Demon in White (The Sun Eater, #3)

by Christopher Ruocchio

Osman straightened his jacket like a recruit afraid of his first inspection. I felt my eyebrows shoot up. I never had gotten used to being taken so seriously.

What we may become is ours to choose, and we may choose badly. I know only that we must choose—as I have chosen—and live by our choices.

In politics, principle is like a sword aimed at the heart. Far better, one might be forgiven for thinking, for a lord to have no principles than to risk that he might fall on that sword. The principled man simply has more to lose.

“But then, so few of us truly think themselves evil. They simply think good and evil matters of opinion, and seek to impose their opinion—which is evil—on good. Nothing is evil in its beginning, it only grows that way.

“The greater part of wisdom is in silence.”

“Up yours, Oh-Four!” Unseen in the gunner’s seat, I smiled. Ordinary men. What a relief humanity is just to be around. Here we were at a desert on the edge of the world, on a planet beyond the edge of human knowledge, and the bastards were joking. May mankind never change.

Nothing is without meaning, because nothing is without consequence.

Pallino had told me long ago that proper Sollan officers don’t duck. In the open, a shot will find you crouching as easily as standing, he’d said. Plus the men don’t like it. That had always stuck with me. The men don’t like it.