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

by Joe Abercrombie

“Your Majesty, we are not here to set right all the world’s wrongs.” Orso stared back at him. “What are we here for, then?” Bayaz neither smiled nor frowned. “To ensure that we benefit from them.”

Trouble with the good fight, I find… once the fight starts, the good stops.”

“Speed is nothing but faff and bluster without precision.”

All twisted and misshapen, mockeries of men, squashed from clay by children with no knack for sculpting.

“I saw two old men fight a duel in the Circle, and two young women hold hands under a golden dome.” Applause echoing in the gilded spaces. “I saw a flag with an eye upon it, standing behind a high chair.” And someone sitting in the chair… who had it been? “I saw an old woman…” Rikke winced and pressed her hand against her left eye, burning hot, and shuddered at the memory, still faint on the inside of her lids. “And her face was stitched together with golden wire. She spoke to me…”

“Don’t speak if silence will do,” grunted Vick, dragging him on. “To these folk, ‘no’ is the start of a conversation.

promising salvation and threatening damnation. Each insisting all the rest were frauds, and they alone were the one with all the answers.

The door was shut behind them with a clunk like the fall of a headsman’s axe.

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

she said, with a smile could’ve sweetened seawater.

If she told him down was up, he’d laugh at his mistake and stand on his head.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that the more choice there is, the harder it becomes to choose?” “It has been mentioned. But fear is a poor reason to limit your options.” He

It’s an acquired taste.” “Why would anyone want to acquire that taste?”

“Winning teaches you nothing,” said Tunny. “You see what a man really is when he loses.”

“The Union interests you so much, you want to steal it.” Leo worked his mouth. “I want to free it.” “I once heard a pickpocket use that defence about some purses he’d liberated. They still cut his hands off.”

“But being an arsehole is crime and punishment both.”

“Corporal Tunny and Colonel Gorst you know, of course, and this is Hildi, my—” Orso frowned. “What the hell are you, Hildi? My butler? My jester?” “Your parasite,” she said as she lit the last of the candles

“We’ve nothing more to discuss!” “But we’ve still got the main course!” “It’s liver,” said Hildi. “Ah! Bernille does it so it just…” and Orso closed his eyes, touched his lips and let his fingers flutter gently off, “melts away to nothing. You know.” He opened his eyes and smiled. “Like excuses for rebellion.” “You mind if I…?” Hildi was already poised over Leo’s half-eaten fish with a fork in her hand. “Have at it,” he snarled as he turned for the door. “I’ll see you on the battlefield.” Orso almost choked on his wine. “Bloody hell, I hope not.”

Hildi stood at one of the windows of the grand room the mayor had insisted Orso slept in, watching soldiers tramp past Stoffenbeck’s town hall towards the front. Where they would soon be fighting. Where they would soon be dying. That was the theme of Orso’s reign. The conversion of brave men into corpses.

Trouble was like hunger to him. Stuffing your face till you’re sick one day doesn’t mean you won’t want lunch the next. All you do is sharpen your appetite.

Bloody hell, it was hard work, harder work than anything he’d ever done and for no reward but dead men.

He’d have liked to leave Flick out, too, but there was one valuable lesson for a boy to learn here. Namely that swords do no good for the men at either end of ’em. “Chief,”

Time stretched. A breeze came up and kissed his sweaty face. He took a long breath out, and held it. His last breath, he realised. He waited for the end.