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

by Joe Abercrombie

I can be patient. The one good thing about every step being an ordeal. You soon learn how to tread carefully.

It can be a fearsome weapon, patience. One that few men ever learn to use. A hard thing, to keep your mind on killing once you’re out of danger and your blood’s cooled off.

It was amazing how well and how fast a man could patch a wall when it was the pile of stones that might save his own life.

If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?

‘The only difference between war and murder is the number of the dead.’

You can have enemies you never really meet, Logen had plenty. You can kill men you don’t know, he’d done it often. But you can’t truly hate a man without loving him first, and there’s always a trace of that love left over.

There’s nothing worth less than what men think of you after you’re back in the mud.

But Ferro could not bring herself to smile. Killing Gurkish was like eating honey. A little only left you craving more. Too much could become sickening. Corpses had always been a poor reward for all the effort it took to make them. But there was no stopping now.

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.’

‘I’ll pay you! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it!’ Cosca held out his open palm. ‘I prefer cash in hand.’ ‘Now? I don’t have . . . I don’t have it with me!’ ‘A shame, but I work on the same principle as a whore. You’ll buy no fun with promises, my friend. No fun at all.’

‘But you love to play the good man, don’t you? 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.