The only beautiful thing in the whole country was the queen, and she had sold herself into a marriage with the Eddisian Thief, the very one whose hand she had cut off. There was a match made in hell.
The flat top of the hill was scattered with the bodies of dead men in the uniforms of Sounis and Eddis. The outposts of both armies had met here. As I stood staring, I thought, These are my dead. All...
Relius looked away. He said that you...cried, he said softly.But not that he cried as well, said the queen, amused at the memory. We were very lachrymose... would you like to hear more romance of the...
One of us might be assassinated and then my heir will be king. Don't give up hope just because chances are slim.For the assassination or the heir, your majesty?
Is that what the wine is for? To help you think?Oh, the wine. The wine, Costis, is to help hide the truth. It doesn't work. It never has, but I try it every once in a while just in case something in t...
If we truly trust no one, we cannot survive.
I thought that being king meant I didn't have to kill people myself. I see know that was another misconception.
I didn't think about being king, he said, his voice hoarse.Eddis stared. Your capacity to land yourself in a mess because you didn't think first, Eugenides, will never cease to amaze me. What do you m...
He wondered how the Attolians thought Eugenides had managed to become king if he was the idiot they assumed him to be. Perhaps because they had never seen him as the Thief, with his head thrown back a...
He looked gravely at the king. It isn't an easy thing to give your loyalty to someone you don't know, especially when that person chooses to reveal nothing of himself. But no matter, Your Majesty. You...
You have to believe him, because he's going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and y...
You are treasure beyond any price.
To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money.
The magus said thoughtfully, That lying little monster complained about everything: the food, the horses, the blankets, the company. He even found fault with the stories I told by the fire but I canno...
That is ridiculous, she said.The king agreed. Like falling in love with a landslide. Only you could fail to notice.
Teleus, who had faced his failures and his death and the death of his friend and accepted his own salvation at the hand of a man he despised, ran out of the strength to accept any more. He contradicte...
She met the magus's stunned look with a smile. The Thieves of Eddis have always been uncomfortable allies to the throne, Magus. There is the niggling fear that if you fall out with a Thief, he might s...
Power. What men like best for themselves and least in their women.
Ornon said, I have seen him jump across atriums four stories above the ground, a distance that would make your blood freeze, and I heard him once confess that he sometimes thinks the distance is beyon...
I'll be your minister--Of the exchequer? You'd rob me blind.I would never steal from you, he'd said hotly.Oh? Where is my tourmaline necklace? Where are my missing earrings?That necklace was hideous....