Megan Whalen Turner

Quotes

1. "Ten thousand!" I shouted at the walls, back in the room with the wooden shutters, now open so that anyone could hear me, on the porch or probably across the compound. "That arrogant bastard landed ten thousand men at Tas-Elisa. In my port! Mine!" When I was a child and playmates snatched my toys out of my hands, I tended to smile weakly and give in. Years later I was acting the way I should have as a child. Probably not the most mature behavior for a king, but I was still cursing as I swung around to find a delegation of barons in the doorway behind me. My father, Baron Comeneus, and the Baron Xorcheus among them.

   They thought it was how a king behaved.

2. 

   Eschewing ceremony, Eugenides said, "You shot their ambassador?"

   "You gave me the gun," protested Sounis.

   "I didn't mean for you to shoot an ambassador with it!" Eugenides told him.

   "Oh, how our carefully laid plans go astray," murmured the magus.

   "You shut up!" said Gen, laughing.

3. 

   If a man who claims to see the future is a fool,

   how much more so, the man who believes he can control it?

   We think we steer the ship of fate,

   but all of us are guided by unseen stars.

4. 

   "In my experience, the more you know of the gods, the more you know what you cannot understand."

5. 

   "Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?" He looked around the room at the other attendants as if in warning, but spoke to Philologos. "Remember, the love of kings and queens is beyond the compass of us lesser mortals."

   If anyone noticed, no one commented that he had called the Thief of Eddis a king.

6. 

   "I'd suggested eating it before we left the market. I'd also suggested eating it on the road. I was not so comfortable with my new authority that I could say, "We eat the chicken now!" but the magus had seen that I was considering it."

7. 

   "Sophos, you sleep with a knife under your pillow? I'm hurt."

   "I'm sorry," said Sounis, blinking, afraid that he had made contact with his wild swing.

   "I was joking. Wake up the rest of the way, would you?"

   "Gen, it's the middle of the night."

   "I know," said the king of Attolia.

8. 

   As the queen raged at him, he responded, first calmly, then with his own heat. "Is there no one that you will see punished?" the queen shouted. "Are you fond of Teleus now that you preserve his life at all costs?"

   "I only asked you to reconsider."

   "There is nothing to reconsider!"

   "You know why I need him."

   "Not anymore," the queen declared with finality.

   The king ignored the finality. "Now more than ever," he insisted.

   "He has failed-"

   "That was not entirely his fault!"

   "Then you will unmake my decisions?" Attolia dared him to try.

   "You said that I could," Eugenides flatly replied.

   Pushed too far, the queen lashed out. The king made no effort to avoid the blow. His head snapped around and his forehead struck the doorjamb. He staggered and caught himself. By the time he opened his eyes, she was at the door and then she was gone.

9. 

   The king lifted a hand to her cheek and kissed her. It was not a kiss between strangers, not even a kiss between a bride and groom. It was a kiss between a man and his wife, and when it was over, the king closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the hollow of the queen's shoulder, like a man seeking respite, like a man reaching home at the end of the day.

10. 

    Then, as you well know, Eugenides looked me in the eye as if I were a complete stranger and said, "The simplest way to end a war is to admit you have lost it."

    The silence after that was not polite.

11. 

    "You bastard," said Sounis wearily. "I don't know why I don't stab you here in this alley so I can be the annux over Sounis and Attolia." They were twisting through the narrowest of passages, with Eugenides still in the lead, turning on what seemed to be a whim from one walkway to the next.

    "Well, the stabbing would be unkind," said Eugenides, "but you can have the annux part with my goodwill."

    "Not Attolia's."

    "True," said the king. "Better not stab me."

12. 

    The magus and I had talked for many long hours about this marriage of Eugenides and the queen of Attolia. The magus insisted it was Eugenides's choice and his desire as well, but it was impossible to know whose influence would prevail and if Gen would grow more like his wife, or his wife like her king.