Last Argument of Kings (The First Law, #3)

by Joe Abercrombie

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

He was gradually starting to realise that the more powerful a man became, the fewer choices he really had.

“Having fucked the groom is really no excuse for missing a wedding, you know.”

But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

Trust. It was a word that only liars used. A word the truthful had no need of.

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes.” Cosca stretched his chin up and scratched at his scabby neck. “The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.” “Huh,” grunted Glokta as he laboured up the steps. A curse we all have to bear. Round and round in circles we go, clutching at successes that we never grasp, endlessly tripping over the same old failures. Truly, life is the misery we endure between disappointments.

“What crime did we commit to deserve this punishment?” “Punishment doesn’t always come to the guilty.”

Nothing had worked out the way he’d hoped. He should’ve expected it by now, maybe. After all, things never had before. And yet he kept on pissing into the wind. He was like a man whose door’s too low, but instead of working out how to duck, keeps on smacking his head into the lintel every day of his miserable life. He wanted to feel sorry for himself, but he knew he deserved no better. A man can’t do the things he’d done, and hope for happy endings.

Strange, how a man who said so little could leave such a hole.

First it is done to us, then we do it to others, then we order it done. Such is the way of things.