Megan Whalen Turner

Quotes

1. "Think of it as stealing not you but the king's faith in you."

   "And what happens to me without the king's faith?"

   "If you're smart, you leave Sounis," said Eugenides. "Quickly."

2. 

   The minister of war snorted. "Not if he had to follow you on a horse," he said.

3. 

   "Least said, soonest mended isn't the advice for every occasion, Your Majesty, isn't the advice for every occasion."

4. 

   The queen laughed, and I flushed in the privacy of my bedroom. I do hate horses. That was the first sign that I wasn't going to be the soldier my father hoped for.

5. 

   "Nothing mortals make lasts; nothing the gods make endures forever."

6. 

   I am a master of foolhardy plans, I thought. I have so much practice I consider them professional risks. Sooner or later they would have needed the cell and the chains for someone more important, the minister of the exchequer, for instance, and I would have been moved to another cell. Sooner or later I would have had my chance to escape, if I hadn't died of disease first.

7. 

   I stifled a snort of my own in the silence that followed. The magus must have still been tired. He must have once known, but forgotten, that the minister of war had married the daughter of the previous King's Thief. He was talking to my father. The magus might have remembered this, might have recognized me from the first time he'd seen me in Sounis, but we had never been introduced. When he'd come with Sounis's marriage proposals, I had been sulking in my rooms.

8. 

   "You said I should do something." Eugenides smiled in the dark, twisting the knife of his revenge a little deeper into the magus.

   "I did?"

   "As you were leaving, after your extremely edifying visit in the spring. You said ‘You could still do something.’ Your exact words."

   "I meant talk your queen into surrendering, not destroy our navy in its own harbor!" the magus shouted.

9. 

   "Surely I am a better mistress to serve?"

   "You are more beautiful, Your Majesty." The queen smiled again before I finished. "But she is more kind."

   So much for discretion. The smile disappeared. You could have heard a pin drop onto the stone floor as her alabaster cheeks flushed red. No one could ever accuse the queen of Attolia of being kind.

10. 

    "You don't understand your weakness, if you think the greater nations will protect you. We will see how much longer you rule your backwater, Your Majesty. You will soon enough discover the limits of your resources."

    "Will I? I think you underestimate me still, Nahuseresh. While we are being forthright with each other, I admit I find it tedious."

11. 

    "Eugenides," he said. He had recognized the voice.

    "Yes."

    "What have you done?"

    "Not much yet," answered the Thief from the darkness. "I remain fairly limited in my physical activities." He held up his right arm, and the magus started before realizing that the hand he saw had to be a wooden one, concealed by a glove.

    Another booming explosion filled the air, and the magus turned back to the window but could see only a glare reflecting on the whitewashed walls of the buildings below.

    "I had to send someone else to light the fuses," Eugenides said behind him.

    "Fuses?" asked the magus, with a sick feeling.

    "In the powder magazines of your warships," Eugenides explained.

    "Powder magazines?"

    "You sound like the chorus in a play," said Eugenides.

    "And the play is a tragedy, I suppose?"

    "A farce," Eugenides suggested, and the magus winced.

12. 

    "I didn't come to Sounis to blow up His Majesty's warships. I told you someone else had to do that."

    "What did you come for if not to murder my king?"

    "I came to steal his magus."

    "You can't," said the magus in question.

    "I can steal anything," Eugenides corrected him. "Even with one hand." He took a step forward into the moonlight and waggled his fingers. The smile on his face made the magus feel worse, not better.