The Blacktongue Thief (Blacktongue, #1)

by Christopher Buehlman

He was the kind of god you prayed to for making water wet and fire hot, or for keeping giants out of a land where nobody has seen a giant for a thousand years. He was good at the easy things.

bony in that old-man way, like he’s easing into his coming skeletonhood.

“Hey!” I said, louder. “I just want to say thanks. That’s all.” Silence was the only answer I expected, and that’s the one I got. Not that it meant anything. When listening for danger, one must never mistake silence for safety.

And there’s humanity in a glimpse—we’ve always got a copper for a stone idol, but none for the beggar in its shadow.

What a fabulous kingdom the mind is, and you the emperor of all of it. You can bed the duke’s wife and have the duke strangled in your mind. A crippled man can think himself a dancer, and an idiot can fool himself wise. The day a magicker peeks into the thoughts of commoners for some thin-skinned duke or king will be a bad day. Those with callused hands will rise on that day, for a man will only toil in a mine so long as he can dream of sunny fields, and he’ll only kneel for a tyrant if he can secretly cut that tyrant’s throat in the close theater of his bowed head.

If honor decided to attend our adventures, I only hoped I’d recognize her; she’d been pointed out to me a few times, but we’d never really gotten acquainted.

Only the strong, the rich, and the dying think truth is a necessity; the rest of us know it for a luxury.

Monarchy is a bad system because, no matter how smart you are, you can still squirt a moron out of your plumbing.