More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Stephen’s god died a little after noon on the longest day of the year.
I started reading this on the longest day of the year!
he was here and the god was dead and the tide was closing over Stephen’s head. “What is happening to your people?” “It’s the Saint,” said Stephen, as blackness closed over him. He drew his sword. Somewhere, not too far distant, he heard a man scream. “The Saint is dead.”
this is reminding me of Godkiller already, although I realize Godkiller was published after this. A little like Knights of the Alliance too.
The Temple of the White Rat
Still, the Rat had taken them in, broken as they were. Both the Dreaming God and Forge God had offered, but the Rat priests had been the ones who ushered them inside, still bloody from the wounds they had taken and inflicted in return.
The care that the Rat priests had shown, tending to those who would never wake, was part of the reason that the broken paladins had asked to serve. A debt was owed.
There had originally been five candles. Stephen had removed four of them and left the single one remaining so that it was no longer a shrine to the living, but to the dead.
“You’re one of the berserker paladins.” “I was, yes.”
“Young? I’m thirty-seven.” “And I’m sixty-one, so I don’t want to hear it, child.”
Knitting socks was not a particularly glamorous hobby, but it filled the same mental need as the sword—careful work that held his attention and hopefully did not allow his mind to wander too far afield. Plus at the end, you got socks out of it, and no one appreciated good socks like a soldier.
“I will always be dangerous,
It is all darkness and fumbling and rage. It is a black tide lapping over my head, where once the god poured golden fire over my nerves and turned me into the holiest of killers.
That was the debt owed, and the promise. He would watch the other six. They would watch him in return. And the moment any of them fell to the blackness, they would turn on each other and try to stop the tide.
There was little honor among thieves, but there was a great deal of practicality.
“If we could fight sickness with swords, even I might take up the blade.” He sighed. “No, the fact is, paladin, that we healers like to believe that we make a difference, but when it comes to illness, the patient will usually live or die regardless of what we do. If we are lucky, we do not make it any worse. But it is a comfort to the families to know that we are there. So I will sit with this poor woman and bear witness to her fight, however it ends.”
Well, if you find yourself so moved, pray for this woman. And for me, that I do nothing to make her suffering worse.” Now there is a prayer that I can get behind, thought Stephen, as he walked away. Oh gods, if any of you are listening, please grant that we don’t make things worse.
The Servants of the Hanged Mother, a goddess so unpleasant that even the priests of the Four-Faced God couldn’t find much nice to say about her. Given that the Four-Faced God treated even locusts and maggots with reverence, this was saying something.
“There’s more girls down that way. You can get your own. This one’s taken.” And, very quietly, “Extremely sorry, ma’am.” And once they’ve left, this young lady will want to put a knife in my good bits and frankly, I should probably let her. The young lady in question let out a sudden moan, loud enough to make him jump, and shouted, “Oh, yes!” Oh Saint, she isn’t. She was. In fact, she was trying to climb him like a tree. Stephen had to brace himself against the wall and grab for her leg, which she was trying to wrap around his waist. To his mild horror, she let out another cry of feigned
...more
😂😂😂
“Are you really a paladin? You’ve got the cloak, but I wasn’t sure…” She trailed off. “I was,” he said. “Now that my god is dead, I am a paladin of…no one in particular.”
Prostitution bothers her, but not the possibility that I’ll suddenly go into a berserk rage?
“I fear I’ve had to learn how to make the noises for…that sort of thing.” Had to learn. Interesting. Was she an actress? A prostitute? No, the woman who had thrown herself at him with such profound lack of skill was definitely not a prostitute.
Grace could not get the paladin out of her head.
well now I know what the title means!
Annnnnd now I’m thinking about how to make perfume out of human flesh. Yep, that’s completely normal behavior. Nothing odd going on here.
“You’ll never retire,” said Grace, sliding the Squire’s bottle of perfume into a padded box. “You enjoy judging people too much.”
“No, no. Your job involves talking to too many people.”
“Did we win that one?” “Somebody must have. Might have been us.”
“All women are beautiful,” said Istvhan, dismissing this. “It is the job of their lovers to make them feel that way if they do not already.”
Omg I'll take this one please
She hated confrontations. They made her feel dizzy and sick and like she must absolutely be at fault.
Nothing will go wrong.”
famous last words
“Right. Warrior tradition, very manly. They all have beards. Which we wouldn’t care about very much, except that their mythology has it that facial hair makes you trustworthy—no, don’t ask me why, I don’t know, it’s mythology, it doesn’t have to make sense. The translation of their great evil is ‘the beardless devil.’ None of which is particularly relevant here, except that they have a knee jerk reaction that men without beards are suspicious.
Better them than me. I was probably in my twenties the last time I could have dressed like that. Stephen, like all the Saint’s paladins, was in fighting form, but that meant that he was powerful, not sculpted like bronze statuary.
“And we’re all wearing Stephen’s good socks,” said Shane.
