We’re all a disappointment to someone.’

The desert is hot and boring. I’m sorry, but that’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s also sandy, but rocks are essentially dull things and breaking them up into really small pieces doesn’t improve matters. Some people will tell you how the desert changes character day by day, how the wind sculpts it endlessly in vast and empty spaces not meant for man. They’ll wax lyrical about the grain and shade of the sand, the majesty of bare rock rising mountainous, carved by the sand-laden breeze into exotic shapes that speak of water and flow … but for me sandy, hot, and boring covers it all

He’s dead!’ I roared it at them. ‘I’m a fucking prince of the realm. Are you going to touch me?’ I stalked past the first of them, paying him no heed. ‘Thought not!’ I walked on, letting the onlookers part before me.
Just before the entrance I turned back. Several bloody fights were in progress and the richer elements had already started to flee the scene.
I used my royal shout to be heard. ‘My grandmother’s troops will be burning the poppies by nightfall. Death warrants will be issued for Allus’s captains. I expect to see Alber Marks’s head on a spike by morning, Cutter John’s too, and there will be leniency for any man who helped put them there.’

Give him what he wants,’ Jorg had said. ‘Then take what you want. Nobody is more vulnerable than in their moment of victory, and you know that whatever you do this man will never let you go while he lives.’

A man’s first taste of the poppy gives him something glorious and wonderful, something that he strives to recapture with each return to the resin, but in the end he needs to smoke it just to feel human. Life is the same for many of us – a few scant years of golden youth when everything tastes sweet, every experience new and sharp with meaning. Then a long slow grind to the grave, trying and failing to recapture that feeling you had when you were seventeen and the world rolled out before you.

Leaving the shelter of the men took all my meagre reserves of courage. Once out in the open, with the pair of guards following, pride kept me moving. Pride has always been my most lethal character flaw. Worse even than being cursed through my grandmother’s blood with the tendency to infrequent berserker rages when pushed to the edge. Pride lets a man be skewered on the point of other people’s expectations. How often had I walked into the proverbial, and sometimes literal, fire with Snorri watching on, my justifiable instinct to run in the opposite direction crushed under the weight of his confidence in me?

Fear is a necessary metric without which the modelling of risk and consequence would serve no purpose

That woman has lived too long and she’ll sacrifice the tomorrows of a million to live herself lifetimes more. Yes, I want to save my city, my country, my people, and yes it’s worth my life, and yours to give them another year, or month, or day. But truly? In my secret heart, Jalan? What drives me is that I will not let that bitch win. She has raised her hand against me and mine. She will die by my own hands. There’s no life everlasting for that one. No new world. This is a war, boy. My war. I am the Red Queen – and I do not lose.’

It wasn’t an act of malice, Jalan. It was about survival. You know in your heart that when it comes down to burn or don’t burn, you would choose to save yourself over others. That’s honesty. That’s the truth at the core of what we are

abandoning all honour for the privilege of dying fifty yards further from the road.

A story will lead a man through dark places. Stories have direction. A good story commands a man’s thoughts along a path, allowing no opportunity to stray, no space for anything but the tale as it unfolds before you.’

All-father, I have done my best. Watch me now. I ask only that you give me the strength that has left me.’ The prayer of a man who has met his challenges with an axe and a brave heart. The prayer of a man who knows this will not suffice. The prayer of a man who will not live to speak another.

The herd is lost either way, but the shepherds can survive

Imagine though … if it were me that pulled the strings and made the gods dance. What if at the core, if you dug deep enough, uncovered every truth … what if at the heart of it all … there was a lie, like a worm at the centre of the apple, coiled like Oroborus, just as the secret of men hides coiled at the centre of each piece of you, no matter how fine you slice

Lies are our foundation – we each start with a lie and build a life upon it. Lies are more durable than the truth, more mutable, able to change to meet requirements

The facts are a liar’s best friends. So many truths are uncovered in the search for a plausible lie. Why not work with them

What a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive

Only know that you don’t need the truth. The truth didn’t set you free. It was a lie. You didn’t see your mother die. You weren’t in the room. You weren’t even in Roma Hall that day.’

Hate, courage, fear … all lies. Don’t look for reasons. Do what you feel. Not what you feel to be right – just what you feel

I didn’t know much about boats, but what I did know was that very often the people who stepped off them at the end of a long voyage were not the same people who had boarded them.