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It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.
Beyond the walls the city woke, creaking and groaning like an old man leaving his bed, though it had hardly slept.
‘I see any lumps and bumps on Partnis’s new purchases, Denam, Regol, and I’ll knock your heads together so hard you swap brains.
It didn’t seem a contest, unless you considered the blacksmith to be competing to see how many times he could stop the giant’s fist with his face.
‘I hope he comes back full of devils and they eat his heart.’
The old one, Sister Tallow, looked as if she could climb all day. The younger, Sister Apple, at least had the decency to appear flushed.
The memory of that door, black and polished, pressed like a finger between her eyes.
out where the emperor’s name is rarely spoken and his enemies are closer than his palaces,
can punch you with my fist and you will learn a lesson. The knife’s lesson is short and terminal.’
Anger had its place, it was a weapon not to be neglected, but so did patience,
This latter gave the impression that the bird from which it was taken had died of some wasting disease, falling from its perch into a dirty puddle before being run over by several carts and finally thoroughly chewed by a hungry cat.
He took in the cart and three travellers with a disapproving eye, as if mere proximity might sully the dark blue of his velvets.
‘She poisoned the soup for Grey Class once. Got all of them, just because none of them passed an exam.’
A lone chicken strutted in the shadow of the scriptorium, pausing to scrape and peck as if looking for any dropped punctuation.
the rain didn’t care how long you’d spent brushing your hair, it’d fall on you just the same.
A riverboat’s no way to travel at the best of times. I get seasick looking at a cup of water.
‘My title is Mistress Blade, young man. I have been a Red Sister since before you were born. Do not try me.’
All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch.
would be better if you did so in a manner that allows the transgressor to see the error of their ways rather than the contents of their body.
She wanted to grow it long but it went wild if she let it get past a hand span and brushing wouldn’t tame it. When it got long Sister Wheel stopped calling her peasant and called her harlot instead – which made it almost worth it, but not quite.
Nobody knew what they ate up there on the sheet. The consensus being that it was each other.
Sister Flint rounded the corner, a thin dark line that the sun could not yet muster the courage to unwrap.
The troop wasn’t matched in height as the high priest’s church-guards had been, but cut from many cloths with varying degrees of generosity.
The other four beds remained empty and she soon reached the point where pushing someone down the stairs in order to fill one of them seemed quite a reasonable solution.
have been too young to know, and I have been too old to care. It’s in that oh-so-narrow slice between that memories are made.
book is as dangerous as any journey you might take. The person who closes the back cover may not be the same one that opened the front one. Treat books with respect.’
These were the grey hours when mankind lay fast in slumber and the world stood open to the bold.
She felt it like cold and dirty water, trying to sink beneath her skin, but just like water it ran off.
And in the same instant Nona’s world exploded into bright fragments of agony, so dazzling that she neither saw the floor reach up to take her, nor felt it when it struck.
‘I’m serene.’ She took her first step. ‘I’m so fucking serene that if I miss my footing I’ll just walk on the air instead.’
The hedgerows stood thick with ice, coating every twig, blunting the thorns, glistening, gleaming, surreal, holding everything behind glass, for observation, not to be touched, put in storage … for a while. One day it would be forever.
A clever man with clever fingers … He can tie three knots in an eyelash, that one.
But that itself, like most truths, had proved too bitter for the mouth to speak.
Some emotions are like that, too big to be seen from within,
