Who knows but that you will get up to find that the world has inverted itself yet again?

All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.

Where are my guards, Teleus?" He was still speaking softly. Three men dead and he wasn't even breathing hard, Costis noted.

These people make my family look easy to get along with.

He waved at his attendants. "I dragged them like a ball and chain all the way across the palace and back." "If sterner measures are called for, we can find a larger ball and chain." The queen turned and disappeared into the partment. "Oh, dear," Eugenides muttered as he followed...The queen's sterner measures, dispensed by the Eddisian Ambassador, arrived before dawn.

Will there be poppy juice in it?" Phresine shook her head. "Good. My wife and I agreed that only my wine was to be poisoned.

Are you badly hurt?" "Hideously," said the king, without sounding injured at all. "I am disemboweled. My insides may in an instant become my outsides as I stand here before you.