What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier, #3)

by T. Kingfisher

In general I rather like Americans—they’re usually so terribly earnest—but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit nervous. One American can really fill a room. I assume it only takes a hundred or so to really fill a country.

We don’t shake hands in Gallacia, but Americans are completely mad for it, and you can’t refuse or they get this confused, somewhat hurt look. I resigned myself to shaking a great many hands in the next few weeks.

The way he pronounced dark as dahhhk was so pure that I had an involuntary urge to snatch up the teapot and find a harbor to dump it in.

“That is horrifying and I want to go home,” I said, although I pronounced it, “Ah. I see.”

“It’s fine, Denton,” I said. “We just won’t bother correcting anyone. It’s not your fault that your language is so woefully short on pronouns. You don’t even have one for talking to God.” “It’s an oversight,” he admitted.

No wonder Americans all move like they’ve got extra space around them. If their country was a house, it would be one of those monstrous old ramblers that no one can afford to heat in the winter. They probably develop drafts in New York because someone left a window open in San Francisco.

When we finally entered West Virginia the next day, I thought we must be almost there, until Denton gently explained that the state was almost as large as the entire country of Ireland. “So it’s a big state?” I asked hopefully. “Not really, no.”

Angus gazed at the five nags presented to us and produced a silence more damning than most men’s profanity.

I patted my horse on the neck. She gazed past me with an air that reminded me of an elderly Gallacian woman I used to know who had twelve children and twenty-seven grandchildren, and thus no longer registered screaming, crying, wailing, gunshots, explosions, or the sounds of breaking crockery.