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“What separates a true magician from witches, sorcerers, hedgerow fairies, and those most self-important pedlars of empty superstition…” and he curled his lip at Brother Diaz “… priests, is thorough preparation for any eventuality.” There was a pause. “Shouldn’t you have a cloth, then?” asked Alex.
“The Chapel of the Holy Expediency has its drawbacks,” said Sunny, “but I take pride in being part of an elite team. Including the man who can’t step off a boat and the woman who can’t unlock an open door.”
“Aye, well,” said Vigga, “either must look like magic to a man can’t get off a boat without help.” “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?” “Man of your age,” said Baptiste, “I’m surprised you haven’t forgotten it already.”
“At least you hate yourselves more than each other.” “The cornerstone of any friendship,”
“When you’re outnumbered and outclassed, chaos is your best chance.”
“Well, it’s nice to know exactly what kind of shellfish you’ve been murdered by,”
“A sad indictment of the world we live in that we run out of jokes before we run out of enemies.”
Being stabbed up the arse would definitely make most people think twice, but perhaps not most crabs,
One of those things you’ve heard of, sounded vaguely interesting, but you’d never, ever want to actually visit. Like England.
“Magic … may be the ultimate expression … of man’s triumph over nature,” she forced through gritted teeth. “But sometimes you’ve just got to stab a bastard.”
“Well, you know how it is,” said Brother Diaz, lying on a rock in the thickening rain in his soaking-wet underwear with a naked werewolf sobbing in his arms. “God loves to test us.”
She planted her hands on her hips and arched right back to bellow, “Ha!” at the sky.
“Can’t look at the twin twigs you dare to call legs a moment longer.” “I have been told I possess very finely turned calves.” “You clearly know some outrageous liars.”
how d’you become a monk?” “The usual way. Bit by a monk.”
Really, you wear robes to a hunt you deserve everything you get.
“You need to stop clinging to the notion that there’s only one right path. You’ll waste half your time panicking you’re not on it, and the rest backtracking to find it.
Brother Diaz ever so slowly let out the breath he’d been holding
The colour drained from his face. “Another Dane-Wolf…” Vigga showed her pointed teeth. “I’m a Swede.”
Balthazar sourly shook his head. “You always have to go one better, don’t you?” “I don’t have to.” Baptiste fanned herself modestly with her hat, wayward curls fluttering. “It just always seems to happen.”
Baron Rikard closed his eyes. “She was a ruthless, reckless, self-serving snake. God, how I miss her.”
Both Churches might have lauded the charity of the Saviour from their pulpits, but they weren’t giving much away at the negotiating table.
“What you call luck I call careful preparation, healthy caution, and never sticking my neck out.”
“Everything has a sheepskin in your stories,” said Sunny. “To hear you tell it, Scandinavia is all blood, boats, and sheepskin.”
“You properly poked my tit,” grumbled Vigga, rubbing at the bruise. “Behave yourself or I’ll poke the other one!”
Entrance is forbidden on pain of excommunication.” Sunny shrugged. “I’ve never been incommunicated.”
Alex glared back at him. “This from a man given all his fancy titles by his mummy.” Sabbas paled with the special fury of those born with everything when they’re told they haven’t actually earned it.
“That’s only three reasons,” said the other sorceress. Vigga frowned at her hand, and saw she was pointing at the sky. “Ah. Well, my thing isn’t so much counting … as killing.” She curled that last finger in to make a fist
A man with the most ridiculous cloak Jakob ever saw—and he’d borne witness to some self-important drapery in his time—was
“One more last stand,” growled Jakob, hefting his shield. “Our third on this trip alone.”
In the end, time gives everyone the kick in the sack they deserve.
Out of the frying pan, into the plague house.
“I am doing the best I can with the materials available!” snarled Balthazar, plucking up more corpses to limp, lurch, and hobble towards the door. “Would a little appreciation be too much to ask?”
it occupied the terminus of a ridge with precipitous cliffs on two sides. No doubt a marvellous position for the contemplative isolation of the monks who long ago inhabited the place, but by no means an advantage for a ragtag band of convicted heretics attempting to flee for their lives.
They could worry about the drop when they were plummeting down it, which was more or less what they had been doing ever since they left the Celestial Palace. The Chapel of the Holy Expediency was a think-on-your-feet sort of institution.
He’d sworn an oath of honesty, not an oath of blabbing every detail.
“I have defied God and his angels,” he hissed. “I have bathed in blood and waded through gold. Kings … have abased themselves … at my feet. Do you truly imagine … you can stick me with a fork?”
the self-styled Angel of Troy was dragged down, bloody and squealing, into the rotting embrace of the damned.
“The missions assigned to the Chapel of the Holy Expediency are like the members of the congregation—each awful in its own special way.”
“You spend years illuminating manuscripts,” said Baptiste, working off one boot, “and singing hymns, and tending the monastery gardens, but all anyone wants to talk about is the one time you fucked a werewolf.”
“Cardinal Zizka, I must confess,” sang Baptiste as she pulled off her other boot and leaned back, wriggling her bare toes at the fire, “that I slipped while praying, my habit caught upon a stray nail, and my prick, engorged as it always is while filled with the love of our Lord, accidentally went up a lycanthrope’s twat.” “I have heard it all.” Balthazar stared off wide-eyed into the darkened forest. “The universe holds no mysteries for me any longer.”
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” said Baron Rikard. “As does the twat,” said Sunny, “apparently.”
According to the histories, ancient Carthage itself boasted three pillars on an even grander scale, but they toppled when most of the city was sucked through a gate to hell.” “A bad day for property values in general, one imagines,”
Like most things, it was worse close up.
The cavernous room on the other side was where high-end brothel met cathedral to some evil god—all
“A rule of politics always and everywhere,” murmured Jakob. “Never stop the money.
“Yesterday’s heroes.” Jakob pulled his fingertips from the faded carvings. Soon enough there would be nothing left of them. “Tomorrow’s ghosts.”
Brother Diaz did not break for lunch. He did not need to eat. He was fuelled by pure administration.
The duke with all the moustaches turned towards the bottom of the table. “Have you anything to say … Duke Arcadius?” “I do indeed, and it is this.” Eudoxia’s eldest son swept his feet from the table and stood, propping his clenched fists before him and glaring balefully towards the Serpent Throne. “Never fuck with a librarian.”
“How many invisible elves do you know?” “It could’ve been the Holy Spirit,”
“He who cannot die cannot be judged.” “He who cannot die cannot run out of time to win redemption.
