What's hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it's deciding what to write. - Neal Stephenson

"Jad said, "The leakage was forcing choices, the making of which in no way improved matters."

Okay. So we were, in effect, locked in a room with a madman sorcerer. That clarified things a little."

My men think you are dead now, and won’t waste balls on you,” Jack said. “In fact I have let you live, but for one purpose only: so that you can make your way back to Paris and tell them the following: that the deed you are about to witness was done for a woman, whose name I will not say, for she knows who she is; and that it was done by ‘Half-Cocked’ Jack Shaftoe, L’Emmerdeur, the King of the Vagabonds, Ali Zaybak: Quicksilver!

boys had been programmed by Darwinian selection to run around in the open chucking spears at wild animals — something