none had known true pursuit until they'd been chased by riders whose horses did not tire

pharos device

Cigelin Sisters

It'd been Akua that had told me about the cleansing and healing properties of the cedar trees that grew in the shade of Mount Tyro, the mountain where the mage-doctor schools of Ashur had first been raised centuries ago.

we have filled the silence with a madness of words

J'ose ... I dare

If you were forced to run a race you could only lose, then the only way to win was to cheat.

from villain to another an open admission of usefulness was one of the most prized guarantees of safety

Biting the hand that feeds you is another way to feed.

polyglots

the Stacks of This and That

This is fear, I thought. This fear speaking through my lips, a worm slipped into my mind through my ear. And once fear rules, she is the mother of defeat.

to have someone speak in such a vile way of ties that were so important to her almost felt like a sort of defilement

The other woman offered a shallow smile, amusement so thin a finger run across it would reveal dislike.

How easily you dismiss the possibility that you might be the most interesting part of you

when principle got in the way of itself, a closer look usually gave away that the whole affair was really about pride

decency is not made worthless for the use the indecent would make of it

If the exercise of a virtue is put to the service of evil ... It is an accomplice to it, regardless of what else it might be.

Even a bleeding heart eventually bleeds dry.

Sometimes it felt like I was sharp only because the world had whittled away everything but the sharpness.

I know no passion, save the taste of her lips, Is it not a folly, how my heart skips?

just because you could win a fight didn't mean you should be fighting it

sennight

"A plan of war is the inevitable victim of circumstance; methods of war are superior, for they are the mother of many a plan."

You are your worst day ... But you are your finest day as well, and every single other one.

past the lights of the stronghold below there was only a dark and desolate stretch

His loose grey robes looked half made of dust and even drabber than usual, his rheumy blue were clouded with exhaustion

Half the anger is fear that I could have failed

We can't change the world without changing with it.

I stayed alone on my tent, eyes closed and seeking calm that would not come.

The Iron Prince had never acted the tyrant before because he'd never seen a need to. It was as simple as that. Not all ruthless men needed to trumpet about their ruthlessness.

It was all too easy to become drunk on your own learning and confuse it with wisdom.

A great good too often came at the costs of a hundred petty evils

"It is not the grand choices of our lives that determine who we are. It is the small acts of small days, the quiet kindnesses and cruelties, that shape us like a smith's hammer. And when those grand choices come calling we are already formed, already shaped, and we understand that it was never really a choice at all."

"Stories never truly end with victory," the god told her. "We only cut them there so that they might be easier to swallow."

"The Gods abhor perfection, child. It leaves nothing for us to seek."

There were no mirages this time, not swirls of colour. Only soft words by starlight, with the tall stones circling around them like a mother's embrace.

"Be who you are, Antigone," the Maker-of-Riddles spoke in a rumbling voice. "Without lie or apology. Without fear or regret. Of you I will never ask more nor less." He laughed again, bathed in starlight. "Do this, my child, and you will have done more in the span of your short years to honour her than I did in the crawling eternity of mine," Kreios said. "I never understood it before, you see. That was it always about learning when the torch must be passed." "I don't know who I want to be," Antigone confessed. The old god smiled, heartbreakingly gentle. "Let us learn, then," Kreios said. "Together."

Catalina was not sure who it was that began to sing.

Even in the dark, they sang. Perhaps in the dark most of all.