The Will to Battle (Terra Ignota, #3)

by Ada Palmer

Ancelet twitched: this was the first time, I think, he had seen a man offer to die for him. “No. The trial will go forward.” His voice turned from conversation to command. “You will plead terra ignota.”

They said the title of the series !! :-0

Arm thyself well for this trial, young polylaw; here at the law’s wild borders there be dragons.

The beast strays near the light for a moment, so the prey can make out the contours of face and shoulders as it licks rich meat drippings from its cheeks.

Dignity is strong in this one.

I have seen many strange species of courage in my years, but one of the strangest was this, to pin above her still-raw wound the bull’s-eye invitation: shoot me again, my love, if your cause demands it.

I am lying to you, reader. I just realized. Reading back these last few paragraphs I recognize my fantasy, not memory, taking control. It should have been me who served my masters well and talked these rebel leaders into prolonging peace. I failed. I lay there sobbing, useless. It was my Enemy who made these arguments. It was Tully Mardi who saved the world. “Stop blubbering, Mycroft!” He backhanded me, a strange blow, ill-aimed but strong, the semipracticed strike of one who has trained long on punching bags but never flesh.

I often forget that Mycroft is an unreliable narrator...

Dominic will not object to being called a cur in any language.

The pair have crossed swords, I suspect, or had sex. Or both. It can be difficult to tell the difference.

surely, reader, no philosopher in history has ever had a truer apprentice than had the Marquis de Sade in Dominic Seneschal.

The only other interruption worth mentioning was that Madame’s confessor, two hours into her recital, attempted to bludgeon her to death with a censer.

LMAOOOOOO

He is always awkward ending handshakes, easily distracted by the question of how much souls touch when hands do.

The folly shimmered with internal lights, which in daylight played through it like rainbows through prism, but at night, which already dominated day in the maturing summer darkness, the eerie rainbow makes it seem as if cunning has sown the ground with seeds of fire, and reared the Southern Lights.

‘Permanencia, un acto de sacrificio.’

Faust’s eyes nearly vanished into the smile-folds of his cheeks as he caught sight of his Nephew. “Dominic, brace yourself.” The warning came too late. As the bloodhound set eyes upon his Maître—color! color on his Maître’s shoulders!—the blood vanished from his cheeks. His eyes rolled back. A staggered pace buckled under him, and Dominic collapsed to his knees, further as even knees gave out, and he toppled forward onto his forearms, groveling on the stone floor like a man too starved to crawl. “Marvelous reaction.” Faust stepped in at once, with a light, stimulating slap to Dominic’s ear, and a dark stimulating whiff of brandy. “Breathe, my boy. In-one-two, out-one-two. Don’t raise your head too fast.”

His touch dispelled the paralysis, granting Dominic energy enough to throw his arms around his Master’s knees, and sob. Dominic’s are not grief tears like mine, reader, not mourning in advance the battle-deaths Jehovah’s war clothes promise. Neither are they joy tears. I would call them tears of raw catharsis, as Dominic’s mind reorders itself around the all-transforming fact that his God can change.

« You have mine! » Dominic gasped, his breath still ragged. « Maître, I have the Mitsubishi now. I lay them at Your feet. Tell me how to use them. Tell me to destroy them! Tell me to make them masters of the world! Tell me to turn plowshares into swords and scar Your Name into the Earth! Tell me to have them raise an altar to You on every acre of their dominion, and stain the stones black with the hearts’ blood of Your enemies, and then their own! »

« Thou art a foreigner among the Mitsubishi, » Jehovah answered, His gentle hand still on Dominic’s brow, « thy authority young and fragile. Thou must use it in the spirit in which it was entrusted to thee by Hotaka Andō Mitsubishi, who remains one of My fathers, and must be honored as such. Thou shalt either honor and further the needs and wishes of his Hive, or renounce the custodianship of it and return to Me, alone. » He tilted Dominic’s head back to make the suppliant face Him. « And I warn thee, My Dominic: if this truce fails, and violence desecrates the sacred Olympics, and thou provest to be the agent of that failure, I will not judge that the human race has failed My Great Test. Thou art a traitor to thy Maker, one of My creatures, My agent, not My Peer’s, so thy works are not works of humankind, nor thy sins sins of humankind, but Mine. My Peer’s creatures will pass or fail this Test, and if thou interferest, thou wilt only make the Test into invalid nothing. Nothing comes from nothing, not wisdom and not grief. Failure may indeed loose from Me the tears thou longest to see, but will not if thou art that failure’s architect. »

Did you think Jehovah did not know? That the bestial desire which rules Dominic’s every thought and gesture remained secret from He before Whom this dark and craven angel cannot master his legs, let alone his lies? Dominic hungers to taste the tears of his God, broken, grieving, struck to His Heart by some unforgivable aspect revealed, in His Divine Peer, or in Himself. That is the consummation this bloodhound lusts after.

The God replied at last, “Mihi monstra Iusurandum. (Show Me the Oath of Office.)” “Nullo pacto. (No.)” Death leaned close to his Son, as close as the wall of my body would let him.

It is not power that corrupts, but the belief that it is yours. I think I will never believe that any privilege I enjoy—whether Caesar’s trust or the Throne—is mine—yet, when I face a mirror now, I see the shadows of Caligula and Commodus, and doubt myself.

Just as you cannot see a mantis spring, or as an arrow seems less to fly than to vanish from the archer’s bow and reappear quivering in its target, so no eye could trace the speed with which Achilles was—I cannot say ran or leapt—he was across the room, with blood spattered across his knuckles, and Faust flat at his feet.