Red Seas Under Red Skies
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Red Seas Under Red Skies is the second novel (of a projected seven) in Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard series.
- Locke: I make it a point never to trust men with weapons to my windpipe.
Discussing a game of Cards
- Locke: What's your hand look like?
- Jean: A parched desert. How's yours?
- Locke: A Wasteland of Bitter frustration
After losing a hand at cards
- Jean: Well, here's to charming losers, I suppose.
- Locke: If only we knew where to find some.
- Locke: And now, my dear professional pessimist, my worry-merchant, my tireless font of doubt and derision....what do you have to say to that?
- Jean: Oh, very little, to be sure, Master Kosta. It's so hard to think, overawed as I am with the sublime genius of your plan.
- Locke: That bears some vague resemblance to sarcasm.
- Jean: God forfend. You wound me! Your inexpressible criminal virtues have triumphed again, as inevitably as the tides come and go. I cast myself at your feet and beg for absolution. Yours is the genius that nourishes the heart of the world. If only a leper was handy, so you could lay your hands on and magically heal him.
- Jean: I suspect that drink has made you impulsive
- Locke:Drink makes me see funny; the gods made me impulsive.
- Jean: You needed a bath. You were covered in self-pity.
- Locke: When I get this door open, you're dead Jean!
- Jean: When you get this door open? I look forward to many long years of life then.
Discussing a Necklace Locke has stolen
- Jean:That's a sweet piece. You didn't snatch that off a street.
- Locke: No, I got it from the neck of the governor's mistress.
- Jean: You can't be serious.
- Locke: In the governor's manor.
- Jean: Of all the-
- Locke: In the governor's bed.
- Jean: Damned lunatic!
- Locke: With the governor sleeping next to her....It is possible that I have been slightly too bold. I think we're going to need to flee the city.
- Jean: Flee the city? You've screwed up weeks of work! I've been training the Coves- signals, tricks, teasing, fighting, the whole bit! I was going to...I was going to start teaching them how to cook!
- Locke: Oooh, this is serious. I take it the marriage proposal wasn't far behind?
- Requin: Master Kosta. What a pleasure! Selendri tells me you've expressed an interest in getting killed.
- Jean: Is it done then? Am I successfully betrayed?
- Locke: Quite betrayed. Absolutely sold out. A dead man walking.
- Jean: Wonderful!
Discussing literature
- Jean: As for history, we are living in its ruins. And as for biographies, we are living with the consequences of all the decision ever made in them. I tend not to read them for pleasure. It's not unlike carefully scrutinizing the map when one has already reached the destination.
- Locke: When did we discover how easy it is to be cruel to one another?
- Jean: We met five years ago. On a sea voyage. We became business partners out of sheer boredom. Since then we've been inseparable.
- Locke: Except that my plan calls for me to be plotting your death.
- Jean: Yes, but I don't know that, do I? Boon Companion! I suspect nothing.
- Locke: Chump! I can hardly wait to see you get yours!
- Locke: Why don't dog's assholes like Stragos ever want to simply hire us for money? I'd be happy to work for fair pay.
- Jean: No you wouldn't.
- Locke: Feh.
- Cordo: Oh, gods, Oh, gods protect me! It's you!
- Locke: Of course it's me, you just don't know who the hell I am yet.
- Locke: Is this man, ah, senile?
- Servant: He's absolutely competent
- Cordo: I assure you I am, and I will not be put off from business by assassins in my own bedroom! Now, you will either kill me immediately or negotiate my release!
