What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

“You blackmailed me.” “I most certainly did not.” “There was guilt. I distinctly remember guilt being involved.”

Imagine if an architect wanted to re-create Budapest, but on a shoestring budget and without any of the convenient flat bits. While fighting wolves.)

I’m keeping is what we say in Gallacia to any such inquiry, and it covers such a broad range as to convey no information whatsoever. It can mean “I am filled with unspeakable joy, my gout is cured, and angels attend my every step,” or it can mean “a bear just ripped my leg off and I am, at this moment, bleeding out, but please don’t make a fuss.”

Bors had a mind like a lava flow. It took a long time to get where it was going, but there was no stopping it. I quite liked him.

As difficult as it is to read Angus’s emotions, I am fairly certain that he lost the remainder of his heart to Miss Potter in that instant.

It’s not as if we sat down together and you said, “Alex, tell me a tale where you had a pleasant trip to your homeland and the worst menace you faced was the amount of paprika the Widow put in the sausages.”

“But that’s nonsense. You know it’s just superstition.” “Witch-hares are just superstition too.”

I sometimes think the fundamental disconnect with civilians is that they think a war is an event, something neatly bounded on either end by dates. What anyone who’s lived through one can tell you is that it’s actually a place. You’re there and then you leave, but places don’t stop existing just because you aren’t looking at them.

The other ones like you understand. We all realized long ago that we’re dual citizens now, that we come from two different places. Gallacia. And the war.

“Does no one here put their arms under their pillows at night?!” “I imagine that you quickly learn not to,” Father Sebastian said mildly, although I could tell va was trying not to laugh. “Given the stabbing and all.”

They have the quiet confidence of a people who know that, at any moment, they could strap on skis, go into the woods, and take out an entire squad of enemy soldiers before anyone knows they’re there.

Ostriches are things that happen to other people, far away, in countries

“Angus,” said Miss Potter sternly, “that was not kind.” “Worked though, aye?”

“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,”

“It’s not the place’s fault,” he said reasonably. “It was here before she was. It doesn’t deserve to fall apart because something bad happened here.” Another of his long silences, and then he added, “Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.”