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...
Damn him, damn him, damn him.
Your Majesty, you just- Costis stopped.Just what? the king prompted wickedly.Nothing would induce Costis to say out loud that the king had almost fallen from the palace wall and that Costis had seen h...
You learn something new everyday.What are you learning? Sophos asked.To keep my mouth shut, I hope.
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...
The only thing I knew was that I didn't know anything, really, about the king of the Attolians, and I didn't trust him.
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...
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...
I’ll stop shouting. I won’t sit down. I might need to throw more inkpots.
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....
Don't match your weakness against your opponent's strength
A thief never makes a noise by accident.
Being defenseless didn't preclude attack.
Your Majesty, is it true that your cousins held you down in a water cache.Is it also true that they wouldn't let you out until you agreed to repeat insults about your own family?I could send you to as...
Were you lying?I never lie, he said piously. About what?The sand, the snake.For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.
To you alone, Eldest,the Fates have given unassailable rule.Time alters all things,except this one thing.For you alone,the wind that bellows the sails of rulemakes no shift.