Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.

There’s something brittle in me that will break before it bends.

Hate will keep you alive where love fails

The biggest lies we save for ourselves

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.

Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.

Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it.

Few things worth having can be got easily.

You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.

I may be running out of options, but running out isn’t an option.

Lucifer spoke thus. Pride took him from heaven, though he sat at God’s right hand.’ Her voice grew faint, the hint of a whisper. ‘In the end, pride is the only evil, the root of all sins.’ ‘Pride is all I have.

I think maybe we die every day. Maybe we’re born new each dawn, a little changed, a little further on our own road. When enough days stand between you and the person you were, you’re strangers. Maybe that’s what growing up is. Maybe I have grown up.

Most men have at least one redeeming feature. Finding one for Brother Rike requires a stretch. Is ‘big’ a redeeming feature?

You soon learn there’s no elegance or dignity in death if you spend time in the castle kitchens. You learn how ugly it is, and how good it tastes.

Running ain’t no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.

You got responsibilities when you’re a leader. You got a responsibility not to kill too many of your men. Or who’re you going to lead?

The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over. Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mother, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog.

In the end it seems we’re just toys, easy to break and hard to mend.

She had the eyes of everyone who ever cared.

We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us. The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. 

We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.

You’d think priests would be better liars, what with their jobs and all.

an eternity alone in the dark can be a welcome alternative to the business of living.

War, my friends, is a thing of beauty. Those that disagree are losing.

We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.

There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.

Memory is all we are. Moments and feelings, captured in amber, strung on filaments of reason. Take a man’s memories and you take all of him. Chip away a memory at a time and you destroy him as surely as if you hammered nail after nail through his skull.

As a child there’s a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one…each of those moments is the theft of your childhood, each of them a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.

A Dark time comes. My time. If it offends you. Stop Me.

I’ve always seen ‘no’ as a challenge rather than an answer.

We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I’ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off.

They say that time is a great teacher but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

A fool may scrawl on a slate and if no one has the wit to wipe it clean for a thousand years, the scrawl becomes the wisdom of ages.

Sometime, it’s easier to love someone with flaws you can forgive in return for them forgiving yours.

When a game cannot be won, change the game.

If the sins of the flesh ever got old I didn’t ever want enough years on me to know it.

In the end though, everybody dies, but not everybody lives—the climber, though he may die young, will have lived.

This is where the wise man turns away. This is where the holy kneel and call on God. These are the last miles, my brothers. Don’t look to me to save you. Don’t think I will not spend you. Run if you have the wit. Pray if you have the soul. Stand your ground if courage is yours. But don’t follow me.

No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.

There’s a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It’s not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey.

Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me.

Hurt spreads and grows and reaches out to break what’s good. Time heals all wounds, but often it’s only by the application of the grave, and while we live some hurts live with us, burning, making us twist and turn to escape them. And as we twist, we turn into other men.

Some tell it that “sorry” is the hardest word, but for me it has always been “help”.

I knew myself broken, to burn over every refusal, to feel my blood rise at the slightest provocation, but knowing and fixing are different things.

If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice.”

Words are blunt instruments, better suited to murder than to making sense of the world.

Nature shaped the claw to trap, and the tooth to kill, but the thorn…the thorn’s only purpose is to hurt.

I maintain a balanced view of the world, but that balance is always in my favour.

We can’t be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths.

It’s an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war.

There’s a road to hell that is paved with good intentions but it’s a long route. The quicker path is paved with the kind of ignorance that clever men who just don’t want to know are best at.

Every man has his thorns, not of him, but in him, deep as bones. The scars of the briar mark me, a calligraphy of violence, a message of blood-writ, requiring a lifetime to translate.

Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life—keep moving.

Pretty armour doesn’t make a warrior.

My enemies defeated, and yet the sorrow remained, keener, more true, more clean, for I had always owned it. It echoed back to the thorns, the tone of a bell resounding through the years. We’re fashioned by our sorrows – not by joy – they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting.

You can’t grow if you’re constantly defined by this collection of frozen moments that you keep returning to. And if you can’t grow, you’re not alive.

The future is a dark place. We all die there.

When a decision is inevitable you may as well take it as quick as possible so that you still have something left to deal with whatever consequences may arise.

Decadence begins when the budget to beautify a man’s home exceeds the coin spent to ensure its defense.

I call it howling but it was screaming. Man, dog, horse. With enough hurt we all sound the same.

Nothing can be cut away. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.

Too much cleverness can be a torment to a man, setting his wits against his faith.

I liked her, respected her quick mind and ruthless undercurrents. But I didn’t love her, not the irrational foolish love that can overwhelm a man, wash him away and strand him on unknown shores.

I might not hunger for the warmth of family but in troubled times it’s wiser to be surrounded by subjects who follow out of habit rather than out of new-found fear.

