The Fall of Babel (The Books of Babel #4)

by Josiah Bancroft

I’m going to make tea, and you’re going to learn a little history.” “What sort of history?” Adam asked, pulling out a chair from his kitchen table. “The sort that ends with a clan of simple folk presiding over jars full of eyeballs inside an empty paradise.”

“It’s quite a steal, when you think about it. I would’ve died a hundred times for my kids. Just the once seems a bargain.”

“There was an open bet on how he would die. As options we had, let me see… Ah yes: killed in battle, killed by old age, by mutiny, execution, duel, accident, pox, gout—” “It was gout,” Iren said. “You didn’t stamp on his head while he was retreating from the battlefield?” “Maybe a little. The gout did most of the work.”

Byron had read that a fawn born in the morning could walk by the evening. Shark pups were birthed swimming, snapping, and eager to feed. But the human race came into the world with all the physical prowess of a custard and all the independence of a pimple.

If you can’t be useful, be elsewhere.’

“Stories are not without consequence.” “Perhaps. The human race will march into the darkness singing songs and telling stories because that is who we are and what we do.”

The holdings of a ringdom’s Lost and Found are auctioned off according to their perishable nature: lost milk, bread, and cut flowers are sold after a day; lost fruit and leafy vegetables are sold after three days; lost onions, tubers, and children after a week;

Queen Hortie fancies herself a diviner. She has a magic wand. It looks like a stick. It is a stick, but she calls it a wand.

mastery sometimes gave the impression of indifference.