A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians (The Shadow Histories, #1)

by H.G. Parry

Her dark eyes had a way of constantly measuring up his everyday self against her ideal of him; finding him wanting was, paradoxically, the way she expressed her utter faith in what he could be.

They were silent, without even a gasp or a shudder, but their silence was heavy with revulsion.

It showed a ship, in broad mathematical outline, and the ship was packed with small black human figures. Several different cross sections showed, with notes and equations, how 482 such figures could be crammed into every available space in compartments the size of coffins. It looked like an illustration of a tin full of the toy soldiers a rich parent might buy a child. It was precise, and perfectly worked out, and monstrous.

I don’t like this. This isn’t a side street in France, and we’re not twenty-four anymore. This is the heart of London, and you’re the head of the British government.

The madness of a powerful mage-king isn’t the same as the madness of an ordinary person. The madness of a mage-king means the entire country convulses.

She felt a past made of the texture of books, the feel of a mother’s hand about his own, the flicker of a fire at night.

“It’s not about the king as an individual. It’s about the monarchy as an institution. And in that light, the king and his supporters are hardly harmless.”

The news had nothing to do with kings falling and countries at war. Women had children all the time; they died bringing them into the world all the time. It was perfectly natural, and devastating.

I sometimes think ‘just this once’ is the most dangerous phrase in the English language.”

No one can reign innocently.”

You complain that I have committed illegal acts. Of course I have. We all have. The Revolution is illegal. The fall of the Bastille was illegal. The formation of this republic was illegal—as illegal as liberty itself. Citizens, do you want a revolution without a revolution?”

He was artfully disheveled from the streets and carried with him an air of summer dust and violence and unlawful magic.

In the silence that followed, Robespierre had a brief flash of the two of them as if from the outside: two figures, haggard and worn in the light of a single candle, like ghosts haunting their own bodies in a world gone mad. We are dead, he thought with wonder. We are already dead.

Many people had been to the guillotine before them. Many had faced their deaths bravely, with stoicism and dignity and resignation. Camille had never been one for any of those things. He was young, and distraught, and he did not want to die.

it was possible to do truly terrible things, and go home to bed afterward, and get up the next day.

The Girondins had not escaped death either—perhaps one or two had survived, but not in any way that mattered.

But it was a bondage he had accepted willingly, for his people, and if he paid for it, he would do so by his own choice. Perhaps that was part of what freedom meant too.

He had believed he was right. Truly, deeply, and completely. That was his only defense. Perhaps it was enough. Perhaps too many had died for that to make the slightest bit of difference.