Costis followed, telling himself that it wasn't true that he and the king and even the stone under their feet were nothing but tissue, transparently thin, and that for a moment, the only real thing in the universe had been there on the parapet with the king.

Ornon said, "I have seen him jump across atriums four stories above the ground, a distance that would make your blood freeze, and I heard him once confess that he sometimes thinks the distance is beyond him. He always jumps, Your Majesty. The Thieves are not trained in self-preservation. I beg you would take my advice.

What a strange world it is, where prisoners are left their weapons and the written word is a mortal danger.

I stayed only two days in the capital. I was welcomed by a cheering citizenry, who threw flowers at my head. It was disconcerting to think I could have put almost any young man in my retinue on a white horse and they would have thrown flowers at him instead. It was not me they cared about, only what I meant to them: a cessation of hostilities, a chance for prosperity, food on the table.

Sounis had been thinking of Ambiades. "He would have been a better man under different circumstances." Gen looked at him. "True enough," he said. "But does a good man let his circumstances determine his character?

Would you have your hand back, Eugenides? And lose Attolia? And see Attolia lost to the Mede?' Eugenides's eyes were open. In front of his face the floor was littered with tiny bits of glass that glittered in the candlelight. 'You have your answer, Little Thief.

It isn't deep," the Eddisian Ambassador said from the other side of the bed. He was leaning over the wound, looking critical and mildly disappointed. Eugenides didn't miss a beat. "It is...too...deep!" he insisted, outraged.