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If this was a fairy tale, it was the kind where everyone gets eaten as a cautionary tale about straying into the woods, not the sentimental kind that ends with a wedding and the words, “And if they have not since died, they are living there still.”
Also there are bears.
“I didn’t force you to come,” he said. “You blackmailed me.” “I most certainly did not.” “There was guilt. I distinctly remember guilt being involved.”
(The greatest city in Gallacia is fine, I suppose, but I didn’t feel the need to linger. 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.)
(You really don’t want to drink our wine. We export it because we don’t want to drink it either.)
No Gallacian soldier would be without a bottle, in case we ever need to remember what we’re fighting for. (Mostly the opportunity to be somewhere that has better liquor.)
(Most of the wooden shutters had carved turnips on them. No, I don’t know why, it’s just a thing we do in Gallacia. In Switzerland, they carve flowers on the shutters, but nobody ever asks them why. We just like turnips, okay?)
Paying one’s condolences sounds well and good in theory, but in practice you have to walk up to a stranger and effectively say, “Ah, yes, that person you loved so much? Remember how they died horribly? So sorry about that.”
If you have ever dealt with the possessions of the dead, you probably know what I mean. You take things away and leave behind emptiness, and everything you remove—every sheet and pillowcase, every lost sock and old razor—erases a little bit of the dead person’s footprint in the world. You picture your own home being carted away, piece by piece, hopefully by loved ones and not by strangers.
I thought basically this exact thought after my grandparents died. How the things that had been so important to them became little more than an inconvenience for the part of the family that was cleaning out their house. So much was just thrown out and it felt more than a little sad to me.
Nevertheless, I do not believe that God cares where you worship Har. The prayers of the dying on the mud of the battlefield and the pleas of the fearful hiding in cellars must surely ascend just as quickly as those uttered under the light of stained glass. More quickly, if there is justice in the universe.
Many a prospective bandit’s career has been blighted by sheer embarrassment.)
We parted from Father Sebastian with a promise to see var in two days, and were finally allowed to leave the church and return to our usual week’s degeneracy.
Miss Potter had never experienced livrit, and if we were good people, we would have allowed her to remain in that state of grace.
It was like being bludgeoned to death by a cheerful turtle.
People seem to either believe that a doctor should come at all hours to attend their slightest sniffle, or that they are omens of death, with no ground in between.”
Dinner that night was particularly lavish, the Widow apparently feeling that the doctor was a worthy enemy and thus should be fed until he damn well choked. I made a note to bring enemies to dinner more often.
Though you might consider building a sauna. It won’t hurt, and even if it doesn’t help, at least then you’ll have a sauna.” Which, as medical advice goes, was not the worst I’d ever heard by a long shot.
I followed warily, wondering if she planned to take me outside and stab me and what on earth I would do if she did. Probably I would have to fire her for that. Dammit. Maybe it would be easier just to stay inside and avoid being stabbed.
I loathe people who assume that because they are an expert in one field, they are therefore infallible on a totally unrelated topic, merely because they gave it five minutes of thought.”
“World’s a big place. I figure some bits just get overlooked sometimes. Like God goes around sweeping things up but He misses a corner now and again.” “That’s technically blasphemy, Angus,” I said mildly. Angus uttered a nontechnical blasphemy, then flushed, remembering Miss Potter’s presence. She hastily turned the corners of her lips down to hide her smile.
“What if he doesn’t get better?” Angus sighed. “Then he will be like a thousand others in Gallacia this winter. The only difference is that you know his name.”
“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,” I said, lifting my wine.
“Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.”
Whatever I did to deserve you, it wasn’t enough.
