Paladin of Souls (World of the Five Gods, #2)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

her afflicted brother-in-law’s

Pejar

The village of Porifors,

was clearly a town-in-waiting

Lord dy Caribastos

If . . . his will is not quite his own, and yet is informed by all his wits .

Traps for bears, the god had said.

if he could directly control his wild demons fled into the realm of matter, he presumably would, and not let his divine weakness depend upon human weakness.

THE FLORAL ENTRY COURT,

Porifors’s castle warder,

groom Goram

Haha

the lowborn, high-riding girl.

the tray of bread, olives, cheese, and dried fruit,

Mee too

Haha

a suitable vail

Coin? Or gesture of thanks?

Haha - what Ista did.

She was almost glad, in retrospect, that the translator officer had been one of those fled. She had spoken with him, eye to eye, a few too many times for her to imagine him as a cipher, blurred into the faceless ranks of the fallen. A feminine weakness, that, perhaps, like refusing to eat any animal one had named as a pet.

Goram

“Funny old man, Goram.

Roya Orico’s widow Sara

Goram

’B ’n ’t,” he mumbled obscurely,

Haha

But she *wants* to take a look, see p. Question

Haha

Ser dy Arbanos

“It was a princess put him here. I thought maybe you could wake him.

“You could try. It wouldn’t hurt to try.”

What desperate hope could drive him to such bizarre lengths? Maybe he has dreams, too.

The memory of the Bastard’s second kiss

What if it had been not unholy jest, but another gift—one meant...

So are the saints seduced by ...

A life for a life, and by the grace of the Bastard, ...

the tongue was the organ held sacred to the Bastard,

to feel for a bandage wrapped around his chest beneath that decorated tunic.

Haha not this scene.

“But you are the one he was going on about,”

But if he waked at all, why not now, for her kiss, or at any other time? Why just at the time that his brother slept his motionless sleep . . . her mind shied from the thought.

the wound don’t heal right.

his father’s mother was Roknari,

he seemed the exemplar of a lack-witted attendant.

Roya Orico’s

“When Lord dy Lutez was still alive, and young, you mean? I’m afraid the chancellor—was he already Roya Ias’s chancellor, way back then, or just a rising courtier?—didn’t come much to Porifors.”

Ista wondered if there was anything lacing that goat’s milk in addition to the honey,

A seductively rational consideration, that one. Not a single dose of poison from a Roknari dagger, but an ongoing regimen, from a source much closer to home? It would account for the visible symptoms quite exactly. She was sorry she had thought of it.

Is it true? Question. What’s the story where this is part of the plot, and the protagonist(s) find out and secretly stop the poisoning to allow the king to recover while pretending to continue the poisoning regimen? It’s in several novels and I can’t remember the one I read in the last year or two.

Less disturbing than dreams of white fire, though.

Why not be straight with Liss? Question

Haha

the Bastard had claimed she was not here by chance.

The gods