The Throne of the Five Winds Quotes

“Then it will be war again, perhaps.” Mahara’s arms loosened. “Yala, is it cowardly to want to live?” Relief, hot and acid, boiled in her stomach.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds

“Each room had seen several years of princes, running feet, and impatient questions as Mrong Banh explained science and stars to Garan Tamuron’s sons, but the round room most crowded with memories was this one in the middle of the cylinder, its sliding door opening onto a walkway-hall two floors above the ground. A long heavy wooden table stood in the exact center, and a small arrow-chamber off its interior side, curtained away, was where the astrologer often prepared tea for his guests. Shelves and scroll-racks marched in orderly, curved ranks in every direction, crammed with paper and scroll cases of wood, hide, ribbons of jointed bone. Some of the shelves held astrologer’s implements or other scientific junk, and good-luck charms hung from them next to babu and paper models of fantastical machines or structures. The high wooden ceiling was studded with hooks, and sometimes Banh had hung particular models or constellation-shapes from them to teach princes the movements of the Five Winds—or other forces—upon the night sky.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds

“But no ruler could allow rivals once he ascended a throne. Such ascensions were… delicate, and largely fatal to non-victorious claimants.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds

“Takshin breathed in, deeply. If he concentrated upon her scent, the pain retreated. It was a new thing, to have such a refuge, and normally he would disdain to use it. But he faced a wall and a cabinet of apothecary drawers, with no one to see any weakness.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds

“Flowers fade," she murmered in Khir. "Only the blade survives.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds

“All you must do is call, and I shall answer.”
― S.C. Emmett, The Throne of the Five Winds