A Practical Guide to Conquering the World (The Siege, #3)

by K.J. Parker

The Sashan believe that the world was originally an orchard laid out by Agen for his pleasure; but maggots hatched in the apples and grew into men. To punish them, Agen sent down an angel with a golden box, which he forbade them to open. Needless to say, as soon as the angel had gone, they opened it, and out flew Death, Sickness, War, Poverty and all the other evils that plague mankind. All except one; Hope was too feeble to climb out of the box, and the stupid humans, not realising that Hope is the greatest torment and deceiver of them all, lifted her out and took her for their own.

My father knew a man whose wife kept a leopard. Her husband had been given it by a Sashan diplomat. It’s a very special, prestigious gift in Sashan society. The idea is, you turn it loose in your deer park, chase it with hounds and kill it, preferably on foot with a sword. Barbaric, said his wife, we’re not doing that, and I guess her husband, who’d have had to take care of the on-foot-with-a-sword side of things, didn’t give her much of an argument. Instead, she tamed the horrible thing. It was just like a big pussycat. It curled up in a basket and slept a lot. It held still while she tied bows round its neck. If you were very patient and gentle, it would eat bits of cake from your hand; its tongue, she said, was slightly abrasive, like fine sharkskin. And then one day it killed her, and by the time they were able to get into the room and kill it, it had already eaten her head and both legs. Moral: don’t play with savage things that are stronger than you are. Such as love.

It’s not exactly chariot science, just time-consuming.

We all adored her, it goes without saying. Maybe not quite as much as we adored the first most famous actress in the City, the divine Andronica, but anyone who tells you it’s impossible to be madly in love with two people at the same time clearly doesn’t go to the theatre.

Besides, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, plagiarism is practically a declaration of love.

The Massani sect believe that human life is God dreaming, and when you wake up, it means that God has fallen asleep.

If it turns out that I’m wrong, and that God exists and I am his prophet, the first thing I’ll say to him will be: how could you do such a thing? How could you use me like that? He will most likely answer: stop moaning. You’re a translator, nothing more or less. Your words and actions; my ideas. You don’t have to believe what you say so long as you translate accurately. To which I reply: I’m an interpreter. My job is to take the real meaning and put it into a form that can be understood and acted on. Real, I shan’t add, in the Sashan sense. I use words carefully, and between translation and interpretation there’s a sliver of difference, as thin as a knife blade. Very thin, but it’s amazing the difference a knife can make. All the intended consequences in my life have turned to shit and all the unintended ones have turned to gold. Everything I’ve touched I’ve translated, into one thing or the other. But this conversation will never take place because he doesn’t exist. He’s not real (except, just possibly, in the Sashan sense). And when I meet him, I intend to tell him that, to his face.