The Wheel of Osheim (The Red Queen's War, #3)

by Mark Lawrence

I’d heard that the Libans could get almost as stabby if you didn’t touch their food as they would if you did touch their women.

I wondered whether it was etiquette to use the same spoon for eyeballs as for brain . . .

“Fear can be a useful friend—but it’s never a good master.”

“Fuck that!” My turn to drop the scroll-case as though it were hot. “. . . your stewardness.” “‘Highness’ is the correct form of address when the steward is of noble birth . . . if we’re being formal, Jalan.” “Fuck that, your highness.”

“The point is that there are things I’m prepared to die for. Times when it is right to make a stand, whatever the odds. And if Tuttugu and I would do what we did for Hennan’s grandfather—an old man we didn’t, as you rightly say, know. Then what do you think I’m prepared to do for my children? For my wife? Whether I can win is not a factor.”

“Interesting,” I said, by which I meant “shut the fuck up.”

The pair of them could debate the smallest issue for hours in that sing-song tit-for-tat way the Norse had. They would end up hair-splitting over some terminally dull point of Viking history. Suddenly the world would hinge on whether Olaaf Thorgulson, fourth son of Thorgul Olaafson, sailed from Haagenfast in the 28th year of the Iron Jarls or the 27th . . .