City of Last Chances Quotes

“God is timeless but no god is greater than time.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“And he was a false prophet if anyone was. He was the debased currency of patriotism.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“You’re a learned man. Please tell me where the word ‘negotiate’ can be found within ‘unconditional surrender’.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“He hadn’t ever been a courageous man, but desperation gave him wings.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“She found the smile she kept for him, and just for him.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“You do not get to empty my purse just because you parrot a word and think yourself wise.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“No questions, because to pry into the reasons and the logic of it would be to pull the miraculous apart and find, no doubt, the mundane and the reasonable behind it.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Sage-Archivist Ochelby had a kindly face. It crinkled in pleasant, paternal ways when he was conducting the more demanding tasks his position required. Such as deconstructing primitive magical belief systems – a task that often involved deconstructing primitive magicians.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“A dagger of ambition in the sheath of a generous uncle with a pocket full of sweets.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“There are some things you just can’t scrape off your shoe, no matter how hard you try.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“For the Armigers, it had been a boon, money hand over fist and a tame population of serfs to turn the cranks and get their fingers caught between the wheels. Each complex act of craftsmanship reduced to a score of unskilled stages that anybody could complete. No more fussy mastercrafters with their demands and standards. Every part of the machine replaceable, especially the human element.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“It would only get tighter or, at best, stop getting tighter for now. The two modes of the Occupation.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Langrice, because she was fundamentally not a pleasant person, found it a great source of amusement.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“He felt like his mind was a rusty fuel can, one corner eaten away into a rough-edged hole. Things fell out, and then they were gone, vanished into this world he’d found himself in. He felt that, if he could get back, somehow, he’d find those lost memories and thoughts just piled by the roadside, waiting to be poured into the miraculously restored can once more. And then, he’d be whole and remember who he was.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Small wonder God was only a small wonder.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“As you confirmed, you hanged me.” “I did.” “The Ordnances of Correct Appreciation, volume seven, article eight hundred and forty-two second subsection,” Ivarn reels off, hoping to all available gods that he’s remembered it right. “Once sentence of execution has been made then, for whatever reason, should it be remitted and no matter which step in the procedure has been attained the…” Losing his thread, panicking briefly, then the words coming back to him. He always had a fine memory for texts. “The prisoner shall not subsequently be sentenced to a further execution but only such commuted sentence as… well, you can look up the rest, I’m sure.” Hegelsy stares at him, trying to work out if he’s furious or amused or some new and unnamed emotion partaking of both. “You are offering a legalistic defence?” he demands. “It wouldn’t have swayed the Old Duke,” Ivarn admits, still outwardly casual. “But it is the price of seeking to perfect the world that you must have rules for everything. I am afraid I cannot be sentenced to hang again.” Been there, done that. “Well, this is regrettable.” Hegelsy’s mood is restored, and Ivarn doesn’t like that. “Get rope!” he shouts to a subordinate. There is already rope, because they’ve learned to anticipate him. “String him up,” he says. “I am here to negotiate!” Ivarn squawks. And then, as they seize his arms and take his stick and fit him with a new collar, “You can’t! Your own laws!” “I’ll just have to do you off the books,” Hegelsy informs him. “I’ll just have to ask for a full score from within, instead of nineteen. Consider this entirely extrajudicial, Maestro Ostravar. A whim of my own. I shall be sure to censure myself later, in my report.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“She has discovered within herself an absolute love of continued life.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“A great deal of strain is being placed on the relationship between the different Palleseen Schools. Correct Speech holds the most authority, breaks ties, investigates abuses. Hegelsy has the winning hand, then. Save that, for those reasons, nobody likes Correct Speech. Correct Exchange runs commerce and has the purse strings, but the others loathe it for its venality and reluctance to enforce its own regulations. Correct Conduct has the most soldiers, but for that reason, it’s given the least seniority for fear of a coup. Correct Appreciation, with its authority over the arts and judiciary, is derided by the other Schools, save that its adherents can devote their time to politics, hence the primacy of men like Culvern. Correct Erudition should be the least significant of all, save that Palleseen culture is reliant on magic to fuel its engines and weapons and conveniences. Hence, what the Archivists want, they get. Right now, in Ilmar, the senior Archivist dead and Culvern isolated, Hegelsy makes the move that will see him promoted or damned.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“The students hold to their barriers and loose every time a target presents itself. There’s no particular discipline, just everyone for themselves, but as a defence, it holds up readily enough. As long as the Pals keep giving them targets, there’s no time for the academics to fall to bickering or discussing the philosophical implications of it all.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“– it says ‘seven (7)’ on the paper, but he doesn’t know how he’s expected to read it like that –”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“A shout! It’s started. She almost falls off the classroom chair she’s sitting in, fumbles automatically to make sure her flag is flying properly, as if that’s anyone’s sane priority. A skirmish and a scuffle in one of the buildings overlooking the square. Everyone has a weapon to hand, looking up anxiously.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“She hadn’t named a price, yet. That worried him. He didn’t like owing people, though in this life, who could avoid it? He especially didn’t like owing Langrice. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her. Well, he didn’t like her, but then he didn’t like anybody. He respected her a great deal: intelligent, resourceful and ruthless when she needed to be. Exactly the sort of person you didn’t want to owe.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Expensive,” one said, “to drink there.” A laboured aside, ostensibly to her comrade. “I’ve heard so,” Blackmane agreed. “Probably you will be off shift soon after dawn. You should not deny yourselves.” A brief sleight of hand in which Blackmane was the magician and the lead soldier his charming assistant; a handful of pennies passed so that any watching Statlos would see nothing. And then they were on their way, the jaws of the trap propped open by greed.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“There was something cold in Hellgram. Usefully cold, if she was honest. He’d not shirk at dirty hands or wielding the cudgel. But if he was motivated by love, then it was the sort of sharp, narrow love that he’d do anything for, and not in a good way.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“He’d do any job, and if he was no master at anything, he learned and had quick and steady hands. He could sew, hammer, paint, chuck out the kind of drunk who could be chucked out and face down the kind who couldn’t. She wasn’t entirely sure what Hellgram’s wife had brought to the package, honestly. The woman must have been waited on hand and foot. Plus, though he wasn’t exactly popular and didn’t really have friends, he’d accumulated a fair amount of respect among the various groups and cliques who used her taproom to plot their villainies and acts of resistance.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Sage-Invigilator,” the man breathed, “we have duly appointed officials whose job it is to brutalise the prisoners. You need not lower yourself to the task.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Her look to him showed she knew and shared the sentiments. They were trapped in the same circle, for now. We will be ashamed of what we did here, one day. And at least, if that came true, it would mean things had got better. A better tomorrow bought with a succession of compromised todays.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Hellgram she could open up to, if only because he plainly just let most people’s words sleet past him. He was safe, she’d decided.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“Langrice, keeper of the Anchorage: a woman apart, uncanny by association. The thought of what lies beyond her doorstep means respectable Ilmari turn their noses up. You kept strange company, if you kept the lights burning at the Anchorage. Reserved, lean-faced, hardened by time. There had been suitors once, before she chose her profession. Now, none would dare.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances

“They were tall, flattened, a great deal like fish. Great goggling eyes like plates, pale flanks striped with dark bars. Mackerel things walking on lizard legs with jaws enough to gulp down three of his soldiers in a single lunge. Their teeth were not the needles of fish but jagged bone wedges like the interlocking gears of a living machine. Their tails were those of crocodiles. Their glassy gaze was detached and clinical.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances