The Wisdom of Crowds (The Age of Madness #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

In came labourers, smallholders and farmers with scythes and pitchforks—which caused some concern—and with flour and hams—which caused some celebration.

All the old certainties were crumbling, and she was left wondering whether they’d ever been certainties at all, or just fools’ assumptions.

“Absolutes are never to be trusted.”

But you’ll buy nothing with wishes,

Vick snorted. “The thing about history is you don’t know what the right side is till long afterwards, and by then it hardly matters.”

Vick kept walking. “Threats for tomorrow don’t cut very deep when today is so damn threatening.

“Folk want bread,” he said. “Then safety. Then shelter. Freedom’s far down the list, and principles far behind that.”

“Which side are we on, then?” Clover scratched gently at his scar again. “That’s one o’ those questions you try not to answer till you have to.”

Pain is the price of doing the right thing, Leo’s father used to say.

Pike had taught them a lesson—if enough people got angry enough, they could change things. Now anger was the answer to everything.

The Great Change had been a basket of dreams. A

bouquet of promises. All things to all men. Which was grand until, against all expectations, the Breakers won. Then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t enough just to have a change, it had to be a change into something. Trouble was, soon as you tried to actually deliver the bastard, to mould it into policies, with costs as well as benefits, and losers as well as winners, well, nine-tenths o...

“I could tire of the wisdom of crowds,” Vick whis...

“We cannot blame everything on the old regime. Some problems, and some solutions, are simply… the way people are. We can have no illusions, after what we have seen, you and I, about the way people are.”

It was better not to mention things unless you were sure of the right language. Every day brought new wrong words to avoid. New ideas at odds with the Great Change. Everyone was free to say what they wanted now, of course. You just had to be careful in case it got you hanged.

“Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous… should always have doubts.”

But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

“Equality never quite comes in equal shares,” murmured Savine.

“I am sketching. For a painting.” Vick frowned towards the bonfire, the ragged figures warming their hands, the Burners dragging people from the buildings, the Constables emptying out the cellar that had been a bank. “You want to paint this?” “Future generations might never believe that it happened.” She blew some yellow hair out of her face with a smoky breath and went back to sketching, charcoal hissing on paper. “Then it might happen again.”

“History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

it’s that what really happened doesn’t matter half so much as what people want to hear.

“But danger and opportunity often walk hand in hand.”

Chances are that men who’ll hurt folk for one master won’t flinch at hurting folk for another. It’s a job. A potter doesn’t need a grand cause to shape his clay for, does he? Why hold a thug to a higher standard?

Truth was, she wouldn’t be missed. She’d made sure of it. Never stay in a place you can’t walk straight out of without a backward glance. Never own a thing you can’t leave behind. Never make a friend you can’t turn your back on. A life that leaves no marks. She thought about that, as if for the first time. The people she’d tricked, betrayed, left behind, and she wondered—is a life that leaves no marks a life at all?

“I’ve got plans like I’ve got boots.” Clover frowned down at his waterlogged footwear. “Honestly, I could always do with better ones.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised how vengeance, falling from a great height, can spatter the most innocent o’ bystanders.

by the dead. You make every effort to steer clear o’ something, and all you do is end up mired to your fucking neck in it.”

“First fear’s their weapon.” Clover remembered winning a few fights before they began, using just a hard stare and the weight of his name. “Then it becomes their shield. Only thing that’ll stop their enemies trying to kill ’em. Only thing that’ll stop their friends trying to kill ’em. They get scared o’ not being feared enough, so they pile horror on horror. Turn ’emselves into monsters. And since memory tends to make the past look bigger, today’s bastards are always hunting for ways to out-bastard the bastards o’ yesteryear.”

“The sad truth is, men love to follow a man other men fear,” said Clover. “Makes them feel fearsome, too. We tell the odd fond story of the good men. The straight edges. Your Rudd Threetrees, your Dogmen. But it’s the butchers men love to sing of. The burners and the blood-spillers. Your Cracknut Whirruns and your Black Dows. Your Bloody-Nines. Men don’t dream of doing the right thing, but of ripping what they want from the world with their strength and their will.”

Her mother had always warned her a man is judged by his best moment, a woman by her worst.

“Vanity, a loud voice and a loose relationship with the truth,” whispered Zuri. “All the qualities of a successful politician.”

The past isn’t made of facts, not really, just stories people tell to make themselves feel better. To make themselves look better.

Perhaps you’ll see now you have children of your own… being a parent… there is no plan. It’s just a set of mistakes you hardly notice making.

nothing proclaims disunity like shrill proclamations of unity on every corner.

one score settled only plants the seeds of two more.

if people wanted the truth they could look at the real world. In my experience they much prefer paintings.”

“It’s a comfort, telling yourself there’s some big right thing out there. That you could seek some wise old bastard in the mountains who’s got the answer. Then there’d be no need for doubts and regrets.” He looked sideways, sunlight glinting off his metal eye. “But far as I can tell it ain’t that simple. Right things, wrong things, well… it’s all a matter of where you stand. Every choice is good for some, bad for others. And once you’re chief, you can’t just do what’s good for you, or those you love. You have to find what’s best for most. Worst for fewest. Like your father tried to, and with no magic eye to see the outcome.”

“Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead.

“Great folk are great ’cause they plant new footsteps. Not ’cause they blunder through the same mistakes some other bastards made.”