" Don’t waste your breath, lovely.”
“But you don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You were about to plead your case, tell me you need my help, you can’t pay me but your heart is true, the usual thing.”
I blinked. That was exactly what I’d been about to do. “But—”
“Waste of breath, waste of time, waste of a fine afternoon,” he said. “I don’t like to see prisoners mistreated, but that’s as far as my interest goes.”
“You—”
He shook his head. “And I’m notoriously immune to tales of woe. So unless your story involves a talking dog, I don’t want to hear it. Does it?”
“Does it what?”
“Involve a talking dog.”
“No,” I snapped. “It involves the future of a kingdom and everyone in it.”
“A pity,” he said, and took me by the arm, leading me to the aft hatch.
“I thought you worked for Ravka,” I said angrily.
“I work for the fattest purse.”
“So you’d sell your country to the Darkling for a little gold?”
“No, for a lot of gold,” he said. “I assure you, I don’t come cheap. "

― Leigh Bardugo , Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)