The Game of Courts (Lays of the Hearth-Fire #0.6)

by Victoria Goddard

Conju did not like Fitzroy Angursell’s poetry and had never read Aurora; he thought that if the Imperial Censors had banned it they must have a good reason; the stories of the Red Company irritated him for how topsy-turvy and irregular they wanted society.

Persnickety, precise, sober, exquisite of dress, careful of speech—these were all things Conju was himself and was disposed to admire in others.

The sun come out on a landscape that had not seemed dark until the light fell upon it.

“Someone’s secretary, I take it,” he said, refusing to back down from this challenge. “True enough.”

Conju’s perfumes and lotions spoiled or smelled of completely bizarre and unrelated things—frying onions, or bread baking, or horses, or campfires, and there was one day when simply everything smelled pungently of ginger.