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

by Joe Abercrombie

“People like to watch the pretty puppets, Superior. Even a glimpse of the puppeteer can be most upsetting for them. Why, they might even suddenly notice the strings around their own wrists.

Power for the people?” sneered Bayaz. “They don’t want it. They don’t understand it. What the hell would they do with it if they had it? The people are like children. They are children. They need someone to tell them what to do.”

Who would have thought? More first of the moneylenders than First of the Magi. Open Council and Closed, commoners and kings, merchants and torturers, all caught up in a golden web. A web of debts, and lies, and secrets, each strand plucked in its proper place, played like a harp by a master. And what of poor Superior Glokta, fumbling buffoon? Is there a place for his sour note in this sweet music? Or is the loan of my life about to be called in?

“What have I done?” Bayaz snorted with disbelieving laughter. “I combined three pure disciplines of magic, and I forged a new one! It seems you do not understand the achievement, Master Ninefingers, but I forgive you. I realise that book-learning has never been your strongest suit. Such a thing has not been contemplated since before the Old Time, when Euz split his gifts among his sons.”

That would have been the clever thing to do. That would have been the realistic thing. But it was just the way that Logen’s father had always said… He’d never been that realistic.

I do not care for your brand of government, it smacks of tyranny!” Bayaz narrowed his eyes. “Government is tyranny. At its best it is dressed in pretty colours.”

There was no one here but him, now, anyway. Him and the dead. But maybe that’s what happens once the fighting stops, to a man who knows nothing but fighting. He fights himself.

“I always dreamed of a man I could dance with.” She looked up and held his eye. “But I think, perhaps, that you suit me better. Dreams are for children. We both are grown-ups.”

This is a low chapter even for me.

“You are aware, I suppose, that I lived through two years of torture? Two years in hell, so I can stand before you now. Or lean before you, twisted as an old tree root. A crippled, shambling, wretched mockery of a man, eh, Lord Hoff? Let us be honest with one another. Sometimes I lose control of my own leg. My own eyes. My own face.” He snorted. “If you can call it a face. My bowels too, are rebellious. I often wake up daubed in my own shit. I find myself in constant pain, and the memories of everything that I have lost nag at me, endlessly.” He felt his left eye twitching. Let it twitch. “So you can see how, despite my constant efforts to be a man of sunny temper, I find that I despise the world, and everything in it, and myself most of all. A regrettable state of affairs, for which there is no remedy.”

she still seemed beautiful. More than ever, in a way. The beauty of the candle-flame that has almost burned out.

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

“I should have come to you,” said Glokta. I should have come to you far sooner. West made another effort at a smile, even more bilious than the last. Several of his teeth were missing. “Nonsense. I know how busy you are, now. And I am feeling much better today.”

The tragic irony of dying things is the sudden second wind the day before death.

“I am a pitiable shell of what I was.” “I truly feel your pain.” Truly. Almost more keenly than my own. West slowly shook his withered head. “How can you stand it?” “One step at a time, my old friend. Steer clear of stairs where possible, and mirrors, always.”

“This is how most of us go, isn’t it? No final charge. No moment of glory. We just… fall slowly apart.” Glokta would have liked to say something optimistic. But that rubbish comes from other mouths than mine. Younger, prettier mouths, with all their teeth, perhaps. “Those who die on the battlefield are in some ways the lucky few. Forever young. Forever glorious.”

Glokta felt his left eye flickering as recognition washed over him like a wave of freezing water. Changed, of course. Changed utterly and completely. And yet I know him. “Rews,” he breathed. “None other.” Rews bit off the words with grim satisfaction.

Friends are people one pretends to like in order to make life bearable. Men like us have no need of such indulgences. It is our enemies by which we are measured.”

We could have been free!” “No. We couldn’t. And freedom is far overrated in any case. We all have our responsibilities. We all owe something to someone. Only the entirely worthless are entirely free. The worthless and the dead.”

Do you know what’s worse than a villain? A villain who thinks he’s a hero. A man like that, there’s nothing he won’t do, and he’ll always find himself an excuse.