A Caligula, or a Yuri Vorbarra, can rule a long time, while the best men hesitate to do what is necessary to stop him, and the worst ones take advantage.
Lord Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. Occupation: security risk. Hobbies: falling off walls, disappointing sick old men to death, making girls cry.
My word was too easy to give, too hard to keep.
He fantasized about burning his fraying vestments when he finally reached home.
Well, I don’t hate him. Can’t say as I worship him, either.” She paused a long time, and looked up to meet her mother’s eyes square on. “But when he’s cut, I bleed.
Greed is an appetite that looks largely to some imagined or feared future.
I can tell you truths. I cannot give you understanding. For how can one give what one does not possess? I have always told the truth.
You’re worse than evil. You’re inefficient.
Why are you wearing slippers?” She stared down at her feet. “I’m – sorry, Pilot Officer Mayhew. That’s classified.
He was uneasily unsure about the intentions of the white god that she, and now he, served. Though so far, Penric seemed to have been let get on with his life free of holy molestation.
What did it say that Nikys had better luck getting a straight answer from a chaos demon than a man? Nothing new, more’s the pity.
Ah.” “And what does ah mean?” he asked, slightly exasperated. “It’s sort of like biting my tongue, but less painful.
Her hands started to reach out, but then retreated behind her back and consoled each other there. “I am so sorry. But surely you see any girl must be quite afraid to marry a man who could set her on fire with a word!” He’d dreamed of setting her alight with kisses. “Any man could set a girl on fire with a torch, but he’d have to be deranged!
How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot?
Carry on. Remember, I want maximum inefficiency, incompetence, and error. On the Vervani channels, that is. You’ve worked with trainees, surely. Be creative.
She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold.
Miles looked up at his father. “Did I do the right thing, sir? Last night?” “Yes,” said the Count simply. “A right thing. Perhaps not the best of all possible right things. Three days from now you may think of a cleverer tactic, but you were the man on the ground at the time. I try not to second-guess my field commanders.” Miles’s heart rose in his aching chest for the first time since he’d left Kyril Island. He nodded, satisfied.
The demon settled like a dog cowering before a stern master, and no wonder; it had been a dog, or rather been in a dog, at one time, Pen was certain. The new-hatched elemental had found its early way through lesser animals before that, maybe, but mostly it was doggish.
What, everyone knows of Royesse Iselle’s clever secretary, the man who keeps his own counsel – and hers – the Bastion of Gotorget – utterly indifferent to wealth – ” “No, I’m not,” Cazaril assured him earnestly. “I just dress badly. I quite like wealth.
Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice.
When I was twenty, I knew everything about my future. Now, I know nothing.