And: “How must we understand potato?” “As your closest vegetable relative,” said Harrowhark, who’d never seen one in real life. “You are a ready wit,” her cavalier said, with no apparent rancour and every sign of appreciation. “I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte—so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it—but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all
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