A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

“You know, you are not a stupid person, Din.” “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, pleased. “Or, rather, not an unusually stupid person.” “Thank you, ma’am,” I said, far less pleased.

Goddamn autocrats. They really are hardly better than shit-stained children.”

“I appreciate it when you throw rocks at my ideas, Din. Keeps me from going too far up my own ass. Proceed.”

I assumed all was safe, or at least as safe as a bank with boxes of severed heads could possibly be.

“I disdain it. I disdain it so, all this fucking spectacle! Nothing irks me more than a showy murderer, as if their wretched deeds were some mystical marvel!”

“We fear the elements, and plague, and the wrath of the leviathans. Yet if we are to see clear-eyed, we would admit that the will of men is as unforgiving as these. How many chieftains and champions have wrought just as much sorrow as the wet seasons? We must govern thoughtfully, then, and manage such passions wisely—for if these folk have their way, we shall return to nature primordial, and be as beasts, and all the world a savage garden, mindless and raging.”