The Ruin of Angels (Craft Sequence, #6)

by Max Gladstone

“I’m sorry,” he said, drawing the cigarette from between his teeth. “Bad habit, but it calms the nerves. Big day.” His eyes flicked left. They were very blue. “You want me to put it out. You think I should put it out?” He shrugged, dropped the cigarette, crushed it with the toe of his boater. “I should have quit years ago. But we only have so much willpower, and every decision we make, we spend some. I conserve mine, to spend it in the right places, at the right times.”

Jax, one hand pocketed, strode to the bow. The way he stood, moved, spoke was all assumption: he expected the world would bend to his wishes, because it so often did. But Kai knew tyrants, and he lacked their scorn. Eberhardt Jax was a machine more than a man, a system of ideas, a rumor and a fortune and a set of contracts dedicated to building that fortune. Eberhardt Jax, the meat, the person who once was born and might one day die, was incidental to that machine. He guided it, built some parts and directed others, but the machine did not need the man. Many of Kai’s pilgrims, no matter how great their wealth, no matter how vast their power, never grasped this truth. Jax cultivated carelessness, and let his machine carry him.

“There’s been a change of plan.” “A change of plan.” He echoed her words in the tone of voice people used to describe kinks they didn’t share.