”
It smelled something like a keg of bad beer overturned in a mortician’s storage room on a hot summer day.
“The gods wouldn’t get four and two from me. Morgante himself with a flaming sword and ten naked virgins yanking at my breeches might get four solons one. You get three and four and that’s final.”
“I have to pay extra because your ass and your brains switched places at birth? I think not; if that were the case I’d have heard about it before. Take your five and consider yourself lucky.”
“Well, I can’t argue with the manifest wisdom of the boy that jumps off temple roofs. But I trust my points are noted,” said Jean. “Very noted,” said Locke. “Received, recognized, and duly considered with the utmost gravity. Sealed, notarized, and firmly imprinted upon my rational essence.” “Gods, you really are cheerful about this, aren’t you? You only play vocabulary games when you feel genuinely sunny about the world.” Jean
“Short leash. Right. But don’t worry,” said Locke. “I’m not as reckless as I was. You know, when I was little.”
“Ah. Well, I expected that. Take what you need from the vault and mark it on the ledger. Screw around with it, though …” “I know. Lead ingots; screaming; death.” “Something like that. You’re a little on the small side, but I suppose Jessaline might learn a thing or two from your corpse anyway.”
So eat hemp and shit rope, Bondsmage.”
“When you don’t know everything you could know, it’s a fine time to shut your fucking noisemaker and be polite.”
“And if you needed any further demonstration that he can do things you cannot, well, why don’t I instruct him to wallop the shit out of you one more time?”
“You poor, sweet idiot. You do have it bad for her. Well, what can I say, Locke? You’re fucked.” Felice laughed softly. “Just not by me.”
“Now quit acting like there’s a fucking naked woman on your shoes, will you?”
“Because if you’re merely being careless, I’ll beat that habit out of your butter-fat ass before you can blink.”
“Mmm.” Locke sipped hesitantly, then tilted the cup back and poured it down his throat in one smooth series of gulps. “Actually not bad at all. Tastes minty, very refreshing.” “A worthy epitaph,” said Jean, taking the cup.
During those few minutes, Locke became intimately acquainted with the idea of “a short eternity.”
“There’s a few things I want to ask him. Philosophical questions. Like, ‘How does it feel to be dangled out a window by a rope tied around your balls, motherfucker?’ ” “Sounds more like physik than philosophy.
“Madam, you’re complicating our night, so before we come in and complicate yours, kindly cork your bullshit bottle and close the gods-damned window!”
She looked up, aghast. “Two of you? All of you, get down, get down, get down!” “Close your window, close your window, close your fucking window!”
torrent of polysyllabic blasphemy from four mouths;
“Yes!” cried the woman. “Now throw him out the window!” “For the love of the gods, madam,” snapped Locke. “Can you please pick one man in your bedroom to cheer for and stick with him?”
III REVELATION “Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau From Émile ou De l’éducation
Damn, but the boy seemed to be constitutionally incapable of remaining in high places for any length of time.
“Bug, get out of the water! Get up on the stones!” “What about Locke?” “He doesn’t want to come out of that cask right this fucking second,” Jean hollered. “Trust me!”
senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he’d seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size.
the channels of his frame were entirely evacuated of vim.
It was strange, how readily authority could be conjured with nothing but a bit of strutting jackassery.
“Wicked sisters,” said Jean, as he let the hatchets fall out of his right robe sleeve and into his hand, “I’d like you to meet the Wicked Sisters.”
the last few pimps clinging brutally to their livelihood were convinced (convinced to death, in most cases) to
I am entirely prepared—body and mind—for this affair at Raven’s Reach. I am the soul of caution.” “La, sir, if that is the case, I should hope never to meet the soul of recklessness.”
though I daresay it would be quicker and easier for the pair of you to simply dig your own graves and take your ease in them until your inevitable transition to a more quiet state of affairs!”
When a team scored, a small boat with a beer keg lashed amidships would pull alongside the playing court and ladle out a drink for every man on that team. Naturally,
Meraggio moved off, peering back over his shoulder at Locke and then shaking his head. Oh, Crooked Warden, thought Locke, you’re one funny son of a bitch, aren’t you?
impaired in the fine art of standing up straight.
“Homunculi,” said Locke. “They crawl out of my ass every full moon; they’ve been a problem for years.”
“Biggest gods-damned bird we ever saw.”
“Just one question, you arrogant fucking cocksucker,” said Locke. “I’ll grant the Lamora part is easy to spot; the truth is, I didn’t know about the apt translation when I took the name. I borrowed it from this old sausage dealer who was kind to me once, back in Catchfire before the plague. I just liked the way it sounded. “But what the fuck,” he said slowly, “ever gave you the idea that Locke was the first name I was actually born with?”
Now this finger coming up—this one’s Bug. Actually, Bug probably should have been the little finger, but what the hell.”
“Fuck you, Falconer, answer my questions.
“Quit being deliberately freakish and give me my fucking answer.”
“I called him an asshole, too,” said Locke. “He didn’t like that.”
“Great! We can all go! It’ll be fun!” Locke waved his tied hands at the door. “But hurry it up, for fuck’s sake.”
“We pass the coin, lad,” he said. “We pass this fucking coin right up the chain of command and we forget we ever saw it. Haul him to the Palace of Patience and let someone else give it a ponder.”
“Let me guess,” said Reynart. “They’re full of shit.”
It was a death-offering, Stephen, a death-offering.”
“Well, cheer up. At least you’ve got more mobility than a fucking tadpole on dry land. Look at my little oilcloth castle.” Locke sighed. “So this is winning,” he said.
