What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

I inherited him from my father, along with my chin, my hair color, and my cast-iron liver.

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.”

The last word came out strangled. I didn’t expect that. I don’t cry any longer. I’ve lost the trick of it. Lots of soldiers do, eventually, and only the lucky ones get it back. But even if I can’t, my throat still closes up sometimes, and it closed up now, because I knew I couldn’t explain what it had meant, when I sat there staring at the snow for a month straight with my mouth full of ashes and my head full of dead men, that the tea was always there and always hot.

When you talked to Bors for very long, you realized that he was slow, and if I had meant stupid I would have said that instead. 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.

Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.

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.

Nature creates horrors enough all by itself.

“Blessed Virgin,” I whispered, even though I couldn’t even hear myself. “Why must you keep sending me innocent monsters?”

I thrashed but she was as heavy as guilt.

“May we always have the choice to err on the side of mercy,” I said, lifting my wine.

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.”