Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)

by Steven Erikson

service to someone else. And the rewards? Ah, some security, perhaps. The cement that is stability. A sound roof, something on the plate, the beloved offspring each one destined to repeat the whole travail. And was that an even exchange? It would not have been so, for him. He knew that, had known it from the very first. He would bargain away nothing of his life. He would serve no one, yield none of his labour to the edification and ever-expanding wealth of some fool who imagined that his or her own part of the bargain was profound in its generosity, was indeed the most precious of gifts. That to work for him or her was a privilege – gods! The conceit of that! The lie, so bristling and charged in its brazen display! Just how many rules of civil behaviour were designed to perpetuate such egregious schemes of power and control of the few over the many? Rules defended to the death (usually the death of the many, rarely that of the few) with laws and wars, with threats and brutal repression – ah, those were the days, were they not? How he had gloried in that outrage! He would never be one of the multitude. And he had proved it, again and again, and again. And he would continue to prove it.