Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1)

by Jim Butcher

“Kord sees power as something to satisfy his desires, instead of a tool to protect and serve the people beholden to him. It’s a stupid attitude, and it will eventually get him killed—but until then it makes him dangerous.”

Being captured, Tavi thought, was a twofold evil. It was both uncomfortable and boring.

They ran through a number of legionares and holders who had performed bravely during the incident, including a stammering Pluvus Pentius, who had saved a handful of children from a wounded herdbane by clubbing it to death with his accounts ledger.