As soon as the guards where gone, I lay down on my stone bench and dumped the king and his threats out of my head without ceremony. They were too unpleasant to worry over anyway.
And the Earth had no name. The gods know themselves and have no need of names. It is man who names all things, even gods.
All of my own impulses to balance and move seemed to conflict with those of the guards, and I was jerked and jostled down the portico, just as graceful as a sick cat.
A liar thinks everyone else lies? ... A thief thinks everyone else is stealing from him? ... A philanderer thinks everyone else is philandering.
I asked Ochto what in the name of all that was sacred he thought he was doing.Helping you, said Dirnes.Why?They put the soldier down, and Ochto straightened to look me in the eye. Because I know nothi...
My opponent's self-confidence is usually my best asset.
You are wary of treachery?More wary of stupidity.
Would you have your hand back, Eugenides? And lose Attolia? And see Attolia lost to the Mede?'Eugenides's eyes were open. In front of his face the floor was littered with tiny bits of glass that glitt...
Why did you come if not to murder my king?I came to steal his magus.You can't, said the magus in question.I can steal anything, Eugenides corrected him, even with one hand.
Who am I, that you should love me?You are My Queen, said Eugenides. She sat perfectly still, looking at him without moving as his words dropped like water into dry earth.Do you believe me? he asked. Y...
The king’s attendants remained, digesting the fact that their helpless, inept king had promised his wife to destroy the house of Erondites in six months and had done it in ninety-eight days.
Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. He would have been a better man under different circumstances.Gen looked at him. True enough, he said. But does a good man let his circumstances determine his cha...
She thought of the hardness and the coldness she had cultivated over those years and wondered if they were the mask she wore or if the mask had become her self. If the longing inside her for kindness,...
My beautiful queen. Your entire court is staring at you, and I can't blame them.They were, too. The queen turned to look. Her glance swept through the crowd like a reaping sickle through grain. Mouths...
I'm sorry, Dite.Dite shrugged away the apology. You have spared my brother when you could have killed him and you have offered me escape from the cesspit of my family and this court. You know what it...
I will forgive him because I have heard him scream when someone pulled a sword out of him that could have just as easily gone into me.--Sophos
He looked at her and tilted his head very slightly in wonder. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, how beautiful she was. Her hair was held away from her face by the ruby and gold headband that cros...
Dying would have been so much easier.
Darker thoughts crowded in during the deepest hours of the night when he woke listening to the secret mystifying sounds of the sleeping palace. Many nights, the king was there. Pleasant, irrelevant, a...
Attolia had brushed Eugenides’s cheek almost shyly before sending him with a wave back to his own couch.