Best Served Cold

by Joe Abercrombie

was his considered opinion that one could never bow too much to men of Orso’s stamp, though he did reflect that persons of huge ego were a great drain on the patience of bystanders.

Strange, that however tough one’s skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close.

Darkness and dark company make it easy for even half-decent men to behave like animals,

The boundaries of civilisation are not the impregnable walls civilised men take them for. As easily as smoke on the wind, they can dissolve.

People would far rather believe a lurid lie than a sorry string of accidents. Would far rather believe the world is full of evil than full of bad luck, selfishness and stupidity.

That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.

Maybe they just liked corpses, so long as they weren’t theirs.

Orso had once told her that the way to turn a lie into the truth was to shout it often enough,

“Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.”

“It’s a special kind o’ fool takes the hard path just ’cause it’s the right one.”

There is a brief spell after a new leader comes to power, however it is achieved, during which they can do no wrong. A golden period in which people are blinded by their own hopes for something better. Nothing lasts forever, of course. In time, and usually with alarming speed, the leader’s flawless image grows tarnished with their subjects’ own petty disappointments, failures, frustrations. Soon they can do no right. The people clamour for a new leader, that they might consider themselves reborn.

It was like the Bloody-Nine told him once—love and hate have just a knife’s edge between ’em.

He was forced to reflect once again, as he had so often, that life was rendered immeasurably easier for the comely.

It’s a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you’re lying on your deathbed, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.”

myself have left a thousand tasks unfinished, unstarted or outright failed across the whole breadth of the Circle of the World. In the end, they bother me considerably less than my successes.”

These are ruthless times we live in, and in ruthless times, mercy and cowardice are entire opposites. We all turn to shit when we die, Monza, but not all of us are shit while we’re alive. Most of us are.”

Shenkt had seen it all before. Loyalty, duty, pride—fleeting motivations on the whole, which kept men smugly happy in good weather but soon washed away when the storm came. Greed, though? On greed you can always rely.

Often, the last thing men believe is the truth.

Strange, how men are almost as happy to break a thing as steal it, at a time like that.

Never fight your own battles, Verturio wrote, if someone else is willing to fight them for you.

Shenkt was always surprised by how treacherous men could be over trifles, yet how loyal they could be when their lives were forfeit.

“When you build your life around only one thing, love only one person, dream only one dream, you risk losing everything at a stroke.

Fine lies beat tedious truths every time.

But she’d seen enough to know that no battle is ever the last, whatever people might want to believe. Life goes on. Every war carries within it the seeds of the next,

“Change, Friendly… change is a funny thing. Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity…” He waved his flask around for a moment, then shrugged. “They change back.”