I knew Gomst for a rogue, a goat-bearded letch with an eye for his own comfort and a taste for grand but empty oratory. Honesty from him spoke more than from another man

servants are a disease that leaves you crippled.

I maintain a balanced view of the world, but that balance is always in my favour

All men of ambition must pray to be pitted against men of honour

We can’t be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths

Don’t live by half measures, I heard a priest once speak of the business of salvation. He urged us not to let the fact that we couldn’t save everyone from their sins stop us trying to save the people in front of us. That’s priests for you. Ready to give up in a moment. Falling over themselves to admit their frailty as if it were a virtue. Either children are worth saving just because they’re children, or they’re not worth saving. Don’t let your actions be dictated by the accident that puts one in front of your eyes and hides the next. If they’re worth saving, save them all, find them, protect them, make it your life’s work. If not, take a different street so you won’t even see the one you might have seen, turn your head aside, put a hand to your eyes. Problem solved.’

Do you love God, boy?’
‘I couldn’t love him any more.’
‘And do you repent of your sins?’
‘What man doesn’t?’
‘And are you humble, boy?’
‘I could be no more humble,’ I said.
‘You’ve a clever way with words, boy.’

My father taught me not to love or to compromise, the thorns taught me that even family bonds are fatal weaknesses, a man must walk alone, bide his time and strike when the strength is in his hands. Sometimes, though, it seemed all that bound me to those lessons were the scars they had left on me.

I reasoned that what I wanted from the road, from my road-brothers, wasn’t gold and the slaughter of monks. I had come from wealth – I knew how the innocent died. What I sought was the power that lies in hands untied by social strings, not restrained by moral code, chivalric charter, the rules of war. I wanted to earn the edge that the Nuban showed in my father’s dungeons, to be forged in battle. And I would find those things in the hard times. I would steer my brothers into the crucible where the Hundred wet their swords, and see what would unfold.

I didn’t care if they tore me, so long as she felt some fraction of it too.

The smell of Murillo, perfume and sweat. The corrupt softness of his bulk. The strength that twisted my limbs until they creaked, until the pain reached me through the fog of whatever drug the wine had hidden, and tore thin screams past the gag. I made Katherine watch and share, made her share the pollution, the crude stink of his lust, the delight he took in his power, the horror of being helpless. I let her hear his grunting. I made her understand how dirt can get inside you, too deep to be scrubbed out, too deep to be bled out, perhaps too deep even to be burned out. I showed her how that stain can spread, back across the years turning all a child’s memories to rot and filth, out across a future, taking all colour and direction.

I kept her with me, lying soaked in blood and filth and pain, bound, blindfold, sick with the drug and yet clinging to it for fear of the clarity a clear head would bring

As the drug faded from me and focus returned, a need for revenge started to build, quickly eclipsing all minor desires such as escape, the easing of pain, or the need to breathe.

Chains can hold a man. A well-fastened manacle will require the breaking of bones before the prisoner can win free. Ropes in general cannot be broken, but with determination they can often be slipped. Lubrication is the key. Sweat will normally start the process, but before long the skin will give and blood will help those rough fibres slide over raw flesh.

I let Katherine see how something so simple as hammering home a nail can make such profound changes, to the bishop whose head is pierced, and to the boy who wields the hammer. And then I let her go. And she ran.

And how did I get my box of gold? By setting my will behind a sharp edge and applying an unhealthy amount of determination.’ I sipped from my flagon

When you move the big pieces on the board, the world seems more like a game than ever. That illusion, that those at the top know what they’re doing – the feeling some folk hold, that the world is safe and solid and well-ordered – well, that illusion wears thin when it’s us who stand at the top doing the ordering. I don’t doubt that for every step you take toward Roma God sounds three steps further away.’

When you’re helpless and in the grip of men for whom your pain is the only decent entertainment for miles around, you’d be mad not to be terrified.

Waiting is part of the exercise. Letting the tension rise, like bakers’ dough in the tin.

I knew what would happen because I’d seen it before. I also knew that the quiet ones, the ones biding their time like me, would scream just as loud and beg just as uselessly in the end

When the torturer does damage that obviously won’t heal they underscore the irreversibility of it all

This won’t get better. This won’t go away. It lets the man know he is just meat and veins and sinew. Flesh for the butcher

The strong will hurt the weak, it’s the natural order

There’s a freedom in being surrounded on all sides by enemies. In such circumstances, with a heavy blade that’s sharp enough to make the wind bleed, you can swing in grand and vicious circles and your only care need be to ensure the weapon isn’t locked into the corpse of your last victim. In many ways I had lived most of my life in exactly such a condition, swinging in all directions with no worry about who might die. Experience served me well on the edge of the Iberico Hills.

