“One last chance. That’s all I’m asking.” He had lost count of the number of last chances he had wasted. “Just one more. God!” He had never believed in God for an instant. “Fates!” He had never believed in Fates either. “Anyone!” He had never believed in anything much beyond the next drink. “Just one… more… chance.”“Alright. One more.”Cosca blinked. “God? Is that… you?”Someone chuckled. A woman’s voice, and a sharp, mocking, most ungodlike sort of a chuckle. “You can kneel if you like, Cosca.”

“Shivers heaved out a sigh. “Just trying to make tomorrow that bit better than today is all. I’m one of those … you’ve got a word for it, don’t you?”“Idiots?”He looked sideways at her. “It was a different one I had in mind.”“Optimists.”“That’s the one. I’m an optimist.”“How’s it working out for you?”“Not great, but I keep hoping.”“That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”

“You are Shenkt? I expected more.”“Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.”“I do not pray.”Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. “I advise you to start.”

“severed heads,' Cosca was explaining, 'never go out of fashion. Used sparingly and with artistic, sensibility,They can make a point a great deal more eloquently then those still attached.”

“Where d'you get the knife?" He wished he had one."He gave it to me." There was a crumpled shape in the shadows by the wall, the matting all around soaked with dark blood. "This way.”

“A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.”

“You can never have too many knives, his father had told him. Unless they're pointed at you, and by people who don't like you much. ”