The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy, #2)

by James Islington

FEAR, MY FATHER ONCE TOLD me, is simply our realisation of a lack of control. And that is why when we are afraid, sometimes the only way we can cope—the only way to dull the edge of that lack—is to put our faith in those who appear not to suffer it.

“Ulciscor may not be the one that you want. But fathers rarely are.”

“Foundation is like life. You can make no mistakes at all, and still lose.”

“A father is a man who loves you, no matter what. Not all of us can have one.”

Rule a man, and he will do whatever you can imagine. Befriend him, and he will do more.”

Grief, my mother once told me, is love’s most honest expression. The last and hardest aspect of truly, truly caring for someone. She said it at her own mother’s funeral rites, tears in her eyes even as she tried to comfort a boy too young to understand why he was so sad, why his grandmother couldn’t be there anymore. She explained through choking sobs that without grief, love would be meaningless. Because it is impossible to truly love something that cannot be lost.

I don’t like it either but when power is so entrenched, so impossibly distant, blood becomes the only possible currency of change.”

“Small men so desperate for power that they will take it from wherever they can.

just because what you told them was true does not erase your past. Words sound the same coming from the honest and the deceiving, the informed and the deceived. They matter—never think otherwise—but most of the time, people need to be shown a truth before they will truly believe it.”

The power to protect is the highest responsibility

“The oldest argument for doing something wrong is that everyone is doing it. To dismantle what they have built would have required the agreement of every man who had spent his life building it,” agrees my father softly. “It would have required them to give up all they have striven their entire lives to gain. And they would have needed to do it, largely, for the benefit of those at whose expense it originally came.”

“A society cannot make a man a monster, Diago. But it can give him the excuse to become one.”

a child needs to hear and truly understand only three phrases from their father as they grow up. ‘I love you.’ ‘I will help.’ And, ‘I don’t know.’

I had no answers. No simple way forward. It’s the hidden truth of how we eventually have to face the world—of being an adult. None of us know

sometimes, talent and empathy fight for the same air.

“We do not stop learning when we get older,”

“ ‘Know your line.’ It is good advice for a son. For a man, even. But for a father?” He leans forward. “To protect our sons, Catenicus, there is no line we will not cross.”

The needs of the many will always be loud.” He leans forward. Hooked nose inches from mine. “But in the end, it is only the strength of the few that matters.”

“For things like this to happen, Vis, it takes a special kind of cowardice from both commander and soldier.”

I am a child again, and all I want is for my father to be here. All I want is for him to stay. His embrace is long and gentle. Cupping the back of my head, forehead against mine.

Battles for these men are less about strategy and more about courage.

“Make it matter.”

“You’ll serve them until you break or die, Eidhin. And in the end, you won’t have done the right thing. You won’t have made a difference. You’ll just have mitigated one tiny part of their evil, by helping them advance another.”

As long as we let ourselves be their prisoners, nothing will change.”

Poor luck is being aware of these currents, but able only to drown in them

The measure of a man is not whether he does the wrong thing. It is whether he accepts that he has.