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

by Joe Abercrombie

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 of folk found the Great Change wasn’t the change they’d wanted after all and wouldn’t fucking have it.

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

“Isn’t that what we all want?” Bayaz gave a sigh through his nose. “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.”

Not much left of the handsome joker who nicked the North from under everyone’s noses. A man who’d lasted past his time. A man dragged back for one fight too many. But then, one is one too many.

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