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“To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike” Diane de Poitiers
Probably just a shitty day was all. You get ’em everywhere.
If this was the home of the grand new man he was hoping to become, Shivers had to admit to being more’n a touch disappointed.
But being a bastard was crime and punishment both.
“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.” The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. “Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.
Shivers frowned. For some fine-looking woman to come out of nowhere, more’n likely save his life, then make him a golden offer? His luck had never been anywhere near that good. But eating had only reminded him how much he used to enjoy doing it. “I can do that.”
“You’re a dead man!” roared Gobba, taking a stumbling step back, fumbling a bright knife from his belt. “I’ll kill you!” But he did not come on. “When?” asked Friendly, blades hanging loose from his hands. “Tomorrow?”
He stood there, weighing the purse. But she’d already taken her hand off her knife. She already knew his answer. Money is a different thing to every man, Bialoveld wrote, but always a good thing.
When he looked up his face had turned hard. “Who do we kill?” The time was she’d have smirked sideways to see Benna smirking back at her. We won again. But Benna was dead, and Monza’s thoughts were on the next man to join him. “A banker.” “A what?” “A man who counts money.” “He makes money counting money?” “That’s right.” “Some strange fashions you folk have down here. What did he do?” “He killed my brother.” “More vengeance, eh?” “More vengeance.”
“Why did you favour Styria with your presence, anyway?” asked Morveer. “Why not stay in the North, swaddled in the magic mists?” Shivers rubbed slowly at the side of his neck. Seemed a strange reason, now, and he felt even more of a fool saying it. “I came here to be a better man.” “Starting from where you are, I hardly think that would prove too difficult.” Shivers had some pride still, and this prick’s sniggering was starting to grate on it. He’d have liked to just knock him off his cart with an axe. But he was trying to do better, so he leaned over instead and spoke in Northern, nice and
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The first time Shivers had seen anything close to a smile on her face, and he reckoned it suited her. “I always said I’d go.” “To Adua? What’s stopping you?” “Six men I need to kill.”
A surge of worry went through him, and he wondered afresh just why the hell he’d ever said yes. “I’ve always been my own worst enemy,” he muttered. “Stick with me, then.” Her smile had widened some. “You’ll soon have worse. We’re here.”
“Are you entirely sure of that knot?” asked Morveer. “There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop.” “Twenty-eight strides,” said Friendly. “What?” “The drop.” A brief pause. “That is not helpful.”
When God means to punish a man, the Kantic scriptures say, he sends him stupid friends, and clever enemies.
The people far prefer a leader who appears great, Bialoveld wrote, to one who is.
Convicts, in the main, are wonderfully polite. Bad manners can be fatal in prison.
“The memories of our glories fade,” he whispered, “and rot away into half-arsed anecdotes, thin and unconvincing as some other bastard’s lies. The failures, the disappointments, the regrets, they stay raw as the moments they happened. A pretty girl’s smile, never acted on. A petty wrong we let another take the blame for. A nameless shoulder that knocked us in a crowd and left us stewing for days, for months. Forever.” He curled his lip. “This is the stuff the past is made of. The wretched moments that make us what we are.”
“And I am going back to bed. My earnest thanks, Master Friendly, you make as fine a conversation as any man I’ve known.” The convict looked away from his porridge for just a moment. “I’ve hardly said a word.” “Exactly.”
“I’ve always thought it must be a fine enough life, being a whore. A successful one, at any rate. You get the days off, and when finally you are called upon to work you can get most of it done lying down.” “Not much honour in it,” said Shivers. “Shit at least makes flowers grow. Honour isn’t even that useful.”
“It’s always a crying shame when honest people are betrayed. When it happens to the treacherous, though, one cannot avoid a certain sense of… cosmic justice.”
“Three people as loyal as us all on one side? I can hardly wait to see how this turns out.”
“I tried to do the right thing in Dagoska.” She jabbed at her chest with a finger. “I tried to do the right thing! I tried to save people! Look what it’s cost me!” “There might be a lesson in there about doing the right thing.” Monza shrugged. “I’ve never had that problem.”
Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got.
Friendly leaned forwards into his face. “Apologise!” he roared at the very top of his lungs. “Apologise to my fucking dice!”
“Why do things like this always happen to me?” “Because you’re a bad, bad man,” said Cosca, peering over his shoulder.
“None. We should give some consideration to the possibility that there may never be any.” “He’s right.” Vitari was a black shape in the lamplit doorway to the kitchen. “Chances are good they’re dead. What do we do then?” Day looked at her fingernails. “I, for one, will weep a river.”
“So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?” “He does not kneel, apparently,” said Ganmark. “Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?” “Nothing,” said Shenkt. “But you do not kneel.” “I used to. Long ago. No more.” Orso’s eyes narrowed. “And what if a man tried to make you?” “Some have tried.” “And?” “And I do not kneel.”
“You are Shenkt? I expected more.” “Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.” “I do not pray.” Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. “I advise you to start.”
You set to killing folk, there’s no right place to stop that means a thing.
“My old mentor Sazine once told me you should laugh every moment you live, for you’ll find it decidedly difficult afterwards.”
To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock.
“This is rubbish,” snarled Shivers through gritted teeth, sitting down on his crossed legs by the fire. His whole head was pulsing. “This is just… just rubbish!” “What’s rubbish?” gurgled Tul Duru, blood leaking from his cut throat as he spoke. “All this. Faces from the past, saying meaningful stuff. Bit fucking obvious, ain’t it? Couldn’t you do better’n this shit?”
Forage, Farans wrote, is robbery so vast that it transcends mere crime, and enters the arena of politics.
You make yourself too hard, you make yourself brittle too. Crack once, crack all to pieces.
“I like a look of agony, because I know it’s true” Emily Dickinson
“You sure the night before your own destruction is the best time to celebrate?” “The day after might be too late.”
She wondered if Nicomo Cosca was up there, squinting towards them through his eyeglass. Cosca squinted through his eyeglass towards the mass of soldiery on the far side of the river.
“It amazes me, that after so long on campaign, the whole business of the chain of command still confounds you! You will find it far less worrisome if, rather than trying to anticipate my orders, you simply wait for me to give them. It really is the simplest of military principles.”
Cosca leaned close. “You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I’m no clown.”
“On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance. And if there’s one thing I absolutely cannot abide, it’s disloyalty. You have to stick at something in your life.”
Cosca gave a long sigh. “You Gurkish think there’s a point to it all, don’t you? That God has a plan, and so forth?” “I’ve heard it said.” Ishri’s black eyes flicked from the valley to him. “And what do you think God’s plan is, General Cosca?” “I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me.”
“You’re cleverer than you look.” “Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce.”
‘Things aren’t what they used to be’ is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.”
“I have fashioned a successful career upon the principle that there is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life. It is the remarkable ease of killing, rather than the impossibility of it, that has always caused me astonishment.”
Strange, that however tough one’s skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close.
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.
“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.”
“‘Bravery is the dead man’s virtue,’” Monza muttered. “‘The wise commander never trusts it.’ ”
“Excellent. These last few days have positively crawled. 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.”
Seemed one of Volfier’s lads was a fresh recruit, went pale when he saw them dead men. Strange, but seeing him all broken up just made Shivers wonder when he got so comfortable around a corpse or two.
