Delegating authority seems unnatural to women. First they tell you to do something, and then they keep sticking their noses into it while you’re tryi… - David Eddings

The Queen of Night was in full voice when Althalus and the others reached the battlements on the eastern side of the city, and her catapults were hurling boulders at the walls of Mawor with a monotonous thudding sound. “I’m starting to get a bellyful of that,” Duke Nitral growled. “I spent a fortune on that marble sheathing on the outer wall, and she’s breaking it all to pieces with those accursed engines. Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m going to do something about that right now.” He went on down the parapet to a cluster of peculiar-looking engines. “What are those things?” Eliar asked curiously.
“Nitral calls them arbalests,” Koleika replied. “They’re sort of an oversized bow. They’ll throw a spear for half a mile. Nitral and I’ve come up with a way to make life very interesting for those catapult crews out there.”
Duke Nitral barked a sharp command to the men around the arbalests, and a sheet of spears trailing fire shot out in long arcs from the high walls of Mawor.

You're a slave trader, then?"
Althalus shrugged deprecatingly. "It's a living, your Highness. Slaves are a valuable commodity. I buy them in places where they're an inconvenience and take them to places where they can be put to work to pay for their keep. Everybody benefits, really. The one who sells them to me gets gold, and the one who buys them gets laborers."
"What do the slaves get?"
"They get fed, your Highness. A slave doesn't have to worry about where his next meal's coming from. He gets fed even when the crops fail or the fish aren't biting."
"Our philosophers tell us that slavery's an evil."
"I don't concern myself with philosophy, your Highness. I take the world as I find it. I'm prepared to offer ten Perquaine gold wheats for every able-bodied young captive you'd care to sell.

You don't have to be so apologetic with me, Bheid," Althalus told him. "I'm very tolerant about things like that. I gather that your murderers are on a salary of some kind?" "A yearly retainer with a bonus for each murder, yes." "Then they aren't just assorted fanatics who kill for their God?" "Good heavens no! Fanatics want to be captured and executed. That makes them martyrs, and martyrs are rewarded in heaven. Our assassins are thoroughgoing professionals who never get caught." "Good policy. Never hire amateurs when you can get professionals.