Les manteaux de gloire, tome 2 : Knight's shadow

It's one thing to see a child dead, but quite another to force yourself, step by step, to envision the moments up to their death. It felt wrong, cruel. Perverse, even.

- I said I'd help you put her on the throne, and I will. But she'll never last, Falcio. Thirteen years old ? She'll be dead a week after she's crowned.
(Duke Isault)

He truly loves Tommer, I thought. He's a monster and a tyrant, and yet his heart is trembling in fear at the thought of losing his child. He is oblivious to the fact that he's destroyed the lives of hundreds - maybe even thousands - of other parents and children.
What strange creatures this world creates.

Happiness is a series of grains of sand spread out in a desert of violence and anguish.
Le bonheur est une série de grains de sable dispersés dans un désert de violence et d'angoisse.

- Neatha's fatal. A man's exposed to it and he dies. It's that simple. (Merchant on the road)
- I was exposed, I said. And I'm still moving.
The old man took up the reins of his mules.
- If you got it by neatha then you're dead, son. Your body just needs a bit of time to figure that out, is all.

- No signs of danger at all, Brasti said.
I loosened both my rapiers.
- So, definitely a trap, then.
- Oh, absolutely, Brasti said, and motioned for me to go forward. I imagine you'll want to walk right into it.
[...]
The girl held up her hand and waved to me. When I didn't wave back she turned and ran into the small stone building.
- She might have some kind of crossbow or even a pistol in there, Kest cautioned.
- Or maybe she's an innocent girl who's been attacked and is now scared for her life, I said.
Dariana snorted.
- Do you really believe that ?
- No, I'm fairly sure it's a trap.
- Then why go in ?
- So I can find out -
- Because that's what he does, Brasti interrupted. He asks himself what the dumbest possible thing to do would be in any given situation and then he does it.

Only a Tristian Knight would make the argument that to be honourable doesn't require behaving honourably; that murdering a young girl is justified so long as you lawful Lord demands it. But there you have it. That's the country of my birth and the place I'd spent most of my life trying to defend from itself. If that meant I had to kill a few Knights along the way, well, I thought, as I took in deep breaths and tried to slow my heart, I could live with that.

The hunt once started ends only in blood.
(Dashini's sentence)

- How did you know it was us ? Brasti asked.
- I know where every thread starts and where every thread ends, The Tailor replied without looking up from her sewing. Besides, I could hear your footsteps coming down the hallway. The three of you walk like a cross between a drunken three-legged horse and a family of ducks.