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January 19 - February 2, 2025
Battles may sometimes be won by the brave, but wars are always won by the clever.
Your best shield is a smile,
“What’s your name?” She planted one elbow on the stretch of counter Zuri had wiped so she could lean closer and draw out both syllables. “Savine.” “That’s a lovely name.” “Oh, if you enjoy the tip, you’ll go mad for the whole thing.” “That so?” he purred at her. “How does it go?” “Savine… dan…” And she leaned even closer to deliver the punchline. “Glokta.”
These were bullies, so they needed to be bullied. It was the language they understood.
“Once the killing starts, it rarely sticks to those who deserve it.”
“Guess there comes a time you have to give up on what you want and make the best of what you’re given.”
But that’s what growing up is, maybe. Realising what a fucking arse you’ve been.
Time was he’d had a fine sense of humour, but the more men get, the sourer they tend to turn, and Black Calder had almost the whole North. His brother Scale might wear the king’s chain, but everyone knew Black Calder made the king’s choices.
I’m supposed to mind the future of the North, the king-in-waiting, the Great Wolf, Stour Nightfall.” Both her brows went up now. “You?” “I’m to keep him on the right path. Calder’s words.” “Good luck with that.” She beckoned him close and lowered her voice. “Not sure I ever met a bigger prick than that boy, and I stood second to Black Dow.” Clover snorted. “For a day you did.” “A day was plenty.”
It’s a rare man who’s made better by a bit of power.
“We can’t correct the misapprehensions of every idiot any more’n we can correct the tide.”
We all yearn for a simple world, but people are imperfect, unpredictable, contradictory beasts with sympathies, and needs, and feelings. Even people like us.”
The goal of government, you see,” and the Arch Lector prodded at the air with his bony forefinger, “is to load the unhappiness onto those least able to make you suffer for it.”
oof
“Believe it or not, we all want what’s best. The root o’ the world’s ills is that no one can agree on what it is.”
Nothing like being wanted, is there? Wanted by someone you want. Always seems like magic, that something can feel so good but cost nothing.
If a man was struck in the balls during a fencing match, he would be expected to howl and weep and roll around, while his opponent gave him all the time he needed and the crowd murmured their sympathy. If, during days of monthly agonies, a woman once let her smile sour, it would be considered a disgrace.
“When one man knowingly kills another, they call it murder! When society causes the deaths of thousands, they shrug and call it a fact of life.”
#FreeLuigi
Principles are fine, but only once you’ve got a roof.
Rikke had never been able to understand why you’d care a shit who someone you’d never even met lay with. How few problems do you need to have before you count that among ’em?
There can be no progress without pain, no creation without destruction.
“War is only ever a prelude to talk,”
“You’re not nobody any more, Sticky Rikke.” Isern opened her eyes very wide. “The legend grows.” “Legend.” Rikke snorted. “I’m nothing and no one.” “Ah, but isn’t that how all the best legends begin?
Might be it’s people who kill people, but you can’t stab a man with a blade you haven’t got.
“You’re a long way from the mud.” “We’re all of us only a hair away, girl, all the time.
“Worries at both ends of the social scale,” murmured Vick. “Troubled times.” Glokta watched that gardener struggle to clear the unclearable lawn. “They always are.”
Sometimes pretty lies win the day. But sometimes ugly truths cut deeper.
He was one tremendous wound. One that would never heal.
“My master used to say that knowledge is the root of power, but I rather suspect power has a golden root these days.
Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it? Whether Casamir and Harod and the rest were really the great men history paints them as. Or were they just yesterday’s mediocrities, bloated up with centuries of stolen credit into today’s towering heroes?”
Leo was learning that people and their reputations rarely had much in common.
When it came to feeding the people, or housing them better than dogs, there were always harsh limits on what government could afford. But for a royal triumph, the Closed Council would find a way.
“So the war’s over.” “Seems so,” said Clover. “A lot of men dead, and nothing much changed.” “That’s war for you. Turns out best for the worst of us. No doubt we’ll have another presently.” “I shouldn’t wonder.”
