The tent in which she first met him had smelled of blood, of the death she did not understand, and still she had thought of it all as a game. She had promised him the world. His flesh in the flesh of his enemies. And much too late had she realized what he had sown in her. Love. Worst of all poisons.

Please," she whispered as she opened the book, "please get me out of here just for an hour or so, please take me far, far away

A thousand enemies outside the house are better than one within. Arab proverb

I don't like to eat the same dish every day, so I read very different things.

The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.

I like a composer called Henry Purcell, and I love to listen to Neil Young.

And there stood Basta with his foot already on another dead body, smiling. Why not? He had hit his target, and it was the target he had been aiming for all along: Dustfinger’s heart, his stupid heart. It broke in two as he held Farid in his arms, it simply broke in two, although he had taken such good care of it all these years.