The Wonder Engine (Clocktaur War, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

“Damn. No one ever tells me I’ve got a tidy mind.” “It’s tidier than mine,” said Brenner. “Yes, but yours is full of spiders.” The assassin looked absurdly flattered by this.

He only had a few inches on Brenner, but he glared down them quite effectively.

Shame flitted briefly over Brenner’s face, but found itself in unfamiliar surroundings and didn’t settle.

“My job is making more corpses. The only way I could make less is if I retired early.”

You were lionized and praised and admired. In return, you trained with the sword every day and you were sent out over and over again, to fight things that gripped your soul like oily smoke and licked your heart with black metal tongues.

He wanted to kiss Slate passionately and yell to random passersby, “She probably doesn’t hate me!”

“We’re living with decisions made by people so long dead we can’t even piss on their bones.”

I’m supposed to be the one who stabs people for money, and this lovesick bullshit of yours is seriously cramping my style!”

Her only consolation was that she’d bitten her fingernails so short, they’d have a devil of a time pulling them out.

“But I don’t want to be the sensible one,” said the assassin plaintively. “I want to be the one who kills people and gets paid a lot of money.”