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His three hapless sparring partners lumbered after him as ineffectually as the cuckolded husbands, ignored creditors and spurned companions did wherever he passed.
But Glokta was an utter bastard. A beautiful, spiteful, masterful, horrible bastard, simultaneously the best and worst man in the Union. He was a tower of self-centred self-obsession. An impenetrable fortress of arrogance. His ability was exceeded only by his belief in his own ability.
Bastards swarmed to him like ants to a half-eaten pastry. He had acquired a constantly shifting coterie of bastards, a backstabbing gaggle, a self-aggrandising entourage. He had bastards streaming after him like the tail after a comet.
Colonel Glokta, meanwhile, smirked at death as though it were a jilted lover begging for more, entirely fearless in his certain knowledge that danger was something that applied only to the little people.
Craw frowned down at the dead man’s bloody face, mouth a bit open as though he was about to ask a question. A potter makes pots. A baker makes bread. And this is what Craw made. All he’d made his whole life, pretty much.
In hard times, soft thoughts can kill you quicker than the plague.
Like a camel turd baked in the sun, beneath the pious crust he was the same stinking, self-serving coward he had always been.
The world’s nothing but a mean bully, that’s a fact. Even when you’ve big misfortunes threatening to drop on your head, small ones still take every chance to prick your toes. How she wished she’d got the chance to grab her boots. Just to keep a shred of dignity. But she had what she had, and neither boots nor dignity were on the list, and a hundred big wishes weren’t worth one little fact–as
Garrottes simply are not part of God’s chosen path and although, through a combination of personal weakness, evil acquaintance and plain bad luck, Shev had to admit her feet had often left the chosen path behind, she liked to imagine she could at least still see it, in the distance, if she squinted.
They like great warriors in the North, and great warriors rarely make great leaders. Men without fear are men without imagination. Men who use their heads for smashing through things rather than thinking. They celebrate spiteful, prideful, wrathful men here, and pick the most childish of the crowd for leaders.’
