The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #1)

by Seth Dickinson

I must be ready with acid and steel mask.

“You will find no power behind the mask.” Cold, rooted conviction in Tain Hu’s voice. “It will wear you. It will eat your face away. You would do more for your home if you tore it all down.”

the shock of power.

I wish, Baru thought, that they would all just shut up and do as I say.

I differ from Nayauru in one great respect: she is dead, I am ascendant, and my children are going to fuck her name out of every song and book of noble lineage.

They were met with rapture, a clamor of joyful disorder—ilykari and mothers, sodomite-husbands and merchants, all crying out to the avatar of their new liberty.

that armies did not kill each other, they broke each other, that the day would be won when one army believed it could not survive.

Fuck them, Baru thought. Fuck them. They can all burn. I will destroy myself if I choose.

I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.