The Trouble with Peace (The Age of Madness, #2)

by Joe Abercrombie

It’s easy to scream about the fence when you’re on the wrong side of it. Some mad twist of fortune lands you on the right side, though, the fence starts to look like it might not be such a bad idea. Might even be worth all the sacrifices. Other people’s sacrifices aren’t that hard to make.

The place looked like bribery, smelled like lust and sounded like blackmail.

Calling a thing a different thing don’t make it a different thing, now does it?”

“All that work,” said Orso. “All that effort. All that ingenuity, and courage, and struggle, to make what? Corpses.” “Few things indeed,” mused Pike, “seem to have so much appeal before, and so little after, as a battle.”