Small Gods (Discworld, #13)

by Terry Pratchett

Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.

It was the problem of all tentative conspirators throughout history: how to conspire without actually uttering words to an untrusted possible fellow conspirator which, if reported, would point the accusing red-hot poker of guilt.

It wouldn’t make a lot of difference, evidence never did once you were in the deep levels where accusation had the status of proof,