The Devils (The Devils, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

It was the fifteenth of Loyalty, and Brother Diaz was late for his audience with Her Holiness the Pope. “God damn it,” he fretted

cripples, prostitutes, crippled prostitutes, had he mentioned the prostitutes? They outnumbered the priests some twenty to one.

cold as an icehouse, busy as a slaughterhouse, and squalid as a shithouse,

Start the evening looking for fun, end the morning begging forgiveness.

She sprang for the next stall, slipped on a huge trout, and reeled one more desperate step before she crashed down on her shoulder and went sprawling in a shower of shellfish.

“She’s vicious when cornered. Like a starving weasel.” She’d been called worse.

He looked like a man who had spent half a century falling down a mountain. Perhaps one made of axes.

Rather in the same way that finding a beggar in your doorway would be merely distasteful, while finding one in your bed would be cause for considerable alarm.

Brother Diaz rolled his eyes piously to the ceiling. “They will all face judgement in the hereafter.” “I would prefer they faced it a great deal sooner,” said Cardinal Zizka, with an edge on her voice that made the hairs on Diaz’s arms prickle.

“A time comes when the stakes are of such enormity that moral objections become themselves immoral.”

“The Church must, of course, remain faithful to the teachings of our Saviour. But there are tasks that must be undertaken, and methods used, to which the faithful and unimpeachable … are not suited.” Brother Diaz supposed, if you really squinted, you could make that argument, but he didn’t want to be anywhere near it himself.

He looked like a man whose methods were deeply impeachable.

“Is she … one of my flock?” he stammered. That quirk became a grin. “Baaaaaa,” she said.

New dukes can be made with a word, but good servants are rare treasures.

“You have a very great number of keys,” murmured Brother Diaz. “Well, Brother,” replied Baptiste as she plucked down one ring and began to sort through it, “we need a very great number of locks.”

“But petty injustice, hypocrisy, and oppression are eternal.”

Balthazar threw up his hands. “You bargain with one demon and that’s all anyone talks about!”

Jakob turned his grey eyes back to Brother Diaz, as if only now remembering he was there. “She’s dead.” And he started to limp back the way they’d come. “Dead?” whispered Brother Diaz. “As fuck.” Baptiste gave his shoulders a parting squeeze. “She’s dead as fuck.”

“I see an ordeal,” whispered the man, in a papery wheeze, “I see tests and trials.” Alex didn’t much like the sound of that. But if these withered ghosts had talked about cake, it likely would’ve come over sinister.

She’d no doubt the elves were real bastards. Who wasn’t? But they seemed a long way off. Hadn’t been their pliers in her face the other day, had it?

He was preparing a sigh so explosive that someone would be forced to finally acknowledge his discomfort

He had never had much patience for religion. What was it, really, but superstition with money?

The prepubescent Pontiff

“The binding killed her?” “Oh, no. A giant fell on her.” This seemed to pose more questions than it answered,

But when one is forced to employ a toenail to draw runes with one’s own excrement one must settle for less-than-optimal results.

She shook her head bitterly. “I should’ve quit after Barcelona.”

the big guard bit her arm, farting intermittently, which is a common problem with the recently dead unless one really concentrates on the relevant sphincters and, really, who has the patience?

testament to the greatest fighting technique of all: a friend behind your enemy.

“Where’s the good meat?” she screamed, but her teeth and tongue weren’t made for man-words and the rain was tickling her nose so all she could do was howl and growl but the fuckers got the gist.

“Pescara’s awful anyway,” threw in Baron Rikard. “Wouldn’t be caught dead in Pescara.” “You are dead,” said Vigga. “But I wouldn’t be caught.”

“Point out one person who respects you,” said Princess Alexia. There was a silence filled only by the patter of rain.

The Saviour had said one could not buy one’s way into heaven, but most agreed that was just a negotiating tactic on her part.

“Shield-maiden, please.” The baron snorted. “Axe-bitch, maybe.” Vigga grinned. “I really like the sound of axe-bitch.”

with the added indignity of making him appear to be fundamentally the same as everyone else, a misapprehension he had been striving to correct since a child.

Say what you like about the Saved, they were masters of setting up in other people’s houses and pretending they were the architect. Lying was a sin, apparently, unless you did it outrageously and persistently enough, in which case it qualified as scripture.

“How is it?” asked Alex. “Cheesy.” “Is that bad?” “In many things it would be, but in cheese it’s essential.”

People stared, of course. That’s a very big woman, they were probably thinking, and they were right. So?

“And to think,” he breathed, “I saw in you the model of what a priest should be. I praised you in a letter. To my mother! What a fraud you prove to be! What a penny hypocrite! Rather than prating from your moving pulpit in the vanguard of our sacred company you should’ve been bringing up the rear with the rest of the whores!”

I think it was late spring, maybe early summer…” The baron frowned, scratching his neck. “No! Mid-spring, definitely, I remember the trees were coming into leaf…” “My God,” breathed Brother Diaz. The revelation burst upon him, a mind-expanding epiphany. If the trees had been coming into leaf … that would have been mid-spring!

Jakob was the grumpy grandfather, Rikard the mysterious uncle, and Baptiste the put-upon mother. Balthazar was the overconfident older brother, Brother Diaz the underconfident younger brother, and Alex the pretty child everyone liked ’cause she hadn’t been around long enough to disappoint anyone yet. Vigga was maybe some weird third cousin who kept fucking everyone when she wasn’t turning into a giant wolf-thing and by that point the metaphor had really fallen apart because how many families have an invisible elf?

“That it should come to this,” murmured Balthazar bitterly. “Running errands for a baker and crime lord.” “And those are just my hobbies,” said Frigo, mildly.

“I’ve yet to see a gate to hell turn out well.” Vigga sadly shook her head. “Makes you wonder why they keep opening the bastards.”

you are a swan, not a seagull, not a duck, do not quack.”

“Exactly! Now, the pelvis tilts—good grief, not back—arse in, such as it is, groin up, such as it is, stomach tight. At least pretend you have a spine. You are not uncooked tripe, you are sculpted from marble! And we walk. No, we walk. No, erect, like a human rather than a beast of the fields, imagine that. No, not clomping on your heels like Vigga Ullasdottr, no, not swaggering like Baptiste, on the balls of your feet! They caress the ground with the tender touch of a lover, weightless. Yes! Your big toes follow one another in a direct line from here to your desires. Own the room! This is your ground! Yes! Here she is!

You must eat, sleep, and defecate with imperial dignity.

“So! We smile. No, we smile. Not a skull’s rictus, you are not graded on acreage of teeth. Less with the mouth, more with the eyes.

A necromancer cannot afford to be put off by a mild fragrance of putrefaction,

If the man ever tired of organised crime, he really would make an exemplary necromancer’s assistant.

The whole thing was about as pleasant as you’d imagine talking to a severed head would be.

Sunny turned up her nose. “An un-monogrammed handkerchief is just a cloth.”