Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #7)

by Steven Erikson

Take any segment of population, impose strict yet clear definitions on their particular characteristics, then target them for compliance. Bribe the weak to expose the strong. Kill the strong, and the rest are yours. Move on to the next segment.

our greatest enemies are those who are without certainty. The ones with questions, the ones who regard our tidy answers with unquenchable scepticism. Those questions assail us, undermine us. They…agitate. Understand, these dangerous citizens understand that nothing is simple; their stance is the very opposite of naivety. They are humbled by the ambivalence to which they are witness, and they defy our simple, comforting assertions of clarity, of a black and white world.

Inequity, else how can power be assessed, how can the gifts of privilege be valued? For there to be rich, there must be poor, and more of the latter than the former.

After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly full of its own self-importance.

Consider this then a warning. Liars will lie, and continue to do so, even beyond being caught out. They will lie, and in time, such liars will convince themselves, will in all self-righteousness divest the liars of culpability. Until comes a time when one final lie is voiced, the one that can only be answered by rage, by cold murder, and on that day, blood shall rain down every wall of this vaunted, weaning society.

The argument was this: a civilization shackled to the strictures of excessive control on its populace, from choice of religion through to the production of goods, will sap the will and the ingenuity of its people

Grieve for lost potential, the end of possibilities, the eternally silent demise of promise. Grieve for that, Fear Sengar, and you will understand, finally, how grief is but a mirror, held close to one’s own face. And every tear springs from the choices we ourselves did not make. When I grieve, Fear, I cannot even see the bloom of my own breath – what does that tell you?

‘Excuse me, ma’am, you have a complexion to die for and I guess that’s what you did.’

I looked back the way I came and saw a trail green with memories lost

‘Having a reason to be miserable is always worse than having no reason but being miserable anyway.

Every field of battle holds every cry uttered Threaded like roots between stones and broken armour, shattered weapons, leather clasps rotting into the earth. Centuries are as nothing to those voices, those aggrieved souls. They die in the now And the now is for ever.

At some point, no matter how repressive the regime, the citizenry will come to comprehend the vast power in their hands. The destitute, the Indebted, the beleaguered middle classes; in short, the myriad victims. Control was sleight of hand trickery, and against a hundred thousand defiant citizens, it stood no real chance. All at once, the game was up.

It was so pathetic, really, how so much violence came from someone feeling small. Small of mind, and it did not matter how big the sword in hand, that essential smallness remained, gnawing with very sharp teeth.

‘The end,’ Senior Assessor said, ‘is never what you imagine. Be comforted by that, my friends.’

‘Never mind the truth. The past is what I say it is. That is the freedom of teaching the ignorant.’

Yes, gather your disaffected, ignorant fools, then. Fill their heads with the noble glory of a non-existent past, then send them out with their eyes blazing in stupid – but comforting – fervour. And this will begin our new golden age, an exultation in the pleasures of repression and tyrannical control over the lives of everyone.

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea. Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want. Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them draw the sword. Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve for war. Grant them darkness and they will lust for light. Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life. Beget life and they will murder your kin. Be as they are and they see you different. Show wisdom and you are a fool. The shore gives way to the sea. And the sea, my friends, Does not dream of you.

‘You surrender your life, Edur, to defend an illusion?’ ‘That, Bonecaster, is what we mortals delight in doing. You bind yourself to a clan, to a tribe, to a nation or an empire, but to give force to the illusion of a common bond, you must feed its opposite – that all those not of your clan, or tribe, or empire, do not share that bond.

He stood on blood-soaked ground, and wondered what it was that had just died within his own soul. Some time later, much later, he would find the word to describe it. Innocence.

The reapers of violence can hide behind the calmest eyes, the gentlest of smiles.