If you are feeling more yourself, there is a problem best addressed immediately, said the queen.In my nightshirt? The king wriggled, as ever, out of straightforward obedience.Your attendants. I have s...
If these were death agonies, they were fake ones, Costis thought, and was sure of it when they reached the shallow stair at the far end of the reflecting pool. No one on the verge of death has the str...
If Attolia could look like a queen, Eugenides was like a god revealed, transformed into something wholly unfamiliar, surrounded by the cloth-of-gold bedcover like a deity on an altar, passionless and...
I would very much like to strangle someone. Why don't you go away until I decide it isn't you?
I stayed only two days in the capital. I was welcomed by a cheering citizenry, who threw flowers at my head. It was disconcerting to think I could have put almost any young man in my retinue on a whit...
I knew I would be in the story somewhere, Eugenides interjected.Oh no, said Phresine, This was a humble servant.Ouch.Though very courageous.Not me, whispered Eugenides to his pillow.
I grieved, but a part of me felt a lightening of a burden that I had carried all my life: that I could never be worthy of them, that I would always disappoint or fail them. As an unknown slave in the...
Costis flinched and looked away from this compensation to the king’s handicap, only to find himself staring directly into the king’s face instead. Eugenides matched Costis look for look, his expressio...
Because you do not believe?Oh, no, said Attolia bitterly. Because I believe and do not choose to worship.
All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege,...
The Attolians liked to point out with a snicker that there was no sign anywhere of the king's hand at work.
That sort of news travels faster than horses, faster than boats. The messengers of the gods carry rumors through the sky the way bees carry pollen and drop them from their wings onto the earth below.
Let the gods into your life and you rapidly lose faith in the natural laws.
It was like being lectured by an earnest, oversized child.
If I couldn't be Eddis, I would be Attolia. If they needed to see my uncle in me, then I would show him to them. And I would take Attolia's advice because if I identified my enemy and destroyed him, S...
I sometimes believe his lies are the truth, but I have never mistaken his truth for a lie.
He waved at his attendants. I dragged them like a ball and chain all the way across the palace and back.If sterner measures are called for, we can find a larger ball and chain. The queen turned and di...
Don't match your weakness against your opponent's strength
Discretion prevented me from saying that I thought she was a fiend from the underworld and that mountain lions couldn't force me to enter her service.
Costis, what do you think you are doing?