Her beautiful face was blank as an unwritten book.
He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and so...
Gentleness shown once is mercy, shown twice is folly.
Didn't he come to—to ask you for some magic?No, he came to enjoy the view of the Wood, the Dragon said. Of course he came for magic, and I sent him about his business, which is hacking at enemy knight...
Including one gentleman who had been introduced as a poet, although Laurence could not believe this had been an accurate translation: more likely the man was a clerk of some sort.
A girl had supposedly disguised herself as a man to fight in her father’s stead, had become companion to a military dragon and saved the empire by winning a great battle;
You have not paid for this victory, false one, cheat, and I will give you nothing.
Would you believe it's harder to find a virgin than a unicorn in New York?
They are ours, he said, although not properly the sailors: they are only along because we would not leave them to drown, and ought to be more grateful for it than they are. Laurence, he said, turning,...
The Dragon hissed under his breath with annoyance: how dare a chimaera inconvenience him, coming out of season.
That Staryk wanted to take her for nothing. He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that...
Rich meant that this room with three beds and a table and chairs and a window filled with glass was something to say sorry for.
Rankin put down his glass and stared at him coldly. I beg your pardon? he said. I gather this is some more of your officious—Laurence paid no attention, but seized the back of his chair and heaved. Ra...
Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?' It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers...
It seems perfectly plain to me that it is war itself which must be halted, without wanting one side or another defeated in particular.
It is not as though we have not heard of you, Captain Laurence. We have all had a great many arguments, whether your aid would not be too expensive, to begin with.Sir, Laurence said, now baffled, I be...
In short, he tried to teach me as best he could, and to advise me in my blundering through my new forest, though it was foreign country to him. He did still resent my success, not from jealousy but as...
If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.
I worked very hard after that. I took as much of Da's work as I could. I didn't want to make a row of dead babies and die.
I remembered when my oldest brother married Malgosia, and suddenly the two of them stopped running around with us and started sitting with the parents: a very solemn kind of alchemy, one that I felt s...