Megan Whalen Turner

Quotes

1. "He didn't marry you to become king. He became king because he wanted to marry you."

2. 

   "Don't you trust my palace security?"

   "Yes, of course," Sounis said, trying to think of some other reason besides mistrust to sleep with a knife. He heard Eugenides laugh.

   "My queen and I sleep with a matched set under our pillows, as well as handguns in pockets on the bedposts. Don't be embarrassed."

   "Gen, what are you doing in my bedroom in the middle of the night?" Sounis asked.

   "Going out of my mind," said Eugenides promptly. "At least I am on the verge of going out of my mind."

3. 

   "Why were these the only dances you knew?"

   "Because no one would dance with me. Thieves are never popular."

   I know why, thought Attolia, but aloud she asked, "Why are you familiar with the square dances?"

   The music quickened.

   "My mother taught me. We danced them on the rooftops of the Megaron. According to legend, the Thief and any partner the Thief chooses will be safe."

   "You are king now," she pointed out.

   "Ah, but they say that if the king dances, the entire court can safely dance with him."

   "Spare me," said Attolia, "and my court, from dancing on the roof."

   "It probably only works in Eddis."

4. 

   Eddis nodded. "Gen leaves the reins in Attolia's hands. Which is not what either I or Attolia recommended, but wisely he ignored us both."

   "Wisely?"

   Smiling, Eddis said, "He hasn't the temperament. He gets angry. She only ever gets angry at him."

   Sounis, having seen the Thief of Eddis lose his temper, could see her point.

5. 

   "I know exactly when. I was hiding in a takima bush in the Queen's Garden, watching the older son of the Baron Erondites tell Attolia that he loved her. He was trying to propose a marriage and she thought he was talking about a poem he was writing. I was laughing like a very quiet fiend, trying not to make the branches around me shake, and then, between one heartbeat and the next, and to my complete surprise, it wasn't funny anymore." He rubbed his chest, as if a remembered pain. "I wanted to kill him. Once she was gone, I very nearly jumped out of the bush onto his head. Poor Dite."

   Poor Eugenides, thought Sounis, to fall in love with a woman he had already made into an enemy.

6. 

   "A story?" Phresine was surprised. "What makes you think I can tell stories?"

   "Insight," said the king. "Go on."

7. 

   He had seen a temple fall once, in an earthquake. Small gaps had appeared between the stones, and these had grown until each separate stone tottered in opposition to the ones below. First the columns supporting the porches and then the walls had tumbled down. So, piece by piece, did the king hammer out the enormity of the disaster Sejanus had precipitated on his house.

8. 

   Staring at me over the barrel of my gun, Akretenesh said, "Did you not just days ago lecture me about the sacred truce?"

   With my finger still through the trigger guard of the spent pistol, I lifted my left palm upward to the sky to see if lightning struck me down.

   When none did, I smiled again. "We will have to assume the gods are on my side."

   "I am an ambassador," Akretenesh warned me, anger bringing his confidence back. "You cannot shoot."

   "I don't mean to," I reassured him, still smiling. I adopted his soothing tones. "Indeed, you are the only man I won't shoot. But if I aimed at anyone else, it might give others a dangerously mistaken sense of their own safety." I raised my voice a trifle, thought it wasn't really necessary. "We will have another vote, Xorcheus."

   They elected me Sounis. It was unanimous.

9. 

   "I seem to remember once sharing my oatmeal with you," Sounis remarked.

   "I seem to remember stealing your oatmeal," said the former Thief of Eddis, "but it didn't have sand in it."

   "Sand?" said Sounis, taken aback.

   "Sand, and if my queen notices, she will have someone flayed."

10. 

    Everything, it seemed, depended on gold. The magus and I had fallen easily back into our old habits. He lectured constantly, and I asked questions to my heart's delight. Where he had once been my master and I his apprentice, I had become king and he my sole advisor. Where we had once focused on natural history and philosophy, we now concentrated on administration, taxation, and the prosecution of war.

    He had begun his lessons by quoting the duke of Melfi: "To make war you need three things: one, money; two, money; and three, money." He went on to tell me the things I should have known already, that I would have known if I had been a more promising heir to the throne and not exclusively interested in poetry.

11. 

    "The court is watching," she pointed out.

    "I thought you wanted me more exposed to the public eye?" he teased.

    "I reverse myself," she said coldly, "and argue for a little circumspection." She tugged at his hand, but he didn't release her. She gave up, unwilling to be seen trying to pull away.

    "You don't think I can do it."

    She didn't think he could.

    "I don't care what they think."

    She knew that. It worried her.

    "No," said the queen, but she wavered.

    He sensed it and smiled. "Am I king?" he asked, irrepressibly.

    It was the one argument she was in no position to deny. She wanted him to be king, and he was resisting it with all his will.

12. 

    "Would I be wrong," Sounis asked one evening as he walked with Eddis, "to think that I talk to you, you talk to Gen, and Gen talks to Attolia, who talks to the magus, who talks to me?"

    Eddis laughed. "Not always. Sometimes, as in this case, someone approaches my Eddisian ambassador Ornon, here in Attolia, and he talks to me, I talk to you, you talk to Attolia, Attolia talks to Gen, and he talks to me."

    "I see you appear in that progression twice."

    "Oh, more than that, because after Gen talks to me, the process reverses. He goes back to Attolia, who talks to you, who go to the magus, who repeats the information to me, who gives it to Ornon, who takes it back to whoever started this particular political ball rolling in the first place."