The Curse of Chalion (World of the Five Gods, #1)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

“Then you might meditate, Royesse, on what honor a captain can claim, who drags his followers into an error when he knows he will himself escape the punishment.”

We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter.”

“What do you think, my lord Castillar?” Cazaril swallowed. “I think…I think if you lent me a razor now, for me to cut my throat with, it would save ever so many steps. Please Your Grace.” The Provincara snorted. “Good, Cazaril, good. I do so like a man who doesn’t underestimate his situation.”

“The gods do not grant miracles for our purposes, but for theirs. If you are become their tool, it is for a greater reason, an urgent reason. But you are the tool. You are not the work. Expect to be valued accordingly.”

“Thank you, Your Reverence,” said Cazaril, with awful politeness. “I shall add that to Rojeras’s theory of the demon growing itself a new body in my tumor and gnawing its way out, should I ever again be in danger of getting a night’s sleep. Although I suppose there’s no reason both could not occur. Sequentially.”

“Any man can be kind when he is comfortable. I’d always thought kindness a trivial virtue, therefore. But when we were hungry, thirsty, sick, frightened, with our deaths shouting at us, in the heart of horror, you were still as unfailingly courteous as a gentleman at his ease before his own hearth.”

“Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice—if not whether, then how, they may endure.”

Prayer, he suspected as he hoisted himself up and turned for the door, was putting one foot in front of the other. Moving all the same.

“I’d storm heaven for you, if I knew where it was.”

“This is a true prophecy, as true as yours ever were. When the souls rise up in glory, yours shall not be shunned nor sundered, but shall be the prize of the gods’ gardens. Even your darkness shall be treasured then, and all your pain made holy.”