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

by Robert Jackson Bennett

But a prideful creature can talk themself into believing that every deed they do is legitimate. Thus, they both giddily and greedily spin their own doom.”

“This work can never satisfy, Din, for it can never finish. The dead cannot be restored. Vice and bribery will never be totally banished from the cantons. And the drop of corruption that lies within every society shall always persist.

The duty of the Iudex is not to boldly vanquish it but to manage it. We keep the stain from spreading, yes, but it is never gone. Yet this job is perhaps the most important in all the Iyalets, for without it, well…the Empire would come to look much like Yarrow, where the powerful and the cruel prevail without check. And tell me—does that realm look capable of fighting off a leviathan?”

To serve is a tremendously humbling

thing. How easy it is to mistake glory and fame for duty! But duty is thankless, invisible, forgettable—but oh, so very necessary.”

“That we are but tools. I make my body and mind an instrument for others and have no say in its use.”