It was a backwards memory of an event in his future so terrifying that it had generated harmonics of fear all the way along his lifeline.

That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.

All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.

Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.

Up until now I'd always though RSI meant 'I hate my damn job'.

It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, but one with far less clothing.