Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

Childrearing is difficult under the best of circumstances. What is being done here is so much more complicated than that.

If any of them attempt to challenge his sovereignty, there will be consequences.

The power would be beyond description. Each of you was chosen to invest with us not only because of your financial resources, but because your emotional resources put you in good standing to help shepherd the world into this new era of enlightenment and understanding.”

“We forced a guiding principle of the universe into human flesh. There have been … complications, yes, but the theory remains sound.”

(Summer kings and snow queens, Jacks in the green and corn Jennies; he knows the names, knows the secret stories whispered about them in the dark places of the world. He knows better than to try for the naturally incarnate concepts. That will come later. When he controls the Doctrine, when cause and consequence dance to his commands, then he’ll be able to reach out and collect the other things that should be his by right. He’ll hold the universe in his hands, and woe betide any who question what he chooses to do with it.)

He believes in exploiting the world for his own gains, but she’d happily ignite the entire thing, if only to roast marshmallows in its embers.

The old fool forgot the lessons of Blodeuwedd and Frankenstein: never create anything smarter, or more ruthless, than yourself.

“Because it would break them.” She shrugs. “Some things need to be broken.” Things like you, he thinks,

The numbers don’t need him to give them meaning the way the words do. Words don’t mean anything without someone to understand them. Numbers just are.

Roger thinks that’s the trouble with grownups. The more effort they put into deciding what kids are going to do or think or be, the more things go wrong for them.)

“It was a good idea to get a few of the answers wrong. I didn’t think to do that.” Dodger shrugs. “People don’t believe things that are too perfect.”

Going unnoticed was never an option for her: he knows that down to his bones. She had to go in the opposite direction, becoming mercurial and never stopping long enough to be caught.

Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullet-quick when no one’s looking, and words don’t leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That’s what makes them so powerful. That’s what makes them so important. That’s what makes them hurt so much.

Dodger shrugs. “It’s not my fault the rules don’t think of everything.”

They can help each other. They can shore up the broken places. He knows the words for this: cooperation, symbiosis, reciprocity. So many words, and he’ll teach her all of them, if she’ll just keep being his friend.

lies should be reserved for life-or-death situations, because anything else would make them weaker, and weak things can’t save you.

Some things run too close to the bone to change, no matter how much you want to.)

Didn’t I tell you?” “You told me,” agrees Dodger solemnly. “You told me until I listened.” She’s not being sarcastic. Sarcasm will come later, after the world has kicked her more.

Without words, some things would slip away, impossible to describe and hence impossible to hold.

Having the living personification of Order itself walking beside him could be pleasant when she’s older, when her creator has finally come to the end of her usefulness. There’s something pleasant and poetic about the idea of Leigh engineering her own successor.

“No.” The word is a wall.

This is the world going white. This is the end. We got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we

They would all be bad math, creating equations her heart might not survive.

“Let us in, Reed. We are all on the same path to enlightenment.” But they’re not, they’re not. Reed left the path to enlightenment behind long ago. The improbable road is different. The Impossible City is not enlightenment, but something more, for the enlightened have no need for power, and the City is power incarnate. Whoever holds the City will hold the world.

Rivalry inspires good work. Not peaceful work, but since when does peace have anything to do with the march of scientific progress?)

It’s just that when they’re together, it feels like the world is finally complete, and if he can keep it in one piece for long enough, he’ll learn what the rules actually are.)

They should have been longer. They should have been always.

I have embodied the Doctrine of Ethos, that I have changed the mechanism which controls the universe. I will do what none has done since Asphodel. I will unlock the doors of the Impossible City, and I will bring magic back into the world.”

“Magic is a natural law, like gravity. It endures.”

We pulled back too far. We allowed belief to turn against us. This will change.”

They need to find the right sequence to make their way through this, take the steps in the right order, or it could all fall down. And he doesn’t want it to fall down.

Erin has always seemed off, but here, tonight, the strangeness of her is magnified: here, tonight, she’s a wound in the fabric of the world, and she’s bleeding, oh, how she’s bleeding.

For the first time in his life, he’s a guest here. You really can’t go home again. Not all the way. No matter how hard you try.

You can’t skip to the end of the story just because you’re tired of being in the middle. You’d never survive.”

Everything is perfect. Everything is doomed.

world keeps ending, every minute of every day, and nothing is going to make that stop. Nothing can ever, ever make that stop.

fire getting ready to ignite, a fire that needs no flame but only the constant friction between the two halves of something which has never, in all the long years of their lives, been fully realized.

Boring, balding, hidebound old men don’t deserve to change the universe. They think they do, but boring, balding, hidebound old men have always believed they deserve absolutely everything.

sometimes being the one who etches the lines in the façade is as important as choosing something already weathered and worn.

But it’s just a feeling, and he knows that if he were ever to articulate it, he would frighten people, so he says nothing.

The toaster impacts with the side of his face so hard that he feels bone give way, and then he’s falling into the dark, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

This is not the first time. It’s closer than they’ve been in years.)

(this was a message last time this was a message on my voice mail; we got it wrong, we got it wrong at least once more, even after we thought we were getting it right)

I’m going to wait for you. I’m not going to give up.” “That’s all I needed to hear.”

she looks like trouble about to start or an accident about to happen.

“I never gave up on you, you know. I was just waiting for you to be ready.”

“I’m saying if they wanted to control the elemental forces of creation, they shouldn’t have turned us into people. People have their own agendas. Mine doesn’t match theirs anymore.”

“You got a girlfriend, I got a therapist. I’m not sure who got the better deal.” “You did.” The words are small, and absolutely final: they leave no room for discussion.

“They’re treating the Doctrine of Ethos as a single divisible whole, with the theory being that if we exist, we have part of it trapped, and it can’t be unified?”

The first pair to claim the Doctrine will call the rest of it home and have dominion over the entire thing. If you manifest, it belongs to you, and they won’t be able to touch you.”