The Steel Remains
“I think you look on death as your friend, ” she murmured. “That is a strange friend for a young man to have.” “The only faithful friend in this world, ” he said bitterly. “Death is always sure to be at your side.”
I see what the akyia saw, Gil. I see what you could become, if you’d only let yourself.
A dark lord will rise.
“Not this again,” he was heard to mutter as he pushed through into the residents’ bar.
“The Steel Remains”
Richard Morgan
The Helmsmen are not human, Archidi, her father had told her once, when she was still quite a small child. He spoke High Kir, and the word he used for “human” was one the Kiriath used about themselves. They aren’t like you or me or your mother at all, not even like the spirit of one of us in a bottle or a box. They are something . . . other. You must remember that in your dealings with them. They are not human, for all that they might sometimes do a good impression of one.
The aspect storm is a warp in the fabric of every possible outcome the universe will allow. It gathers in the alternatives like a bride gathering in her gown. For a mortal, those alternatives are mostly paths they’ll never take, things they’ll never do. At some level, the organism seems to know that.”