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She was almost entirely insensible to pleasantries, especially the parentheses of polite conversation, preferring to let the drumroll of her heels convey her hellos and her coattails say her goodbyes.
We know who suffers when heaven squabbles—the vulnerable. Someone up on high only has to whisper the word ‘unrest’ and the prisons fill up, the workhouses shake out, the missions bar their doors, and the orphanages repopulate. And when the dust settles, perhaps there’ll be a new face printed on the gallet bill or a fresh set of bullies on the bench, but the only thing of real consequence that will have changed is the number of bones in the potter’s field. Revolution may chasten the rich, but uncertainty torments the poor.”
Four primary streams split from magic’s ancient wellspring: wizardry, necromancy, alchemy, and hexegy.
Wizards were powerful conjurers that, among other wonders, were renowned for calling lightning from the unexcited air, immolating careless apprentices, and reading themselves to a state of near blindness. Necromancers, who communed with the dead in ways that unsettled the living and departed alike, were broadly untroubled by morality and sentimentality, a quality that served them well in their efforts to breathe new life into old bones. Alchemists, emerging from a tradition of chemistry and metallurgy, bent the physical laws to their wills, which more often than not were financially inspired.
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I will help you, but all my usual fees and provisos apply: I won’t tolerate interference from my clients; I am not responsible if anyone is inconvenienced by the facts I uncover; and I will not, under any circumstance, appear before a judge, cooperate with the police, or accept questions from the press. I deliver answers, but I answer to no one.”
Society is built upon the currency of concession, of give and take, of small sins for greater triumphs.
Administrators are oblivious and generally get in the way; effective employees learn to work around them.
People who tell you not to be afraid of things are usually the first to get eaten by tigers. Fear helps us to prepare. I say, gather your supplies, arm yourself, and make the dark afraid of you
Do not neglect to live your life. No cause, no matter how noble, will ever love you.
The daily mechanism of their marriage was powered by reflexive faith rather than constant reassurance.
Alchemists had their stances, wizards their orations, necromancers their songs, and hex-casters their illustrations. Indeed, Isolde’s mother had once described the study of hexes as “minoring in magic while majoring in art.”
Hexes gathered their power from their surroundings, sapping from the world whatever air, moisture, heat, light, and life their size and purpose required. And yet, the principal source of energy came from the practitioners themselves.
“No one has any compunction about shouting their heads off at the racetrack, and they’re not even the ones in the saddle.” Insensible to the discomfort the statement caused, Isolde would go on to explain in explicit detail how the marital act stimulated the mind and carried in its ecstasies epiphanies that could not be summoned in the library or laboratory. Sex helped her think.
Old Geb’s only gift, besides squandering livers, was scouring the unwritten inventory of the interred. If there were bones in the ground, the incubus knew them, knew the name that had once belonged to them, and could often guess what had caused the skeleton to surface from their skin. It was a skill the imp was loath to share,
Pretend that you are worth the trouble until you convince yourself that you are.”
“The spade can be used to scratch out a doorway to the afterlife, or rather its waiting room. Between our world and the Gray Plains of the Unmade lies the Nethercroft. It’s an interesting spot. There, each soul is given a sort of gallery of memory to populate as they see fit. The exhibits that inhabit the Nethercroft showrooms are called ‘haunts’: staged recreations of the most important moments from an individual’s life—the sort of stuff that flits through your head when you die.”
“Cake is cake, darling. It’s just a delivery system for frosting.” Warren gasped. “Heretic!
While her home could absorb clutter with aplomb, contemporary decor would be entirely spoiled by the presence of a dropped scarf or abandoned saucer. Its beauty relied upon its emptiness, and so followed its soul.
“Luck is the universe’s thumb placed upon the unequal scales of history. Luck is the primordial sea from which all magic—coherent and entire—once sprang. It is not upon providence but the pivot of misfortune that all existence turns.”
“Equalizer luck, judicious luck, objective luck: We sit here today to worship you, to lay our offerings upon your altar—god maker, bone breaker luck. You do not smite us for our misdeeds nor exalt us for our noble efforts. You do not favor the lord over the lout or the saint over the cretin. You are the manifestation of righteous ambivalence. Forgetful, omniscient, ungrudging luck. You make wizards out of babblers, and cinders of empires. Hearken to me, unhearing luck!” His voice rose as if lifted by ecstasy.
Necromancy required a mastery of song, and alchemy a proficiency with movement and dance. A wizard’s power was dependent upon a command of many languages, half of them dead, and hexegy could only be practiced by an accomplished artist. The exceedingly rare practitioners who worked in multiple schools of magic were called pluricians, and their scarcity was usually accompanied by mortal brevity. Pluricians died young as their organs surrendered to the stresses of their powers.
“War, I loved you right through that rug, past the floorboards, into the basement, under the foundation, straight down to the center of the earth. And I hope to see all of those things wear away as we grow old and our love stays young. Now, come on, let’s warm up the floor before the new carpet arrives…
“One nosy woman to another, is it satisfying—knowing all the secrets of the world? Is it enough? Are you content, or does the ever-swelling bubble of reality make fulfillment impossible? After all, every soul on the planet is out there right now, studiously making a mystery of their life. They’re lying, faking, pretending… Is it better to admit your limitations, to not only allow for, but to insist upon the necessity of the unknown? Is ignorance the basis of sanity? Do we need mysteries to survive?” “Choose your fate, Isolde Ann Always Wilby.” “Oh, very well. I choose madness.
“She is a mongoose, Wilby. She eats little snakes like us and thinks nothing of it. You are alive because she has chosen to let you live. Perhaps she has a plan for you; perhaps she just wants to play with you before you’re a corpse.”
