What Stalks the Deep (Sworn Soldier, #3)

by T. Kingfisher

We grow turnips and sheep, but our primary export is people who want to get the hell away from it.

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

I winced internally at that. Probably there’s a culture where ask him a few questions isn’t a euphemism for beat him until answers fall out, but I’ve yet to encounter it.

Even I eventually run out of the need to prove myself to myself.

“It’s complicated, Fragment. Sometimes when people hurt for a long time, they start to think that hurting is part of who they are. And then anything that helps the hurt, even healing, feels like it’s trying to strip part of them away.”

I suppose if settling into pleasant debauchery doesn’t work as a career, I can hire myself out as an alien ambassador.

The eyes are the window to the soul, they say. Did Fragment have a soul? I thought he probably did, and that was as much as I could say for any person I knew.