The Pariah (Covenant of Steel, #1)

by Anthony Ryan

I’ve found fathers are usually a great disappointment to their sons.

However, the principal lesson he would teach me in very short order would be this: all ambition is folly when it fails to be matched by reason.

My principal addiction has ever been the urge towards unwise action, the lust for the dramatic course, an unquenchable appetite for doing the unexpected.

Assemble the facts, find where they join, form conclusions.

no woman was ever unaware of her beauty, but many a man was unaware of being snared by it until far too late.

That’s what it says, you pox-ridden son of a whore.” “I don’t have the pox,” I muttered in response.

“I’ve been a constant thief,” I told him. “A frequent liar, an occasional fraud and, according to need or rage, a murderer. But—” I tugged my arm free of his grip “—I’ve never yet abandoned a friend.” I gave him a thin, lopsided smile, my bruises aching with it. “I have so few, you see? So it rarely becomes an issue.”