Saevus Corax Deals With the Dead by K. J. Parker EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: K. J. Parker
- Language: English
- Genre: Epic Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Lying is like farming, or draining marshland, or terracing a hillside or
planting a grove of peach trees. It’s an attempt to control your environment
and make it better. A convincing lie improves on bleak, bare fact, in the
same way human beings improve a wilderness so they can bear to live
there. In comparison, truth is a desert. You need to plant it with your
imagination and water it with narrative skill until it blossoms and bears
nourishing fruit. In the sand and gravel of what actually happened I grow
truths of my own; not just different truths, better ones. Practically every
time I open my mouth I improve the world, making it not how it is but how
it should be.
In order to grow strong, healthy plants you also need plenty of manure,
but that’s not a problem. According to most of the people I do business
with, I’m full of it. I accept the compliment gracefully, and move on.
Rest assured, however, that everything I tell you in the pages that follow
is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This is a true and
accurate history of the Great Sirupat War, told by someone who was there.
A big mob of crows got up as we—
No, hang on a moment. I was going to leave it at that, but I did say I’d be
honest with you, and now is as good a time as any.
People tend not to like me very much, and I can see why. They say I’m
arrogant, callous, selfish and utterly devoid of any redeeming qualities; all,
I’m sorry to say, perfectly true. I’m leaving out devious, because I happen
to believe it’s a virtue.
Arrogant, yes; I was born to it, like brown eyes or a weak chin, and the
fact that I’m still alive after everything I’ve done, with luck not usually in
my favour, suggests to me that I’ve got something to be arrogant about,
even if it’s only my deviousness, see above. I’m callous because I’m selfish,
not because I want to be, and I’m selfish because I like staying alive,
though God only knows why. People say the world would be a better place
without me and I think on balance they’re right, but it’s stuck with me for a
little while, as are you if you want to hear the truly thrilling story. And you
do, I promise you, but unfortunately I come with it, like your spouse’s
relatives.
When I started writing this, I edited myself, naturally. I neglected to
record some of my more objectionable remarks and barbarous actions,
because I wanted you to like me. If you don’t like me, you won’t want to
read my story, and I’ll be wasting my time and a lot of forty-gulden-a-roll
reed-fibre paper telling it, and the truth about the war (which actually
matters) will never be known. It even crossed my mind to stick in a few
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