All you need to decide is whether to feed the fire or be the fuel.’

I have many reasons to want him dead. And almost as many reasons to want to be the one to do it

I want what he wants, what all of our kind need. To rule, to own, to hold the highest ground, to have our will prevail

After days pressed against the warmth of Katherine’s cool indifference I could do with a cold shower

though I might walk where angels fear to tread, I try not to rush in like a fool

I made a mental note to change my ways. If, every time an enemy demands you sit down, instead you jump up, well that predictability becomes a ring through your nose by which you can be pulled when pushing fails

I saw her fear too, and the strength that held it down.

‘A man who can’t make sacrifices has lost before he starts, Provost. There was a time when I could spend the lives of those around me without care. Now, sometimes, I care. Sometimes it hurts

You know he had to die. Or at least you will know it in an hour, or a day. What makes us different is that I knew it from the moment you spoke. And in the end, my way is quicker, cleaner, and fewer people get hurt.’

The Prince of Arrow will bring peace. Millions will prosper. Hundreds of thousands will live instead of dying in war. Our order chose the many over the few.’
‘That was a mistake. They were my few

‘I doubt I could escape afterward. I think the desert would defeat me,’ I said, drawing a grunt of amusement from the caliph. ‘Also, I have gained new perspective on the matter and think perhaps that there is a third way.’

And it does seem I’m the object of unhealthy fascination in certain quarters. Isn’t that so, Chella

‘I am of course married now, dear heart, so you must put romance from your mind.’

There are no happy endings for such as us, Chella. No redemption. Not with our sins. Any joy is borrowed – laughter shared on the road, and left behind

We have both walked black paths, lady. Don’t think that mine leads back into the light. Of all those that tried to guide me, of my father, of the whispers from the thorn bush, of Corion’s evil council, the darkest voice was ever mine

Despite my tempering of years some foolish part of me still reached for the happiness of family, the redemption love might bring. Broken hopes that would not serve me. I closed the door on them and rode toward what I knew best – toward the damned. My past lay black, the future burned, and in the thin slice between, the world expected me to be a father, to hold a son, to save him, save them all? Too much to ask of a man so dark with sin. Too much to ask of any man perhaps.

my whole life has been a series of dangerous choices wrestled around to better outcomes

You have crimes on your soul, blood on your hands, that only God can forgive.’ His voice rolled away from us, deeper and darker than the night.
‘I know it.’ I lifted William closer to my face and breathed him in. ‘You and I know it. The rest of them, they somehow forget, convince themselves it can be swept away, misremembered. Only you and Katherine see the truth. And Makin, though it’s Makin he can’t forgive, not me.’

We walk in a vale of tears, Jorg, the only matter of consequence is how we place our steps.’
‘What does that mean?’ Was I supposed to nod wisely? To assume her wisdom surpassed the need for meaning?

Quick hands, that’s what a knife fight is all about. But quick hands are wasted if you’re hunting your weapon while the other man’s fingers are wrapped around his. Don’t waste your speed at the start of the first move. All that does is advertise that it is a move

Anything that happens without witnesses never really happened at all.

Rumours are fine. Rumours just put an edge on things – add some weight to what I have to say. Accusations … not so good. Charges? Then it’s time to march on Roma. And don’t forget, your average Gilden Guard affords the church far less respect than they do the women in Onsa’s wheel-house.’

If God talks to anyone, Kent, it’s not that evil old woman back there. That faith you’ve found – you didn’t find it in church, now did you? You found it in pain and blood. Whatever reached out to touch you, it wasn’t a priest in robes.’

She died. The how of it is a matter for discussion, for theological debate. And what of it? Has the hand of Roma supported the people of this empire or choked them? And hasn’t that grip grown tighter over the years that Pius spent spreading across the papal throne? The time has come for fresh blood, I say, for someone who actually believes in God to wear the silliest hat in Christendom.’

Is my ambition less worthy?’

Why would you do that?’ I asked as he gasped. ‘Why would you hand me a lever to your pain

And you made two mistakes, Moljon. Firstly you gave me your finger. Worse than that, though. When it was taken you let it be used against you, let it be used to separate you from your pride. Don’t compound your errors, man. The finger was lost from the moment I took it. You should have surged forward and let it break, a small sacrifice to regain the upper hand and knock me on my arse

Do you not think some things are beyond purchase, Antas? Vote for me if you believe the empire needs me on the throne. The fate of a hundred nations shouldn’t tip on river rights, horse trading, and back scratching

Men of empire. A better man than I would have won your support with the goodness of his deeds, the clarity of his vision, the truth of his words. But that better man is not here. That better man would fail before the dark tide that rushes toward us. Orrin of Arrow was the better man and yet he didn’t survive even to ask your support.

‘Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me.’