Bokelskere.no

“If I ask any more questions, will this make any more sense?” - Richard
“Probably not, no.” - Messire Marquis

"Nice in a bodyguard," lectured the Marquis, "is about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters."

"You find us funny, Messire Marquis, do you not? A source of amusement. Is that not so? With our pretty clothes, and our convoluted circumlocutions-"
Mr Vandemar murmured, "I haven't got a circumlo..."
"-and perhaps we are funny."
Mr Croup raised one finger then, and waggled it at de Carabas. "But you must never imagine," he continued, "that just because something is funny, Messire Marquis, it is not dangerous."

Mr Vandemar showed them his teeth, demonstrating his sunny and delightful disposition. It was unquestionably the most horrible thing that Richard had ever seen.

"A child, a bravo, a fool. May they each get what they deserve."
"Which one am I?" whispered Richard to Hunter.
"The fool, of course," she said.

"Unprofessional?" he asked, mildly. "Us?" He curled his hand into a fist, which he slammed, rather hard, into the side of a brick wall. There was no change, however, in his tone of voice as he said, "Sir. Might I with due respect remind you that Mister Vandemar and myself burned down the City of Troy? We brought the Black Plague to Flanders. We have assassinated a dozen kings, five popes, half a hundred heroes and two accredited gods. Our last commission before this was the torturing to death of an entire monastery in sixteenth-century Tuscany. We are utterly professional."

Richard wrote a diary entry in his head.
Dear Diary, he began. On Friday I had a job, a fiancée, a home, and a life that made sense. (Well, as much as any life makes sense.) Then I found an injured girl bleeding on the pavement, and I tried to be a Good Samaritan. Now I've got no fiancée, no home, no job, and I'm walking around a couple of hundred feet under the streets of London with the projected life expectancy of a suicidal mayfly.

And he understood then just how little effort it would take to make the pain stop - to take all the pain he ever had had, all the pain he ever would have, and make it all go away for ever and ever. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and took a deep breath. It would be so easy. A moment of pain, and then it would all be over and done...

Door scratched her nose. "There are little bubbles of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber," she explained. "There's a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere - it doesn't all get used up at once." "I may still be hung over," sighed Richard. "That almost made sense."

Richard did not believe in angels. He never had believed in angels. He was damned if he was going to start now. Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it is not actually looking directly at you, and saying your name.