The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War, #2)

by Mark Lawrence

If there’s one thing I like less than boats it’s being brutally murdered by an outraged father.

My theory was that a long history of raiding each other had driven them to make their foodstuffs so foul that no one in their right mind would want to steal it. Thereby ensuring that, whatever else the enemy might carry off, women, children, goats, and gold, at least they’d leave lunch behind.

The night can last twenty hours and even when the day finally breaks it never gets above a level of cold I call “fuck that”—as in you open the door, your face freezes instantly to the point where it hurts to speak, but manfully you manage to say “fuck that,” before turning round, and going back to bed.

Animals are generally good judges of character—they don’t like me—except for horses which, for reasons I’ve never understood, give me their all. Perhaps it’s our shared interest in running away that forms the bond.

I’ve always been sensibly terrified of battle. The discovery that if I get pushed too far I turn into a raging maniac who throws himself headlong into the thickest of the fighting was hardly comforting. A wise man’s biggest advantage is in knowing the ideal time to run away.

Fear is a valuable commodity, it’s common sense compressed into its purest form.

My swimming might accurately be described as drowning sideways.

What saves us all are the deeds of fools as often as the acts of the wise.

A man casts a million shadows, and yet you trap him within such a singular opinion. You travelled here seeking wisdom, girl, but all that I have here on these scrolls is information. The wise come into their majority out in the world, amid the muck and pain of living.

The best thing I can say about what followed is that it probably hurt less than being butchered with an axe.

“If you call the application of intelligence and a shrewd assessment of the statistical odds cheating then yes, both I and Hennan are cheating.” In fact if you called “not playing in accordance with the rules” cheating, then we would both have to raise our hands to that also.

Throw away too much of your past and you abandon the person who walked those days. When you pare away at yourself you can reinvent, that’s true enough, but such whittling always seems to reveal a lesser man, and promises to leave you with nothing at the end.

Running is all well and good but it has to be balanced against hiding.

The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that’s too heavy to carry.

children hope in ways adults find hard to imagine. They carry their dreams before them, fragile, in both arms, waiting for the world to trip them.