The Language of Power (The Steerswoman, #4)

by Rosemary Kirstein

Proper Steerswomen’s precision impelled her to state all the possibilities.

Rowan was sorry to take her leave of them. She made them a gift of Ona’s drawing, which gesture delighted them far out of proportion to the act. Rowan wondered how often they had visitors, and considered that perhaps the greater gifts to them had been merely her presence, and the conversation.

Rowan knew how one sometimes felt a vague responsibility for the actions one’s imagined self took in others’ dreams.

Motion: only motion mattered. Only motion was information.

“All magic,” he said, “is movements of power, or transformations of power. In fact,” he admitted, seeming a bit surprised at the thought, “everything that happens at all is movement or transformation of power. And magic is what happens when you have a very close control over the movement or transformation of power, and can use it to do something complicated and difficult, something that wouldn’t happen naturally, all by itself.”

Magic is what happens when you have a very precise control over the movement of power.

Besides, someone once told me that if you use a false name you should pick one that, when you hear it unexpectedly, you just naturally turn around to look.”