Princeps' Fury

Knowledge is your weapon...Kill them with it.

Isana stared at Gaius for a moment. Then she said, "How can you live with yourself?" The First Lord stared at her for a moment, his eyes cold. Then he spoke in a very quiet, precise, measured voice. "I look out my window each day. I look out my window at people who live and breathe. At people who have not been devoured by civil war. At people who have not been ravaged by disease. At people who have not starved to death, who have not been hacked apart by enemies of humanity, at people who are free to lie and steal and plot and complain and accuse and behave in all manner of repugnant ways because the Realm stands. Because law and order stands. Because something other than simple violence shapes the course of their lives. And I look, wife of my son, mother of my heir, at a very few decent people who have had the luxury of living their lives without being called upon to make hideous decisions I would not wish upon my worst enemies, and who consequently find such matters morally appalling when they consider them--because they have not had to be the ones who dealt with them." He took a short, hard swallow of wine. "Feh. Aquitaine thinks me his enemy. The fool. If I truly hated him, I'd give him the Crown.

Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed.

An inferior sense of smell," Marcus said, as if absolutely nothing of significance had happened, "is distinct from being told that one smells unpleasant.

Legionares are not afraid of dinner,” Max growled, giving the taurg a dire glare. “Dinner is afraid of legionares.

Close your cowardly lips over that void in your head where your brains went missing and keep them there. Then put your lazy, shapeless ass back into your chair and do it swiftly. Or face me in the juris macto.

These creatures have destroyed our lands. Murdered our people." Isana lifted her chin. "Pay them for it." When Antillus Raucus looked up, his eyes were hard, cold, and clear. "Watch me.

If I ever invade Calderon again," he said, "it will be in the summer.

hardly a man ever made a fool of himself by keeping his bloody mouth shut.

in the course of my life, I have more than once been too ignorant to know that something was impossible before I did it anyway.

That isn’t going to happen,” he told her. “It’s going to be all right” “Fool,” Kitai scoffed gently. “You do not know that.” “Sometimes you don’t know the most important things,” Tavi said. “You believe them.” “That is completely irrational.” “Yes,” Tavi agreed. “And true.

All things pass in time. We are far less significant than we imagine ourselves to be. All that we are, all that we have wrought, is but a shadow, no matter how durable it may seem.

Sometimes you don’t know the most important things,” Tavi said. “You believe them.

I've got blisters and muscle cramps in places not meant for the touch of anything but a beautiful woman," Max spat back sullenly. "I've bitten my tongue so many times in the past three days that I whistle in musical chords when I exhale. And the smell isn't ever going to come out of my armor, I just know it.

planning became a great deal simpler and easier when one didn’t have the additional bother of working out how to survive said plan.

Better the enemy you know than the enemy you don’t.

Give me passion -- and compassion -- any day.

Duty flows uphill and down.” He

Books were expensive, as well. But she’d read enough of them to know that they were only as valuable as the contents of their writers’ minds—and to her it seemed that a great many writers, had they been merchants, would have precious little inventory.

Open eyes are of little use when the mind behind them is closed.” Araris

His mind is strange,” came Varg’s rumbling voice, “but capable.

It has become a custom among the Legions to promise one’s fellows that no matter what happens, they will never lie cold upon the earth.

Kestus idly added theoretical torture to the theoretical murder, because done right, it might be funny.

Crows take you Gaius Sextus. Even when you make a request you leave me no choices." "They do seem to have grown a bit sparse, these past few years," he agreed quietly.