It was quite the shocking disappointment. Like popping some delightful sweetmeat into one’s mouth and, upon chewing, discovering it was actually a piece of shit. But that was the experience of being a monarch. One shocking mouthful of shit after another.

Absolutes are never to be trusted
Faith must be shaken from time to time, or it becomes rigid. An excuse for any outrage. I have come to believe that the righteous… should always have doubts.

Only an idiot stands in front of this rabble to say something,”  “You shuffle a few of the right words together and make sure you look ’em in the eye.” “You’re going for a feeling. Make them think you’re one of them. Prove the mob’s behind you. You want to get something done, you pick a few men to talk to behind closed doors.

The hypocrisy was breathtaking. But the public appetite for hypocrisy appeared insatiable. 

You fools have got as coddled as His Majesty used to be. As useless as the Open Council used to be. What is it about some folk, that power makes ’em weak?

Judge was trouble made flesh. The monster off the leash. She was madness, and fire, and violence, and all the things he’d told himself he didn’t want.

But here’s the sorry truth—if you really don’t want a thing, you don’t have to keep telling yourself so.

Orso put his hands over his face and watched from between his fingers. The poor man had it backwards. Whatever the question, the Great Change was the answer. That was a fact none dared challenge. So the scarcity, the failures, the defeats, must be caused by profiteering, betrayal and conspiracy. If you could only purge all the disloyal, all the unfaithful, all the foreign agents, then there would be victory. Then there would be plenty. That the prescription was killing the patient could only mean that not enough had been administered. It was not a rational argument. Facts were useless against it. It was an argument based on faith. It belonged in a temple, not a court. The irony, of course, was that the Burners had burned the temples. So they had turned the Lords’ Round into a temple and called it a court

History is not the story of battles between right and wrong, but between one man’s right and another’s. Evil is not the opposite of good. It is what we call another man’s notion of good when it differs from ours.”

I still like you, Clover. I never can bring myself to trust loyal men. Can’t understand the bastards.

Man who’ll be loyal to someone might one day up and decide he’d rather be loyal to someone else.” He wagged a finger at Clover. “But a man who’s first loyalty is to himself? It always will be. You don’t pretend to be what you’re not. You’re reliable.

Chances are that men who’ll hurt folk for one master won’t flinch at hurting folk for another. It’s a job. A potter doesn’t need a grand cause to shape his clay for, does he? Why hold a thug to a higher standard?Good. Mutual suspicion is the best basis for an alliance. Everyone knows where they stand.”

why bother? The past isn’t made of facts, not really, just stories people tell to make themselves feel better. To make themselves look better. 

reminded him of his parents’ marriage, towards the end. A lie it suited everyone to pretend was true, even years later. Maybe everyone follows in their parents’ footsteps, doomed to blunder into the same mistakes like a blind man into furniture. All our paths set before birth, inevitable, like Curnsbick’s useless fucking cart,only running on the rails it’s given. The only choice you have is how fast you’ll roll to the end of the line. A depressing thought. Leo was having a lot of those, lately. 

Society is a competition, and one cannot have winners without creating losers. People who lose once tend to lose more, and people who lose too often become discontented. I merely… gathered them into a group. Gave them a name. Pointed them in the right direction

Architect sounds so grand. There was dry straw everywhere, I simply struck the match

 owned the banks, and the banks owned the merchants, owned the nobles, owned the treasury, even. The king himself danced to Bayaz’s music. The Closed Council, too. Even me, though I’m not much of a dancer these days. The Great Change was the only way I could see to cut all the puppet strings at once. The only way I could see to make us…” Glokta shrugged his bony shoulders, wincing as though even that much movement gave him pain. “Free.

Within reason. People love the idea of freedom but, in my experience, there is only so much they can be trusted with. You saw what Judge did with it. Take it far enough, freedom becomes chaos. The voice of the people… is just noise. It is the blather of the lunatics in the madhouse. It is the squeal of the pigs in the slaughterhouse. It is a choir of morons. Most of them don’t even know what they want, let alone how to get it. They need someone to tell them what to do.

People are not machines that one can move with a lever. This business is more art than science.

Don’t be upset at him, Vick, it’s beneath you. I found him in the camps, like you. I offered him the same deal and he made the same choice. The only choice. To stand with the winners.

“Only something you turned to your advantage!”

“To everyone’s advantage!” he barked, wheeling himself towards her. “Put aside your pique, Savine, this was war. In war one must make use of every weapon. Restraint is folly. Worse. Restraint is cowardice. You can give us a better Union. A better world! The horrors of the Great Change have left people pliable. Desperate for strong leadership. You are loved as much as I was hated, and the banks are torn up by the roots. We will finally have a free hand!”

It was one of those moments—like the uprising in Valbeck, like the battle at Stoffenbeck—when Savine was forced to realise the world was not quite what she had thought it was. When the solid foundations were revealed to be shifting sands, and all her certainties no more than guesses. She wanted to back away. Wanted to run out into the hall and keep running. But she stood her ground. “Who was your scripture teacher?” she croaked.

 did not think I had anything to learn. But we have learned so much from you. Imagine a South and a Union not opposed but bound together by trade, and industry, and common interest. Not looking always into an ignorant and superstitious past but fixed on progress.” Her black eyes shone at the thought. “A South and a Union where the people are governed not by the selfish whims of priests or wizards, but by the righteous engineering of the watch and the book.”“Not sure there is one.” He sank down on the bench beside her. “It’s a comfort, telling yourself there’s some big right thing out there. That you could seek some wise old bastard in the mountains who’s got the answer. Then there’d be no need for doubts and regrets.” He looked sideways, sunlight glinting off his metal eye. “But far as I can tell it ain’t that simple. Right things, wrong things, well… it’s all a matter of where you stand. Every choice is good for some, bad for others. And once you’re chief, you can’t just do what’s good for you, or those you love. You have to find what’s best for most. Worst for fewest. Like your father tried to, and with no magic eye to see the outcome.” He sat back, one leg stretched out, and looked towards the sea, breeze stirring the grey hair about his craggy face. “Doubts and regrets, they’re the cost of casting a shadow. The only folk without ’em are the dead. For what it’s worth, I’d say you did the best you could.”

“Struggling to do so.” The wizard sighed. “I confess it has not been easy lately. People, Master Clover, make wretched building material. People and their restless whims, and their wilful intransigence, and their petty ambitions.” Bayaz bared his teeth, and Clover had to fight a strange desire to back away. “They simply refuse to see what is best for them. Imagine bricks that pounce on every opportunity to defy the architect and run off their own way.”

“This is not a victory or a defeat, Leo, it is a marriage.” Now she slipped the box from her sleeve and took a pinch up one nostril. “I suggested to

you, before our wedding, that you shouldlook on it as a business relationship.” She smothered a sneeze. “I suggest you continue to do so. Partners need not see eye to eye on every point. They can even, frankly, detest each other on a personal level.” She took a pinch up the other nostril. “But sensible ones collaborate, for the good of the business. I suggest we collaborate, for the good of our children. They need their father. For the good of the Union. It needs its champion.” She dabbed her nose clean. “We have the chance to do so much good together. It would be a crime to throw it away simply because we cannot agree.”